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124 OF THE ADVANCEMENT OF LEARNING. [Vill 3. 
note in these sciences which hold so much of imagination 
and belief, as this degenerate natural magic, alchemy, 
astrology, and the like, that in their propositions the de- 
scription of the means is ever more monstrous than the 
pretence or end. For it is a thing more probable, that 
he that knoweth well the natures of weight, of colour, of 
pliant and fragile in respect of the hammer, of volatile and 
fixed in respect of the fire, and the rest, may superinduce 
upon some metal the nature and form of gold by such 
mechanique as longeth to the production of the natures 
afore rehearsed, than that some grains of the medicine 
projected should in a few moments of time turn a sea 
of quicksilver or other material into gold. So it is more 
probable that he that knoweth the nature of arefaction, 
the nature of assimilation of nourishment to the thing 
nourished, the manner of increase and clearing of spirits, 
the manner of the depredations which spirits make upon 
the humours and solid parts, shall by ambages of diets, 
bathings, anointings, medicines, motions, and the like, 
prolong life, or restore some degree of youth or vivacity, 
than that it can be done with the use of a few drops or 
scruples of a liquor or receipt. To conclude therefore, 
the true natural magic, which is that great liberty and 
latitude of operation which dependeth upon the know- 
ledge of forms, I may report deficient, as the relative 
thereof is. ‘To which part, if we be serious and incline 
not to vanities and plausible discourse, besides the deriv- 
ing and deducing the operations themselves from meta- 
physic, there are pertinent two points of much purpose, 
Inventarium the one by way of preparation, the other by 
opum hum- way of caution. The first is, that there be 
anarum. made a kalendar, resembling an inventory of 
the estate of man, containing all the inventions (being 
Ce ee 
