Thursday Translation, #4

Andreas Libavius, Commentationum metallicarum libri quatuor (1597)

The transmutation of metals is of two sorts: either a more perfect species is produced in the same genus of metals (even though it can also be less perfect, nevertheless the art does not intend this); or it brings about a transformation into a new genus...  It has indeed been denied by demented men that copper, lead, and imperfect residues can be corrupted, whereas this is not unknown to the workshop of the potter, the glassblower, the smith, etc. These demented men deny generation, which is transmutation par excellence, with the greatest violence, nor do they put faith in experiment, or in any authorities, with [their] argument that the perpetual species of things can by no art other than the divine one be reciprocally transformed. This divine art is at least permitted to men by God through the mediation of nature. It is truly ridiculous to deny it, and characteristic of ignorant men.  How easy is it to bring it about that this lead not be lead?  And as it is not nothing, but something else, is this [not] in fact another species? Water is one species, air another. These are transformed into one another from day to day without miracle.  Metal is one thing, woad and stone another.  Metals are transformed into these and are in turn recovered. Iron is one thing, copper another. The one is made from the other through the common art of [the mine at] Schmölnitz [in Hungary]. Tin and lead are said to be distinct species. But the two are easily transformed into each other.  Lead is one thing, antimony another. The enemy of transmutation [Georg] Agricola is compelled to concede that iron mutates into copper.  But he alleges that antimony is either converted into lead or into a metal sui generis, and teaches that with sulphur antimony can be made from lead.  [Girolamo] Cardano, another adversary, does not disavow silver mutating into gold... Pliny [the Elder] believed that all gold has silver in it; and the assayers reveal that in quartation something remains with the gold that at a distance one might suppose is absorbed into its nature.  Many confirm that cinnabar contains the seeds of gold and silver, and through it silver is turned into gold... It is a wonder that philosophers... deny what is obvious to common workers.