Three letters on the lapis philosophorum and the influences of the stars

Count Santi Pupieni

(Joseph Anthony Constantini)

PHILOSOPHORUM PEN

Genoa, 28 October 1758

My beloved friend,
Yes, you have set yourself the task of sounding out my madness with this research.

The whole world cries out against the frenzies of alchemists, every book treats them as madmen and considers it the greatest misfortune that can happen to an honest man if he falls in love with achieving the transmutation of metals, and you, after the universal outcry, still ask me what I think? What do you want me to do? If I speak contrary to the common voice, you and anyone who hears my sentiment from you will treat me as a madman.

If you want me to conform to universal belief, I have told you everything in two lines, but I will not have told you what I feel, and consequently I will be a liar.

So undique labor .

But, finally, I am such a friend of the truth that I cannot satisfy you by telling you what I believe in it.

But I want a pact from you, that if you remain persuaded by what I am about to tell you, you will not expose me to the laughter of your friends, but will speak of it as you do, or at most in relation to an anonymous person.

I tell you then that I am persuaded that the transmutation of metals by means of the Philosopher's Stone is possible; but before telling you the reasons, let me explain to you why this opinion is universally detested, and alchemists are by all passed off as fools.

The greed for riches, which after the passion of love holds the first place in the hearts of men, has induced them, in order to achieve their object, partly to apply themselves to gambling, partly to illicit traffic, and partly to sweat in alchemy.

Leaving aside the discussion of the first two kinds, let us speak specifically of the latter.

Three things can lead men to seek the Philosopher's Stone: either some accident made them observe, or the reading of some book, or some hidden experiment of an impostor.

It must be understood that among the alchemists there are those who shed sweat and substances to reach their object, and those who, to live at the expense of others, have invented some frauds to deceive the credulous.

These, showing visible increases in gold or changes of mercury into silver, then sell the secret at a high price and withdraw.

Nor are the foolish buyers so shrewd as to understand that, if those secrets were true, the seller would not need a few pistoles, nor would he go about communicating his knowledge to others for money.

Those who impoverish themselves in search of the Stone by daily expensive experiments, must be provided with much honor, unless induced by need they also become impostors and sellers of nonsense.

Thus the whole class of alchemists shows us either madmen who waste their substance in vain, or scoundrels who seek to live at the expense of others.

And it is a very wonderful thing that some qualified subjects, enticed by the fables of these people, treat them as if they were great philosophers, give them shelter and maintenance, lavishing expenses on the insinuations of these charlatans, who operate at random without any enlightenment, and have no other merchandise than chatter and a few terms stolen from chemists, or sucked by chance from some book.

If then some of those who spend years in study and in always vain experiments, arrives either by study, which is almost impossible, or by the insinuation of some adept, at the achievement of his goal, you must well imagine that prudence teaches him to hide, and not to make a show of his acquisition.

What would not be the dangers to which he would be exposed, if he wanted to reveal himself? The great are not all good, at the cost of torments the secret could be extorted from them, and then they could be put to death, so that they would not divulge that they had discovered it.

In short, when someone reaches this degree, the love of life advises him to cover himself, since, having no need of anyone, he can live a private life without any disgust, and laugh at the vain pomps of men who destroy their own houses to make sensational appearances.

This is the reason why, since no other alchemists are known to the world than those who slacken their spines without ever achieving their goal and those who deceive the world with impostures, alchemy is called madness and alchemists are frantic or rascals.

But secrecy is so necessary that even the slightest indication that someone was the possessor of the great secret would compel him to withdraw, as Federico Gualdi suddenly did in Venice in the year 1682.

Just imagine that someone were, among the common people, indicated and discovered to be the possessor of this marvelous secret: what would not be the assaults, the enticements, the prayers, the snares? Relatives, friends, acquaintances, everyone would believe that they had a right to obtain help, and not just trifles or mediocre sums.

Gold does not cost anything except a small expense and effort; therefore, satisfying the desires of the applicants must, in their opinion, be of little hindrance; but in the meantime, in reality, the possessor of the secret would always be exposed not only to questions, but to reproaches, snares and risks, with all that more that Theobaldus ab Hogellande, de difficultatibus Chemiae (9) seriously reflects.

This is what makes those who have by chance come to the attainment of such a precious gift, are in a precise necessity of hiding from the eyes of the world, withdrawing from their homeland, fleeing pomp, wandering through various countries and living perpetually alone, or little less.

That Gualdi of whom I spoke to you, after having been some years in Venice in a sort of mercantile figure, or of a man who from his country (he was German) received copious remittances, discovered a portrait of himself in the hands of the famous Titian, who had died more than a hundred years before, having heard that accounts were being made of his age and wealth, pretended to go to the villa with only one coffer, leaving a civilly and comfortably furnished house at the discretion of a servant and a manservant.

See Critique of Death .

