enable man to resist the effects of the division which evolution was
about to set up in his soul-life - the division which was to give him,
on the one hand, an abstract experience of his own self, divorced from
the outer world, and on the other a mere onlooker's experience of that
outer world. As a result of these endeavours, concepts were formed
which in their literal meaning seemed to apply merely to outwardly
perceptible substances, while in truth they stood for the spiritual
functions represented by those substances, both within and outside the
human organism.

Thus the alchemist who used these concepts thought of them first as
referring to his own soul, and to the inner organic processes
corresponding to the various activities of his soul. When speaking of
Salt he meant the regulated formative activity of his thinking, based
on the salt-forming process in his nervous system. When he spoke of
Mercury he meant the quickly changing emotional life of the soul and
the corresponding activities of the rhythmic processes of the body.
Lastly, Sulphur meant the will activities of his soul and the
corresponding metabolic processes of the body. Only through studying
these functions within himself, and through re-establishing the harmony
between them which had been theirs in the beginning, and from which, he
felt, man had deviated in the course of time, did the alchemist hope to
come to an understanding of their counterparts in the external cosmos.

Older alchemical writings, therefore, can be understood only if
prescriptions which seem to signify certain chemical manipulations are
read as instructions for certain exercises of the soul, or as advices
for the redirection of corresponding processes in the body. For
instance, if an alchemist gave directions for a certain treatment of
Sulphur, Mercury and Salt, with the assertion that by carrying out