These treatments have been described at length by Govinda-bhagavat, Sarvajña-rámeśvara and the other ancient authorities, and are here omitted to avoid prolixity. The mercurial system is not to be looked upon as merely eulogistic of the metal, it being immediately, through the conservation of the body, a means to the highest end, liberation. Thus it is said in the Rasárṇava-- "Declare to me, O god, that supremely efficacious destruction of the blood, that destruction of the body, imparted by thee, whereby it attained the power of flying about in the sky. Goddess (he replied), quicksilver is to be applied both to the blood and to the body. This makes the appearance of body and blood alike. A man should first try it upon the blood, and then apply it to the body." It will be asked: Why should we make this effort to acquire a celestial body, seeing that liberation is effected by the self-manifestation of the supreme principle, existence, intelligence, and beatitude? We reply: This is no objection, such liberation being inaccessible unless we acquire a healthy body. Thus it is said in the Rasahṛidaya-- "That intelligence and bliss set forth in all the systems in which a multitude of uncertainties are melted away, "Though it manifest itself, what can it effect for beings whose bodies are unglorified? "He who is worn out with decrepitude, though he be free from cough, from asthma, and similar infirmities, "He is not qualified for meditation in whom the activities of the cognitive organs are obstructed. "A youth of sixteen addicted to the last degree to the enjoyment of sensual pleasures, "An old man in his dotage, how should either of these attain to emancipation?" Some one will object: It is the nature of the personal soul to pass through a series of embodiments, and to be liberated is to be extricated from that series of embodiments; how, then, can these two mutually exclusive conditions pertain to the same bodily tenement? The objection is invalid, as unable to stand before the following dilemmatic argument:--Is this extrication, as to the nature of which all the founders of institutes are at one, to be held as cognisable or as incognisable? If it is incognisable, it is a pure chimera; if it is cognisable, we cannot dispense with life, for that which is not alive cannot be cognisant of it. Thus it is said in the Rasasiddhánta-- "The liberation of the personal soul is declared in the mercurial system, O subtile thinker. "In the tenets of other schools which repose on a diversity of argument, "Know that this knowledge and knowable is allowed in all sacred texts; "One not living cannot know the knowable, and therefore there is and must be life."