Morienus says. “Our stone is like the creation of man. For first we have the union, 2, the corruption [i.e., the putrefaction of the seed], 3, the gestation, 4, the birth of the child, 5, the nutrition follows.” Both constituents come from one root. Therefore the authors inform us that the stone is an only one. If we call the matter “mercury,” we therefore generally speak of a doubled mercury that yet is only one. Arnold (Ros., II, 17): “So it clearly appears that the philosophers spoke the truth about it, although it seems impossible to simpletons and fools, that there was indeed only one stone, one medicine, one regulation, one work, one vessel, both identical with the white and red sulphur, and to be made at the same time.” Id. (Ros., I, 6): “For there is only one stone, one medicine, to which nothing foreign is added and nothing taken away except that one separates the superfluities from it.” Herein lies the idea of purification or washing; it occurs again. Arnold (Ros., II, 8): “Now when you have separated the elements, then wash them.” The idea of washing is connected with that of mechanical purification, trituration, dismemberment in the parable, grinding (mill), and with the bath and solution (dissolution of the bridal pair). “Bath” is, on the other hand, the surrounding vessel, water bath. Arnold (Ros., I, 9): “The true beginning, therefore, is the dissolution and solution of the stone.” Fire can also cause a dissolution, either by fusion or by a trituration that is similar to calcination. They are all processes that put the substances in question into its purest or chemically most accessible form. Arnold (Ros., I, 9): “The philosophical work is to dissolve and melt the stone into its mercury, so that it is reduced and brought back to its prima materia, i.e., original condition, purest form.” Through the opening of the single substance the two things or seeds, red and white, are obtained.