the following began.

The alchemists' general conception of nature led them to assign to
every substance a condition or state natural to it, and wherein alone
it could be said to be as it was designed to be. Each substance, they
taught, could be caused to leave its natural state only by violent, or
non-natural, means, and any substance which had been driven from its
natural condition by violence was ready, and even eager, to return to
the condition consonant with its nature.

Thus Norton, in his _Ordinal of Alchemy_, says: "Metals are generated
in the earth, for above ground they are subject to rust; hence above
ground is the place of corruption of metals, and of their gradual
destruction. The cause which we assign to this fact is that above
ground they are not in their proper element, and an unnatural position
is destructive to natural objects, as we see, for instance, that
fishes die when they are taken out of the water; and as it is natural
for men, beasts, and birds to live in the air, so stones and metals
are naturally generated under the earth."

In his _New Pearl of Great Price_ (16th century), Bonus says:--"The
object of Nature in all things is to introduce into each substance the
form which properly belongs to it; and this is also the design of our
Art."

This view assumed the knowledge of the natural conditions of the
substances wherewith experiments were performed. It supposed that man
could act as a guide, to bring back to its natural condition a
substance which had been removed from that condition, either by
violent processes of nature, or by man's device. The alchemist