it is extremely difficult to give a precise account of views which are very far from being precise themselves. But I think it may be said, without fear of error, that the alchemist who could say, "As above, so below," _ipso facto_ recognised both a very close connection between spirit and matter, and a distinction between them. Moreover, the division thus implied corresponded, on the whole, to that between the realms of the known (or what was thought to be known) and the unknown. The Church, whether Christian or pre-Christian, had very precise (comparatively speaking) doctrine concerning the soul's origin, duties, and destiny, backed up by tremendous authority, and speculative philosophy had advanced very far by the time PLATO began to concern himself with its problems. Nature, on the other hand, was a mysterious world of magical happenings, and there was nothing deserving of the name of natural science until alchemy was becoming decadent. It is not surprising, therefore, that the alchemists--these men who wished to probe Nature's hidden mysteries--should reason from above to below; indeed, unless they had started _de novo_--as babes knowing nothing,--there was no other course open to them. And that they did adopt the obvious course is all that my former thesis amounts to. In passing, it is interesting to note that a sixteenth-century alchemist, who had exceptional opportunities and leisure to study the works of the old masters of alchemy, seems to have come to a similar conclusion as to the nature of their reasoning. He writes: "The Sages... after having conceived in their minds a Divine idea of the relations of the whole universe... selected from among the rest a certain substance, from which they sought to elicit the elements, to separate and purify them, and then again put them together in a manner suggested by a keen and profound observation of Nature."(1c) (1a) _op cit_., pp,. 65 and 110, _cf_. p. 154. (1b) _Vide_ a rather frivolous review of my _Alchemy: Ancient and Modern_ in _The Outlook_ for 14th January 1911. (1c) EDWARD KELLY: _The Humid Path_. (See _The Alchemical Writings_ of EDWARD KELLY, edited by A. E. WAITE, 1893, pp. 59-60.)