Shortly afterward he was recognized in Holland, and from there he apparently disappeared soon after, as was written by that Gazette, and I spoke with a person who did not seem to be an impostor, who professed to have recognized him in Genoa a few years ago in the habit of a priest.

You already know that one of the virtues attributed to the Philosopher's Stone is that of preserving health, and consequently of prolonging life.

In short, he who reaches the summit of this mountain, who in addition to what some authors write, and especially St.

Thomas Aquinas, as far as it appears, that he must either be a saint or become a saint, must necessarily be a philosopher, without a stable homeland, without relatives, without friends, a despiser of vain appearances, content with a humble life and free from affections.

Now, how can one know him?

If then those alchemists who are known cannot give us any certainty that the Stone they seek can be found, since they walk blindly, along uncertain paths; and on the contrary, those who have by chance arrived there, hide themselves from our eyes, nor are they so stupid as to tell us their fortune and demonstrate it to us by experiment, let us seek if there is any reason that could make us believe possible the transmutation of metals and the discovery of the Philosophers' Stone.

The delight I had in my youth in chemistry, led me to spend a great part of my leisure in reading books that treat of this subject, and I will tell you that I have read dozens of them, and some of them I will have read three or four times.

And it was my good fortune that one of the first authors, who I do not remember well who he was, warns never to undertake experiments, since certainly nothing can be achieved, it being necessary to have all the knowledge of the matter and of the Art, and of fire before starting to work, and consequently the surest sign of knowing nothing is to go wandering without knowing the whole.

How far this is suited to the knowledge I have acquired since, you will understand as I go along.

I said, good luck to me, because although I was forming my ideas in study, I never attempted experiments, remembering the warning that I must first be certain of everything.

I was therefore content with study and with forming in myself various arguments that made me believe this science to be true, just as they assured me that I had not arrived at any knowledge, but only at forming various ideas about matter and fire, but never about art.

I thought to myself (and let me tell you my thoughts, so that you do not think me so crazy) how so many authors had written volumes on this subject and had wanted to come to an agreement to deceive the world, assuring us that they were the possessors of the great secret with books, either published after their death, or with supposed names while living to make themselves unknown.

Lorenzo Ventura (10) writes since his time that he had collected in the library of the Count Palatine two hundred and fifty books on this subject, and that he had another fifty with him, in addition to those that were written in two centuries after him.

I thought later how they could have been united in certain terms, although different in their enigmas, but similar in meaning; but above all how they could have so frankly abused the name of God, the fear of which, with the purity of conscience, everyone prescribes as a preliminary disposition in those who set out to achieve this goal.

I could collect for you a hundred passages from various authors on this subject, their thanks to the supreme majesty for the gift obtained and the imprecations against those who think of obtaining it to make bad use of it.

The description that most of them make of their own errors and of the frustrating squandering of their substance, with the precise account of the experiments, the subtle physical speculations with which they try to guide the minds of the candidates, all made me see signs of sincerity and made me believe that deception was impossible in them.

This was also what made me pity those unfortunates who devote themselves to this study, then believing they have made discoveries in the enigmas of the authors, they set out to the experiments.

In short, there is gathered in these writers an effort to point out the ways of art by means of contemplation, by another contrary effort to keep hidden the truth expressed, confessing themselves that one could not in this way arrive at the necessary knowledge without a particular light from Heaven, most of them calling it a free gift of Omnipotence.

So I was not surprised if so many waste time, effort, and substance in vain, since, studying little to reconcile the different meanings of the authors, but above all to ask God for sufficient light to understand them, they lose themselves in useless and expensive experiments, and they intend to make totally worldly uses of this arcane if they were able to achieve it.

And this is why the adepts have written with such obscurity, all believing that they could not use greater ingratitude towards God than to reveal Him freely to the whole world.

In addition to these reasonable reflections, various natural reasons persuaded me of the possible metamorphosis of metals.

Their common liquefaction and malleability, their facility in mixing together and making one body of two or more, the very liquid figure into which they are reduced by means of fire, which resembles the natural figure of quicksilver, and a certain iris or superficial bark of various colors, green, red, blue, yellow and violet, which they all equally show when melted and cast and allowed to cool, persuaded me that they were all composed of some analogous principle and, consequently, that there could be in them the transmutation from one into the other.

I drew no less argument for this from those apparent changes which are familiar to us, that is, of copper into the color of gold with gelatine, or tutia, or into the color of silver with arsenic and tartar, and of iron into the color, or rather in substance, of copper with vitriol.

If metals could not be transmuted in substance, they could not be changed in appearance, because if they were invariable substances like marble and other bodies, such additions would not be able to make them change in appearance, but they would always remain in their original situation.

Moreover, these appearances not only do not change into a third color different from the other metals, but precisely from the color of one into that of another, but also such a change is always in the color of a more perfect metal.

Which shows us that since neither gold nor silver can be reduced to the color of copper or iron, but rather copper to the color of silver and gold, and iron to the color of copper, metals tend toward perfection and philosophers were not wrong in calling the first two metals perfect, and all the others imperfect metals.

