Doğanın Eylemlerini Kurduğu İlkeler Üzerine

We say, in any case, that the principles upon which nature founds its action are of the hardest and strongest composition: and they are Sulfur and Quicksilver (as certain philosophers say). Therefore, because they are of the hardest composition and the most difficult resolution, their mutual thickening and hardening occurs in such a way that there is a blending and extension through hammering rather than shattering. This only happens because the viscous moisture in their mutual mixture is preserved through a gradual and long-lasting thickening, and through a most temperate slow-cooking within the ore-vein. But we hand down a general rule to you, my son: no thickening of any moisture occurs unless there is first an exhalation of the thinnest parts of that moisture, and a preservation of the thicker parts, so that the moisture in the mixture overcomes the dry parts. In this way, the mixture of dry and moist is balanced, so that the moist is tempered by the dry and the dry by the moist. Thus, this substance becomes one in all its parts, pure, that is, homogeneous in its parts and tempered between hard and soft, and expansive under striking.