One might suppose it would be easier, and perhaps more profitable, to examine, observe, and experiment, than to turn one’s eyes inwards with the hope of discovering exactly “the road followed by the Great Architect of the Universe in the creation of the world.”  But the alchemical method found it easier to begin by introspection.  The alchemist spun his universe from his own ideas of order, symmetry, and simplicity, as the spider spins her web from her own substance.

A favourite saying of the alchemists was, “What is above is as what is below.”  In one of its aspects this saying meant, “processes happen within the earth like those which occur on the earth; minerals and metals live, as animals and plants live; all pass through corruption towards perfection.”  In another aspect the saying meant “the human being is the world in miniature; as is the microcosm, so is the macrocosm; to know oneself is to know all the world.”

Every man knows he ought to try to rise to better things, and many men endeavour to do what they know they ought to do; therefore, he who feels sure that all nature is fashioned after the image of man, projects his own ideas of progress, development, virtue, matter and spirit, on to nature outside himself; and, as a matter of course, this kind of naturalist uses the same language when he is speaking of the changes of material things as he employs to express the changes of his mental states, his hopes, fears, aspirations, and struggles.

The language of the alchemists was, therefore, rich in such expressions as these; “the elements are to be so conjoined that the nobler and fuller life may be produced”; “our arcanum is gold exalted to the highest degree of perfection to which the combined action of nature and art can develop it.”

Such commingling of ethical and physical ideas, such application of moral conceptions to material phenomena, was characteristic of the alchemical method of regarding nature.  The necessary results were; great confusion of thought, much mystification of ideas, and a superabundance of views about natural events.

When the author of The Metamorphosis of Metals was seeking for an argument in favour of his view, that water is the source and primal element of all things, he found what he sought in the Biblical text:  “In the beginning the spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.”  Similarly, the author of The Sodic Hydrolith clenches his argument in favour of the existence of the Philosopher’s Stone, by the quotation:  “Therefore, thus saith the Lord; behold I lay in Zion for a foundation a Stone, a tried Stone, a precious corner Stone, a sure foundation.  He that has it shall not be confounded.”  This author works out in detail an analogy between the functions and virtues of the Stone, and the story of man’s fall and redemption, as set forth in the Old and New Testaments.  The same author speaks of “Satan, that grim pseudo-alchemist.”