I added to all this the consideration that from all metals mercury or quicksilver can be extracted, and that from it they receive their weight.

A learned chemist known to the world by the name of Anonymous assured me that when a Neapolitan prince, a lover of metal, wanted to sacrifice a pound of gold to make this extraction, he had extracted eleven ounces and two drams of mercury very similar to the mineral, of which they had subsequently made by experiment the sublimate, the precipitate and various other chemical operations usually done with natural mercury.

This operation explains the reason for the greater weight in gold than in other metals, because it contains a greater quantity of mercury, which is known to be very heavy.

Therefore I argued within myself: if mercury is in all metals, then their different configuration, composition and color comes from the diversity of the earth, or sulphur, which corporifies the mercury.

So when one comes to find that earth or that sulphur which corporifies mercury to produce gold, not only will it be possible to convert simple mercury into gold, but also any other metal, corporifying into gold that mercury which previously was bound to another earth which made it be copper, tin, lead, etc.

These were the principles which made me believe this art to be true, and consequently this study not useless, to which I applied myself however without distracting myself from my other applications, making it serve as a pastime and a place of amusement.

But although this discourse is reasonable and may justify my belief in this matter, I want to tell you an incident that confirmed me in this feeling and that opened my eyes so much, that I began to understand all the enigmas of the philosophers and not only to reconcile them frankly with each other, but also to discover among the many books some impostors who had written capriciously and in relation to the works of the adepts mixing in a thousand fables that drive mad those unfortunates who sweat over the authors, without distinguishing the lie from the truth.

A friend of mine, a militant by profession, had long been enamoured of metallics, but he was not equipped with the terms or the principles of chemistry, much less with the practice and, what is worse, he understood little of the Latin language, so that he had no study of the authors.

Having heard me speak on this subject on a few occasions, he asked me to dictate to him in the vernacular certain Latin manuscripts that he had had with him for many years, and which he had begun to value greatly, after having accidentally preserved them from the flames into which he had thrown quantities of useless writings and recipes, and after having solved certain enigmas or ciphers with the help of a certain learned cloistered monk.

I undertook to serve him willingly, also out of curiosity to read the manuscript, and to my amazement I discovered all the art and the vessels, with such punctual accuracy and without equivocation or twists, that I suddenly saw my mind opened to understand all the enigmas and parables of the printed authors.

Everything was explained, everything was provided with very sound warnings to avoid accidents and deceptions, so that it was not possible to make a mistake.

Then I understood that opus nostrum non est sumptuosum , that it only needs one vase, one furnace, one fire, that the work is ludus puerorum & opus mulierum , and that the many putrefactions, calcinations, cobations, circulations, sublimations, precipitations &c, of which the works of the Philosophers are full, creduntur sudori artis, & sunt operationes naturae .

In short, I no longer read any author who did not understand the artifice with which they have sought to cover up art in order to reserve it to those alone who, enlightened by God, could, through study and assiduous contemplation and comparison, discover the truth.

In addition to the incitement of the first chapter, Lota prius conscientia tua ab omni macula peccati, alias nil boni assequeris, there was a chapter on Deo , in which he gave reason for the necessity of a right conscience and of a good purpose in acting with valid reasons and mature arguments, to distract anyone who wanted to undertake the work for human ends only.

Another chapter on De igne , in which he supported with living examples the necessity of controlling the fire within the terms prescribed by it.

Above all he inculcated that one should not hurry; observe, he says, the works of nature: if the egg is placed at a low heat lasting for a long time, a chicken is formed and life is introduced into it, the grain of wheat thrown into the ground warmed by the slow heat of the sun, sprouts and produces a living grass, and in its time the ear; but if you put the egg in a boiling cauldron, and the grain among the embers, giving them all at once that heat which they should receive in long days, behold, all hope of life is lost in them.

He finally uncovers all the authors' equivocations, detesting them as the cause of the slaughter of so many poor idiots who, imagining that they understand them either in the literal or in the mystical, waste away without ever achieving a principle of true knowledge.

Do not believe, however, that he uncovers everything, since the matter is hidden.

It is true that the inscription of the first chapter is verba septem lapidem pingunt .

It is equally true that after the aforementioned preface he continues: Accipe de lapide, quem si coecus non es, vides scriptum in hoc folio, but do not imagine that you see the stepping stone.

It is described there, and the seven words describe the whole work and the material together, and, it seems incredible, but the author wanted to leave something hidden, protesting that he did it so that God would enlighten whoever he pleased, to discover the true material that is also described there.

In fact it seems to me a work of sufficient charity to make the blind aware of the vanity of their labors and their expenditures, so that they stop that madness that reduces them to dust and that makes them waste their time so uselessly in vain research and experiments.

Making them see the ease and little expenditure that the work requires is enough to dissuade them from their own ruin.

