Piroteknik: Altın Post Peşindeki Sahte Simyacılar

These for the most part, chiefly level their aim, at the attainment of the Golden Fleece; for this they spend and are spent, they believe what they read, and imagine thereupon, and account nothing worth their enquiry, but the mastery of Hermes, and think every thing unworthy their pains and trouble, unless it be the great Elixir, no fortune can befal them unless they may happen to stumble upon that unhappy Stone. This their design (unwilling to be ridiculous,) they will conceal to their power, pretending to the search of some or other more than ordinarily Noble Medicine, which they prosecute with that vigour, that they may, when that is ended, cure all Diseases, hoping in that time to cure the Maladies of their Purse, and then as for the care of the Sick they will leave that to others. These Philosophers at their first initiation have some one thing or other on which they dote, one on Rain-water, another on Maydew, a third on Sulphur vive, a fourth on mercury, a fifth on iron, a sixth on Tartar, a seventh on Gold, an eighth on the Nitre of the Earth, on which subject they imagine to themselves strange Chimæreal Operations, of which as oft as they miss, they are still to begin again, and when they find not what they look for, they account what they find as good as nothing.