Quotation might be continued indefinitely. The _Centrum Naturæ Concentratum_, ascribed to Alipili, and a treatise of some reputation, declares that “The highest wisdom consists in this, for man to know himself, because in him God has placed his eternal word, by which all things were made and upheld, to be his Light and Life, by which he is capable of knowing all things in time and eternity.... Therefore let the high inquirers and searchers into the deep mysteries of nature, learn first what they have in themselves, before they seek in foreign matters without them; and by the divine power within them, let them first heal themselves and transmute their own souls; then they may go on prosperously and seek with good success the mysteries and wonders of God in all natural things.” * * * * * These quotations, some of which are unknown to, or, at any rate, uncited by Hitchcock, do not by any means establish the points which are debated in his book. If the philosophers from whom they are selected were in possession of the whole secret of wealth, they saw fit to conceal it from the profane, and their works, full of practically insoluble enigmas, are proclamations of the fact of their success, rather than lights for those who sought to follow in their steps. Under these circumstances, they saw that in the blind guess-work which their symbols created of necessity, no student would ever attain to the true light of alchemy except by pure chance--in other words, by the favour of Heaven, which, accordingly, they counselled him to supplicate. None of the passages in question are inconsistent with the physical object of alchemy, and in the citation from Alipili, it is evident that the mysteries and wonders referred to include metallic transmutation in the mind of the writer. The investigator of natural secrets was advised to take counsel with the Author of natural secrets after the only possible manner.