You would be surprised if I told you that, at first sight, so to speak, I touched the traces to detect the seven words, and saw in fact that these contained the matter and the art, but my militant friend, who had spent many months to arrive at them, even with the help of his religious, remained much more astonished.

Then, almost regretting having shared that manuscript with me, he was content afterwards to read it as it was, without continuing the translation through me.

However, he had no difficulty in letting me see the work that after a few months he had undertaken, and that he had to abandon when called to the field of service of his prince.

I will tell you more, that he was in another place, where he had summarized it, having arrived at seeing the Caput Corvi , which is the first color blackness, but believing he had erred, and not understanding the terms of the philosophers, after fourteen months of assiduous assistance he had abandoned it.

When I discovered his deception, he began again from the beginning; then, distracted from his duties, he stopped again, and shortly after died.

You will perhaps wait for me to describe to you what I understood of the matter and the art, but it is forty years ago, and I do not remember well.

I also know that you have no knowledge of the great work, and that curiosity alone moved you to ask me my opinion.

I will only tell you that then I established that it was true that matter is not any of the metals, nor sulphur, nor alum, nor vitriol, and that that saying of the philosophers is true:

Do you want to make a man? Take the seed of a man.
Do you want to make a lettuce? Take the seed of a lettuce.
Do you want to make a metal? Take the seed of a metal.

For it is absurd to seek a lettuce from the female of a man, or a man from the female of a lettuce.

Of course, this metallic seed cannot be any metal, because the seed is one thing and the body produced by the seed is another.

It is equally certain that I remember then having understood that many were working and had worked on the true matter, as to the subject, but it was no longer living but dead matter, since, believing that the matters were two, deceived by the gossip of the authors, when in fact it is only one matter that contains two, they operated on that which was already stripped of the second invisible matter.

I also remember that I determined in myself to be true that datur in rerum natura corpus metallicum quoddam facilis solutionis, facilisque putrefactionis: si hoc invenisti, felix medicus eris .

And I know that I realized that my militant friend had chosen a matter that was too compact; therefore the operation was so long for him that he delayed until the fourteenth month to see the first color.

In fact, I recall that this was one of the warnings in the manuscript, that is, not to lose heart if the work was delayed beyond the twelfth month, since this arose from the greater hardness of the material which could sometimes last up to the thirtieth.

These and other reasons that do not come to mind, perhaps more vivid, but which would be obscure to you, which then made me know that material of great analogy with gold and of similar porosity, were those that made me determine for the possibility of transmutation, and for the truth of this science, and these I believe are sufficient to judge this feeling of mine.

You will ask me why with so much knowledge I did not undertake the enterprise; I answer that the almost assiduous assistance it requires was not compatible with my state and my applications, and that just as I was always persuaded that my friend would not reach perfection, because he operated with too much publicity and with human ends, so I never believed I could deserve this gift from the Most High.

Whereupon I abandoned the thought of it so much that I forgot the most essential things, as if they had never been known to me.

If after all this you do not want to believe that the Philosopher's Stone exists, I do not want to bother trying to persuade you, because I do not care at all.

It is enough for me that you cannot judge me totally crazy, because I do not believe it, and that you believe only what is true that I am.

Your good friend

SECRET TO MAKING GOLD, HISTORICAL FACT.

My dear Marquis,
Milan, 7 October 1741.


What are you doing, breaking camp, spending the hours of the day and night studying the ambiguities, metaphors and figures of the philosophers who have written about the great Work?

Why toil so much to reconcile the enigmatic descriptions of the matter of fire and art? Why consume your brains, smoke your eyes, blacken your faces and burn your fingers among ovens, stoves, forges, retorts, flasks, containers, crucibles, tongs and a thousand other smithy instruments?

And it takes so much to learn how to make Gold? Forgive me, you are a fool; you know nothing about it, it does not take so much toil, so much study, and so much sweat, sir no.

I will teach you the great secret that has recently been published here after having been hidden for a long time, so much so that now it is up to everyone to make use of it.

Hear how this great art came into the world.

A certain gentleman of mediocre extraction had been agent of our great hospital for many years, and this was a position that had come to him almost by inheritance, because he had succeeded his father in it, and both had exercised it with praise and reputation.

He lived a long time in his slight figure, but suddenly he began to see himself in a better appearance, and little by little he bought a good palace, had good horses, acquired farms, displayed clothes, adorned with jewels and surrounded by servants, in short he passed himself off as a comfortable gentleman.

Imagine how much talk the world had; but all the chatter vanished as soon as the most curious of his servants penetrated that three or four times a year he retired for a week to a cabinet that he always kept closed, and there with furnaces, bellows, coals, crucibles and glasses he operated closed without being observed, reducing mercury to gold.

The matter spread, and sometimes, smilingly, he was told by someone who wanted a little of his secret, what speeches he always pretended to be ignorant of their meaning; but the world was not disillusioned by this, nor did it cease to believe that he was in possession of the great secret, because in fact it would not have been possible to guess from what other source he could draw a way to expand so much in household expenses.

