But he did them not in that fabulous manner.
Of this kind of learning the fable of Ixion was a figure, who
designed to enjoy Juno, the goddess of power, and instead of her had
copulation with a cloud, of which mixture were begotten centaurs and
chimeras. So whosoever shall entertain high and vaporous
imaginations, instead of a laborious and sober inquiry of truth,
shall beget hopes and beliefs of strange and impossible shapes.
And, therefore, we may 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 description
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
mechanic 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.
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