Note H (381). For the old as for the new royal art the material is man, as man freed from all framework. “Not man of the conventional social life, but man as the equally entitled and equally obligated being of divine creation, enters the temple of humanity with the obligation always to remain conscious of his duty and to put aside everything that comes up to hinder the fulfillment of the highest duty.” (R. Fischer.) Compare with this what Hitchcock says of the material of the Philosopher’s Stone: “Although men are of diverse dispositions ... yet the alchemists insist ... that all the nations of men are of one blood, that is, of one nature; and that character in man, by which he is one nature, it is the special object of alchemy to bring into life and action, by means of which, if it could universally prevail, mankind would be constituted into a brotherhood.” (H. A., pp. 48 ff.) [The tests] ... “begin with the stripping of the metals. Now alchemy recommends, once the propitious matter is seen, carefully examined and recognized, to clean it externally for the purpose of freeing it of every foreign body that could adhere accidentally to its surface. The matter, in fine, should be reduced to itself. Now it is an absolutely analogous matter that the candidate is called to strip himself of everything that he possesses artificially; both it and he ought to be reduced strictly to themselves. In this state of primitive innocence, of philosophic candor retrieved, the subject is imprisoned in a narrow retreat where no external light can penetrate. This is the chamber of meditation which corresponds to the matras of the alchemist, to his philosophic egg hermetically sealed. The uninitiated finds there a dark tomb where he must voluntarily die to his former existence. By decomposing the integuments that are opposed to the true expansion of the germ of individuality, this symbolic death precedes the birth of the new being who is to be initiated.” (W. S. H., pp. 87 ff.)