And these were still little, since there was no pious work that was asked of him, or to marry maidens, or to contribute to sacred buildings, in which he did not pour money, so that he had made himself very welcome not only to ladies and gentlemen and to all kinds of people, but to the cardinal archbishop himself and to the governor.

He was very devoted to devotion, he always exhorted to do good and did it copiously himself, so that he had access everywhere as a singular man and deserving of all esteem.

And as there is never a lack of those who doubt evil, there was one who took advantage of the whim, but those who had the right to it; that in hours when he was away from his ministry, he went to examine the book of the current cash of the Hospital, and found that things were going well.

However, having become superior, the Marquis NN thought of wanting to go further.

One day he told our alchemist to arrange his affairs, since he wanted to make a general revision of the management of the revenues of the Hospital.

He replied that he was very willing, but that he begged him to consider the consequences.

The Marquis paid little attention to this remonstrance, so the agent, who was thinking of what a stir this novelty could make in the country, went immediately to the cardinal, making him reflect on how offensive such a resolution was to his accuracy, and how much prejudice it would result to him in the gossip of the masses, even though he knew the state of his affairs; that the mere mention of an audit was enough to spread the word that he was already discovered to be a thief, and that there would be no one who did not believe it, since he saw with the help of God through legitimate means his condition so greatly improved; that however he begged him to intervene with his good offices to dissuade the Marquis from this thought so as not to ruin him in his honorific, being ready however to give a private account of everything he might request without engaging in a general audit; that having to pay for a vast management of a long course of twenty-five years, he wanted three or four months of work.

Moved by such strong reasons, the prelate sent for the Marquis and effectively engaged him to withdraw from the resolution of this sensational examination of accounts; but the Marquis, who was full of suspicions, protested that he was abandoning the idea in order to condescend to his command, but that his eminence would regret it, being persuaded that the agent was a scoundrel.

The cardinal maintained that this was too sinister a concept, assuring him from a thousand points that he was a good man.

However, the obstinate marquis would not be persuaded, always maintaining that the agent was a scoundrel.

Now hear how the secret of making the gold, with which the agent had enriched himself, was discovered.

One day, after lunch, a peasant came to the agency office to pay an installment of rent; but, the substitutes told him that, since their boss was not there to make the deposit, they could not collect.

In spite of this, the peasant, who wanted to unload the money and go home, planned to leave the cash, provided it was noted at his game, and then he would return another time to get the receipt.

Convinced of the plan, the substitutes looked for his account in the book, and, finding it, told him that he paid fifty crowns per installment.

How? said the peasant; I pay one hundred and fifty.

The substitute replied that he frequently saw the debt accounts, and the payments in three installments a year of fifty crowns each.

The peasant replied that this was making him pay one hundred and fifty crowns a year, when he paid four hundred and fifty in three installments of one hundred and fifty each.

In this debate fate would have it that the marquis unexpectedly arrived in that workshop, and, having understood the reason for the dispute and penetrating the whole mystery, had the previous book pulled down and the peasant's old account found there; and in fact it was found that his debt was four hundred and fifty crowns a year.

He quickly went to find five or six other accounts, and found them all transferred from the old book to the current one with about two-thirds less income.

Having made this discovery, the marquis exclaimed: here is the secret of making gold!

Then, having the two books carried on the shoulders of a porter of the hospital, he turned to the cardinal, and, reproaching him for having already warned him that the agent was a scoundrel and that he would regret the office done in his favor, made him see with his own hands that the secret of making gold was a most solemn robbery.

The good prelate wept for mortification at having been the innocent cause of the robbery continuing for many months, but the marquis, who was anxious to stop the alchemist, went quickly to the governor with the too clear process, which was being formed by the comparison of the books; and in moments the alchemist's palace was surrounded by soldiers and police.

It was fortunate that he was out of town and that, the secret having spread everywhere in an instant, a friend of his was able to stop him as soon as he entered the city and persuade him to retire to a sacred place in a nearby monastery, while he was returning from the villa on a horseback with a lackey in front.

It is superfluous to tell you that his friend had great difficulty in persuading him that his secret was known to all, and that if he went any further he would undoubtedly be hanging.

It is enough that he withdrew and that, dressed as a monk, he had the great fortune to escape the hangman's claws.

In the meantime the trial continues, all the precious furniture is sold; his wife, already accustomed to wearing gold and silver and dressing herself in great jewels, is left in her nightgown, and he has gone wandering, without being able to save anything of the purchases made with his secret, and naturally he will die a miserable death.

It is said that with this beautiful secret he defrauded the poor hospital of about three hundred thousand crowns, but, as we proceed, perhaps more will be discovered.

What made the Marquis doubt was the comparison that, in times of war, the hospital fed five to six hundred patients, and now with only two hundred more it was without money in the coffers, and full of debts.

