I will comment as little as possible. To orient the ideas, I will say only that the figures must be studied independently of their gloss and replaced in the true order, which is that of successive obtentions starting from the lead of the wise men or their mining.
A friendly philosopher criticized the author for having copied his apparently mineralogical mentions in "the great and the small peasant", a famous treatise of the sixteenth century. D'Eckartshausen no doubt had his reasons for using it in this way, following a method common among the best Hermetic authors whose borrowings from
"Classics" of their literature often have excellent grounds for expediency.
