On the impossibility of nature.

we have arrived. For the art of Chemistry original: "Chymiæ" has now discovered such subtleties that scarcely greater ones could be found; and it differs from the Art of the ancient Philosophers just as a Clockmaker differs from a simple Blacksmith. And although both work with iron, nevertheless neither would understand the other's labors, even though both are Masters in their own craft. If the Father of Philosophers himself, Hermes Hermes Trismegistus, the legendary founder of alchemy, and the subtle-minded Geber Jabir ibn Hayyan, an 8th-century polymath were to return to life today, along with the most profound RAYMOND LULLY A 13th-century Majorcan philosopher and logician, they would be regarded by our Chemists not as Philosophers, but rather as Disciples. They would not know so many of the distillations used today, so many circulations, so many Calcinations, and so many other innumerable works of the Artists which the men of this century have discovered and devised from their writings. Only one thing is lacking to us: that we might know that which they themselves achieved, namely the Philosophers' Stone original: "Lapidem Philosophorum" or the Physical Tincture. While we seek that, we find other things; and if human procreation were not so common, and nature did not maintain her law in that matter, we would now scarcely avoid going astray. But to return to the proposition: I promised in this first Treatise to explain nature, lest a vain imagination deflect us from the simple, true path. I say, therefore, that NATURE is one, true, simple, and whole in its being, which God made before the ages, and enclosed a spirit within it. Know, moreover, that the boundary of nature is God, who is also the beginning of nature; for no beginning is finished except in Him in whom it begins.