Now you will have learned how gold is made, and as for me, I believe that all the great advances that sometimes in a short time unexpectedly happen in the world, come about from similar secrets, although not all are agents of hospitals and pious places.

In fact, handling that of others is a great incentive and danger, and I believe that he who handles other people's money and comes out clean, without anything sticking to his fingers, possesses a degree of sanctity.

What I observe in this incident is that these secrets are rarely hidden.

We see certain extraordinary discoveries in which the hand of God is visible.

Having escaped the danger of the revision thought up by the marquis, who could ever have feared the discovery? And yet observe what some gentlemen of modern belief call a combination, and which I call providence.

It is necessary that the peasant has business that keeps him in the city until after lunch, that the agent does not go to the office, and that while there is a dispute between the peasant and the substitute, the superior happens to arrive at an unusual hour.

In truth, if we were to seriously reflect on it, we would find everyday cases in which it is expressly shown that God is not so carefree and indifferent towards human things, as many of our sectarians believe, and as they impiously try to persuade others too in order to lessen their own shame by the multitude of followers.

You will ask me with curiosity what the alchemist was doing now, shut up in his little room with furnaces, crucibles and other smithy instruments.

Oh, here lies a great part of the secret.

He melted down the doubles and the zecchini into bars, which he then sold to the goldsmiths or exchanged for coins from the mint.

Thus, although to his detriment, he supported the universal opinion that he changed mercury into gold.

And does it not seem to you a special secret to hide theft with this artifice?

Neither I nor you would ever have been able to think of such a beautiful secret to detract from ten percent.

Learn then to make yourselves rich; but no, do not learn already, for there is no greater wealth than honesty and exactitude.

And although nowadays wealth is reckoned by the greater part of the world as a happiness and is procured, if not by the secret of the agent, by other secrets that most call of industry, even if they are of robbery, nevertheless I will always believe myself to be rich, if I have nothing of that of others.

Oh, if I wanted to dye my pen in this very black cloister, I would show you a quantity of thieves who pass for good men, many of whom do not even believe they are, although they do.

Let us leave aside this key of too high and acute sound, and let us study to torture our affairs well as judges without passion; and you often remember that I am truly
Your good servant and friend.

INFLUENCES OF THE STARS

Aachen, 3 August 1740
My Lord,

You want to joke with me by asking me what I feel about the influences of the stars.

Since at present the whole world is very undeceived in this kind of things, so, tell the truth, it occurred to you to discover whether among the other prejudices of my extravagant imagination there was also some branch of that infirmity of mind called Astrology.

Know then that as willingly as I have left the reins to my caprice to wander into all kinds of literary and mechanical things, sucking like a bee a sip from a flower, another from a leaf, to compose a mixture not of the sweetness of honey, but of various juices and flavors, a mixture of acid, salt, sweet, bitter and acrid, so much the same I have been averse to applying myself to this study, not even in thought.

I have thought that the sky is a book in which it is enough for man to contemplate the beauty of the characters, without having to tire himself to guess their meaning.

Not that I firmly believe, as many have obstinately fixed themselves, that the stars cannot have some influence on earthly things, I am on the contrary convinced of it.

I am also of the opinion that all the efforts used from the Creation onwards by those who have applied themselves to understanding those luminous figures in order to deduce the meaning of future events, have been so little successful that they have come to understand little more than nothing.

To want to maintain that the aspects of the celestial figures have no influence on us would be to want to fight against the fact.

We have so many proofs of the effects of the Moon on our bodies, on animals and on vegetables, that this operation and influence of the nearest planet is undeniable.

The observations of farmers with an old moon and a new moon, or with a waxing or waning moon, are such and so evident that there is no need to call them into question.

Those of midwives on the pregnancies and births of women, and of peasants on those of animals, are equally ancient and daily testimonies of this truth.

But two things can convince the most obstinate, one the constant rules of women, the other a manual experiment that can be done by any rustic.

Concerning the first it is very well known that in every moon, on the prefixed day, these rules appear, and never happens late without disturbance of one's health.

As for the second, take a glass jar filled with water, with inside it a part of well-cooked ash, of vine shoots, and leave it to rest near the rising of the moon, or the conjunction of the moon with the sun; at the very point of this conjunction you will see some bubbles of water move from the ash and rise, without anyone touching it, and likewise some small portion of ash.

These two facts eliminate the obstinate objection that the rays of the planets, because of their distance, can have no effect on the earth, and, consequently, that they have no influence on us.

I calculate the moon, according to the observations of Cassini (11), distant from us, in its perigee, or closest proximity to the earth, to be approximately 185,000 Italian miles.

And yet, at the very moment of the conjunction of the two planets, there occurs a visible clouding of the water, or motion of the ash with various bubbles that arise without either motion or heat that excites the commotion.

