The final character of the completed philosopher’s stone makes it conceivable, that, as the hermetic masters say, it is made only once by a man and then not again. The Stone is an absolutely imperishable Good; but if it should be lost it is surely not the right stone. I have now to offer some conjectures regarding further interpretations of the two and the three principles [Symbol: Gold] and [Symbol: Silver], namely [Symbol: Sulfur] [Symbol: Mercury] [Symbol: Salt]. We are aware of a general difference. I add now first the remark of Hitchcock that the “two” things are to be regarded as an antithesis: _natura naturans_ and _natura naturata_. We might intellectually conceive the [Symbol: Mercury] (mercury) given by many writers at the beginning of the work as a double one, on the one hand as nature and on the other as our world picture. We cause it to work on our [Symbol: Sulphur] (sulphur), i.e., on our affectivity by which the [Symbol: Sulphur] is purified and dissolved, for it is compelled to adapt itself to the requirements of the world laws. But by this means a new world picture is produced, for the former had been influenced by the unclarified [Symbol: Sulphur]; our affective life limits our intellectual. The new world picture or the newly gained [Symbol: Mercury] we combine with our [Symbol: Sulfur] and so on, until finally after a gradual clarification nature and our world picture harmonize. Then there are no longer two mercuries but only one; and the sulphur, our completed subject, has become more or less a unity. Now we may advance to the unification of the two clarified things, which in this stage are called [Symbol: Gold] and [Symbol: Silver]. Now subject and object are bound together and man enters, as is so wonderfully expressed in Chandogya-Upanisad, VIII, 13, as a being adapted into the unadapted (uncreated-primordial) world of Brahma. [Symbol: Sol] and [Symbol: Luna] may, to be sure, be conceived also as the love of God towards man and the love of man towards God. The different masters of the art are the same in different ways in that the one sees more the intellectual, the other the emotional. They describe different sides or aspects of the same process, for which we do not indeed possess appropriate concepts, and whose best form of expression is through symbols. The sign [Symbol: Sol] is then neither = subject nor love but just = [Symbol: Sol], i.e., a thing to which we may approximate nearest by a form of integration of all partial meanings. In view of the fact that [Symbol: Sulfur] and [Symbol: Mercury] are contrasted at the beginning of the process also as body and soul, we can, by making [Symbol: Sulfur] = passions and [Symbol: Mercury] = knowledge (reason) conceive the rest thus: [Symbol: Sulfur] is to be purified by an exalted [Symbol: Mercury] (in distinction from the common [Symbol: Mercury], called also “our” [Symbol: Mercury]), and so to be purified by a higher knowledge. From [Symbol: Sulfur] is developed (i.e.,