these directions properly, one would obtain Aurum (gold), he really
spoke of a method to direct the thinking, feeling and willing
activities of the soul in such a way as to gain true Wisdom.1

*

As in the case of the concepts constituting the doctrine of the four
elements, we have represented here the basic alchemical concepts not
only because of their historical significance, but because, as
ingredients of a still functional conception of nature, they assume new
significance in a science which seeks to develop, though from different
starting-points, a similar conception. As will be seen in our further
studies, these concepts prove a welcome enrichment of the language in
which we must try to express our readings in nature.

1 Roger Bacon in the thirteenth, and Berthold Schwartz in the
fourteenth century, are reputed to have carried out experiments by
mixing physical salt (in the form of the chemically labile saltpetre)
with physical sulphur and - after some initial attempts with various
metals - with charcoal, and then exposing the mixture to the heat of
physical fire. The outcome of this purely materialistic interpretation
of the three alchemical concepts was not the acquisition of wisdom, or,
as Schwartz certainly had hoped, of gold, but of ... gunpowder!


CHAPTER XII

Space and Counter-Space

With the introduction, in Chapter X, of the peripheral type of