These effects certainly cannot be attributed to the rays of the planet, because they occur without the planet seeing the object on which it acts, because sometimes it will be below the horizon, and sometimes the objects themselves will be out of its sight, in addition to the confusion of its rays with the solar rays, which are much more effective.

But what is more constant than the motions of the sea corresponding, with the ebb and flow, to the different positions of the moon in the sky? The matter is so settled that there is no sailor who does not know to what extent the ebb and flow lasts, when he examines the different situations of that planet.

I could adduce many other observations of fishermen about fish, of market gardeners and gardeners about plants, herbs, seeds and flowers, and of doctors about illnesses, but, in my opinion, the three attached are sufficient to be able to consistently decide that the moon influences.

Now if the moon influences, why can't we equally suppose that the other planets and the stars influence? It is true that the distance of these is incomparably greater than that of the moon, but when we examine the facts which I have set forth above, we soon understand that the effects of the moon on earthly things arise neither from pressure nor from radiation, but from a virtue and correspondence hitherto not understood by us, and which by all appearances we shall never come to understand.

On the other hand, it is clear that this distance does not take away the correspondence on the present action of the planet, since at the very point of conjunction the commotion of the ashes in the water occurs.

The distance of the moon is not so small as to admit a prompt passage of the moon to us of pressure or of some other local impelling virtue; if we were to attribute to it the commotion on contact of such a virtue which should depart from the moon at the very point of conjunction, if it were to pass with the same celerity as that of the ball expelled from the cannon, it would have to take more than twenty days to reach us.

This is not enough; its diffusion should be as vast as the earth is vast, since it must act equally on both hemispheres, and on all the bodies on which it is seen to influence.

The same argument can be made about irradiation, although this can operate more readily, but we will give it in vision, if we want to explain the effects of these rays.

In addition to the fact that the rays can be nothing more than a participation of the subject in our life, so that they give us indubitable testimony of the subject itself, it is added that the rays, starting in a straight line, cannot act on an object intermediated by a roof, a mountain or a wall, and less so when the planets are set from the respective horizon of the objects on which they act.

Therefore, as it is necessary to grant the influence of the stars, it is equally necessary to confess that we do not understand what is the force and what is the action of the star that produces the too visible effects.

Finally, this is not the only thing in which we must call ourselves lost and confess ourselves ignorant.

If it is not possible to understand the mode of action of influences, although it is very easy to understand the effects of things without understanding the effective causes, or the action of causes to produce effects, I have reasonable reason to include among the number of the impossible also the understanding of the true effects of the stars on sublunary things.

Astrologers have been engaged in this study for centuries: all profess to predict the accidents of the seasons, but if it does not happen that they hit on something by guesswork, they show by their mere discordance among themselves that they work by chance, or that their so-called rules are fallacious.

Geminiano Montanari, a memorable professor of Meteors in the study of Padua, has distinguished himself in this regard in his book entitled Astrologia convinta di falso , where with physical demonstrations he proves it is impossible that by examining the stars one can predict anything about the fate of men or the accidents of the world.

But what is singular is the discovery he makes of the way in which the composition of the Frugnuolo was done at that time, an almanac that for 50 years was still in vogue for its so-called predictions.

Listen and be amazed.

At the end of this book he tells the story that, having joined in a certain meeting with four other qualified subjects, who then increased to eighteen, they decided to compose this almanac in this way.

Each one wrote separately at will the accidents of the season for each quarter of the moon, as well as about illnesses, things of the sea, wars, political affairs, common affairs.

Then, by lot, the number that came up indicated the prediction that was written in the almanac, and with this the predictions were prepared in advance one year for the next.

From this you can deduce what faith is due to astrological predictions.

There are, however, some days in the year which are called judicial or critical, others in which undoubtedly stormy times occur which our sailors call the point of the star, and these things also indicate the true influences of the stars; but outside of these, all predictions are arbitrary or erroneous.

Less reliable then are the other predictions about human events.

To pretend to foresee the accidents of the life of men by referring them to the influences of the stars is a presumption too advanced.

The science of future things God has reserved to himself, and the rules of astrology have been sufficiently demonstrated by scholars to be fallacious, as being supported by principles totally invented, which have no demonstration.

With all this it must be confessed that something has been divined with this divinatory art.

A case that I want to describe to you shows that something has been found, but on the other hand it shows that human providence does not succeed in shielding the determinations of God, in whose hands are life and death.

It is thirty-two in thirty-three years that an old prelate of most unblemished life and mature knowledge, told me a story worthy of being written, while I was in Dalmatia.

"I," he told me, "have never given any credence to astrology, horoscopes, nativities and similar nonsense; with all that, an event has happened to me that has always left me in suspense.

It is twenty years since a civilized man from the city of Parma in Italy, gifted with a great deal of knowledge, and among his other studies he was an expert botanist, came to this city.

He found under water at the mouth of the river Salona the androsace reported by Castor Durante, very difficult to find, and which has been seen by few botanists.

