growth. Metals must have seed, the alchemists said, for it would be
absurd to suppose they have none. "What prerogative have vegetables
above metals," exclaims one of them, "that God should give seed to the
one and withhold it from the other? Are not metals as much in His
sight as trees?"

As metals, then, possess seed, it is evident how this seed is to be
made active; the seed of a plant is quickened by descending into the
earth, therefore the seed of metals must be destroyed before it
becomes life-producing. "The processes of our art must begin with
dissolution of gold; they must terminate in a restoration of the
essential quality of gold." "Gold does not easily give up its nature,
and will fight for its life; but our agent is strong enough to
overcome and kill it, and then it also has power to restore it to
life, and to change the lifeless remains into a new and pure body."

The application of the doctrine of the existence of seed in metals led
to the performance of many experiments, and, hence, to the
accumulation of a considerable body of facts established by
experimental inquiries. The belief of the alchemists that all natural
events are connected by a hidden thread, that everything has an
influence on other things, that "what is above is as what is below,"
constrained them to place stress on the supposed connexion between the
planets and the metals, and to further their metallic transformations
by performing them at times when certain planets were in conjunction.
The seven principal planets and the seven principal metals were called
by the same names: _Sol_ (gold), _Luna_ (silver), _Saturn_ (lead),
_Jupiter_ (tin), _Mars_ (iron), _Venus_ (copper), and _Mercury_
(mercury). The author of _The New Chemical Light_ taught that one
metal could be propagated from another only in the order of