Objection I: We have made many experiments with every substance of the vegetable kingdom, but we werent able to find the least trace of the Stone. Same goes for the animal kingdom.
Author's Answer: Εvery step which Nature takes at the vegetable and animal kingdom, not only reveals to the careful observer the possibility of the existence of the Stone, but it offers him a perfect idea of our Stone and a certainty of its existence. A spore fell in the earth, rots, sprouts, and produces a plant thousand times bigger and absolutely dissimilar from the spore which gave birth to it. This plant gives rise to ten new spores and every one of them to a new plant. Same goes for the animal kingdom. But in order for the spore to be able to sprout and produce a plant, nature has to make it rot and destroy its premier form. This is a simple and well known experience, capable to reveal the traces of the Stone to every sane man.
All those who research our science, must admire the work of that gardener, who was able to keep in its full vigour, under the most severe winter, those plants and trees which under normal conditions wither at the end of autumn. We have seen him grow and preserve orange trees and other plants from the hotter countries in the cold climate of the Northern countries. We have also seen him grow plants and trees in the 1/10 of the time which Nature should have required to grow them in the same size without his help. Now that was a man who knew how to work in accordance with nature and to amend nature by nature, in opposition to all those chemists, who spend their times distilling and subliming every substance who fell at their hands. If he could push his experience and knowledge one step further, he should be able to make grow in a time of only few hours, plants which Nature, when have received the biggest possible help from the husbandman, cannot grow at a time shorter than three whole months.
Objection II: From the beginning of our research, we hadnt high expectations from the plant and animal kingdom. The kingdoms of Nature do not transmute one into the other. In accordance to that, man begets a man and a lion begets a lion. We search for an agent capable to transmute baser metals into gold and silver, so it must be of mineral or metallic origin.
Authors Answer: The authors goes into an in depth analysis of the process of human digestion. He describes many experiments and observations he made at the cadavres of freshly dead people, using microscopes and other apparatus, when he worked as an assistant at a lab of anatomy. Those chapters make a really interesting reading. After that he makes some references to agriculture and mentions that we can use as fertilizers human or animal manure, mineral salts or the whole carcasses of dead animals and people. Through this analysis, he is trying to prove that the substance of one kingdom is really transmuted to the substance of the other, as we see that animals preserve their existence and grow by transmuting the substance of plants and plants in their order the substance of minerals. Αt last the author affirms that the Stone doesnt only transmute base metals into gold, but is an agent able to repair any disorder in all three kingdoms of Nature, so we arent allowed to conclude that its origin has to be mineral or metallic.
Objection III: All our experiments with the mineral and metallic substances doesnt reveal to us the least trace of the Stone.
Authors answer: Nature works in the mineral kingdom in the slowest, softest and least comprehensible manner, so no one but a fool would look for the Stone, which is the most active agent in all Nature, in that kingdom. Thats an answer to those who make experiments in the mineral kingdom and wholeheartedly reject the existence of the Stone. For those who believe in the existence of the Stone and make experiments with mineral substances in order to find it, we shall give a more ample answer and put them in the right track in some other point.
In spite of the above, we dont deny that some of the most capable chemists of our era are able to make tinctures from metallic or mineral substances, which tinctures are able to amend and perfect the nature of the base metals. But they dont have to conclude from that fact that they will be able to produce the Stone by working on those mineral substances.
Objection ΙV: What the hermetic authors have mentioned about the generation of the metals has been proved that its not true. Example the treatise of Cosmopolite.
Authors Answer: Cosmopolite was an adept and possessor of the Stone. Same goes for Morienus Romanus. The Paracelsians are chemists and not Hermetic philosophers. The Rosicrucians were impostors for the most part. Cosmopolite hadnt travelled to the center of the earth to give his description of the genetation of the metals, but through the Philosophical work he performed with his own hands, he was able to recognize the ways and the methods which Nature follows, as he was able to produce in very short time thats which Nature need many years to produce without his help. So Cosmopolite, and all the other adepts as well, were able to see through their Work the method which Nature follow in order to give birth to the metals. That means that the chapters in which Cosmopolite describes the generation of the metals must not be rejected, as it is there where he reveals our whole Practice and even the nature of the matter which is essential for our Work.
The scientists of our era arent able to understand the nature of our Archeus, as they are unable to understand the nature of a central fire. If they had observed more carefully their experiments with electricity, which they perform mostly to amuse themselves, they me now be able to understand better the doctrines of Cosmpolite.
Some additional points: Αt the end of that second book, author affirms that of all those author who believed in the existence of the Stone and tried to defend it without being adepts, only one was able to do that thing with success, and this one was none other than Johann Joachim Becher. With the exception of my brothers adepts, the author says, you will find not a man which I respect as much as I respect Becher. He is the only man I know, who without being initiated, was able to understand a large part of our philosophy and present it to the world in a right manner. After that, the author advises the sages of all European scientific academies, to devote six months of their lives to learn the Latin language, if not for any other reason, to be able to study the works of Becher. Its there that you will find a sane philosophy. Its there that you will recognise your current ignorance. He writes for sages of his era.
A last interesting point is a reference to the author to two particular experiments. In the first one, the author says that if we expose an amount of common sand to the air, having firstly treated that sand in a particular manner, after some time pass we shall be able to extract a big quantity of silver and gold from that sand. That quantity shall be bigger than the one we can extract from the richest ore of gold and the expenses are only 1/10 in comparison with the expenses which require the extraction from the ore. If now, after you have extracted the precious metals, you expose again the same sand to the air, under the same circumstances, you shall be able to extract a new quantity of precious metal, and this can be continued ad infinitum.