He was of a wise and temperate nature; so that after having conferred with him several times, I asked him to stay with me to enjoy his pleasant society.

This familiarity opened up to me the confidence to ask him the reason why he had separated from his home.

Sir, he said to me, I have cast my horoscope and have found that I am to be killed by my brother, therefore I have distanced myself from him for three years, having calculated the point at which this misfortune should befall me.

It is written that Sapiens dominabitur astris , whereby I have tried to elude the sad influence.

I laughed at this report, pretending to be surprised that an enlightened man could give any credence to such nonsense, and with a long serious speech I made him understand how much I considered weakness, and perhaps irreligion, to apply myself to similar observations.

Indeed I showed him the vanity and fallacy of this science, and that the dominion of the wise man over the stars which the scripture says must not be understood as meaning that the stars influence the death of men, and the kind of death, and much less the point of it.

It is less to be taken to mean that man can by his prudence avoid that fate which depends solely on the independent will of God.

Rather, the passage is meant to mean that, supposing that the stars influence men with diversity of inclinations and animal appetites regarding sensible things, the man who is a friend of wisdom, that is, of reason and the fear of God, which is true wisdom, can dominate over this force of the stars, by curbing tumultuous passions and forming habits totally opposed to natural inclinations.

He confessed to me sincerely that he had no faith in this science, but that a single impulse of prudence which insinuates the escape from dangers even dreamed of, had induced him to withdraw.

He continued with me throughout the course of his calculated peril, occupying himself so much in the study and in the search for various simple things, that he frequently made short trips to the surrounding mountains.

Finally, when the time of his calculation had expired, he let three months pass, and although I would have liked him to continue my company, he wanted to leave for Italy, towards his own home.

Not two months had passed after his departure when I received a letter dictated by him and signed by his own hand, in which he informed me that his diligence had been in vain in escaping the death he foresaw.

He had had an quarrel with his own brother on account of the handling and accounting of the common income, and that in the heat of the attack his brother had wounded him with two stab wounds from which he was irreparably destined to die.

Which showed that, although he had not erred in the accidents and in the cause of his death, he had erred in the calculation, since this did not depend on a fixed time, but on a cause that, however much he had postponed his return, he always carried with him.

And from this he understood more and more that God is the only dispositive of life and death.

About fifteen days later another letter arrived from a person unknown to me, which, commissioned by my friend, brought me the death of the latter, and you cannot believe how much pain I felt.

The prelate would have liked to show me the two letters, which he told me he had kept, but after so many years he could not remember where he had put them.

In short, I am persuaded that the stars have an influence, and I am on the other hand convinced of the fallacy of the study of these influences.

Even if there were an infallible science to understand the force of the influences, since these can only be laws established by the Creator for human accidents, so, in the same way that he has promised to save those sinners who, although condemned by his own mouth to perdition, will convert, trusting in mercy, he can equally restrain the course of those laws that he has ordained for earthly events.

For this reason, instead of studying the influences to escape the determinations of God, I want instead to stay with God, and study to depend with total resignation on him.

If He is the Master of good and bad influences, if I desire only what is His glory, and if I am certain that He can send me only what is useful to me, whether the influences in the discourse of the world are good or bad, they will always be good in the order of Providence.

I remember that, when I was a young man, one of these professors of astrology predicted to me that I would lead an unhappy life, that I would be subject to a thousand misfortunes, and that everything I attempted would fail.

I confess that I have suffered infinite hardships, so that my life could be the subject of a love story; likewise that in my undertakings I have encountered unheard-of obstacles, but that I have always had recourse with full confidence to Him who distributed the influences, and I have overcome the obstacles and hardships, or obtained a courageous indifference that has made me recognize in all my accidents the beneficent hand of the Father of all.

In my long journey I have known, in my accidents, not the force of influences, but the superior hand that guided me to make me know the transience and misery of earthly things.

If I had been prosperous, perhaps like many others I would have forgotten my duty, and would have lost sight of the right path.

And behold, instead of suffering adverse fortune, I have rather enjoyed good fortune thanks to the supreme influence of He who made the stars and gave them influences.

In conclusion I will tell you that, without turning to such a distant country to seek the influence of bodies that we do not know what they are, it would be much better to study those influences that are familiar to us in our individuality, I mean the movements of our disordered affections.

These are the Stars that the wise man can dominate, these are the malignant influences that are close to us, which, if we want, we can resist.

This is the true study that can guide us once to satiate our curiosity about the influences of the stars, by looking at them closely.

But what do we do? Just like the astrologer in the fable, we contemplate the stars to understand those luminous, imperceptible figures, and in this contemplation we fall into the precipice that lies between our feet, without realizing it.

Think then, if it has ever occurred to me to want to study the influences.

I have told you my feeling on this subject, and I ask your wisdom to conform to it, as your maturity assures me, subsequently granting me the benign influence of your love, so that I can live, both by my choice, and by your pleasure.

Your obliged servant and sincere friend.