Irenæus writes: “... The fire of nature assimilates all that it nourishes to its own likeness, and then our mercury or menstruum vanishes, that is, it is swallowed by the solar nature [The soul of man dissolves and is taken up by the divine or All Soul] and all together make but one universal mercury [All Soul] by intimate union. And this mercury is the material principle of the Stone; for formerly, when it was compounded of three mercuries, [namely, when they thought they had to distinguish spirit, soul and body, or some other division in it] then Soul, world and God were, for example, to be thought of, or as they are called in Soeta-svatara-Upanishad V, Enjoyer, Object of Enjoyment, and Inciter. As eternal cause contains that trinity. Whoever finds in it the Brahma as the kernel, Resolves himself in it as a goal, and is freed from birth.” Cf. also Deussen, Syst. d. Ved., p. 232, and Sutr. d. Ved., pp. 541 ff.: “Frequently we are told of the connection of the highest with the individual soul, and then again of a splitting up [conditioned by them] inside the Brahma, by virtue of which their two parts are mutually opposed and limited. Both of these things happen, however, only from the standpoint of the distinctions [upadhi].... There were two which were superficial (in that they formed an unjustified opposition) and the third essential to Sol and Luna only, not to the Stone; for nature would produce these two out of it by artificial decoction.... [These distinctions depend on ignorance, after throwing off which the individual is one with the highest. The connection of the individual soul with Brahman is in truth its entering into its own self, and the division in Brahma is as unreal as that between space in general and space within the body.] But when the two perfect bodies are dissolved [prepared for the mystical work] they are transmuted with the mercury that dissolved them, and then there is no more repugnancy in it; then there is no longer a distinction between superficial and essential. And this is that one matter of the stone, that one thing which is the subject of all wonders. When thou art come to this then shalt thou no more discern a distinction between the Dissolver [God] and the dissolved [soul] ... and the color of the ripe sulphur [the divine nature] inseparably united to it will tinge your water [soul].” Irenæus says that the two bodies, Sol and Luna, are compared by the alchemists to two mountains, first because they are found in mountains, and second by way of opposition: “For where mountains are highest above ground, there they lie deepest underground,” and he adds: “The name is not of so much consequence, take the body which is gold [i.e., here the consummate man] and throw it into mercury, such a mercury as is bottomless [infinite], that is, whose center it can never find but by discovering its own.” (H. A., 283 ff.)