CHAPTER III.
THE ALCHEMICAL CONCEPTION OF THE UNITY AND SIMPLICITY OF NATURE.
In the preceding chapter I have referred to the frequent use made by the alchemists of their supposition that nature follows the same plan, or at any rate a very similar plan, in all her processes.

If this supposition is accepted, the primary business of an investigator of nature is to trace likenesses and analogies between what seem on the surface to be dissimilar and unconnected events.

As this idea, and this practice, were the foundations whereon the superstructure of alchemy was raised, I think it is important to amplify them more fully than I have done already.
Mention is made in many alchemical writings of a mythical personage named _Hermes Trismegistus_, who is said to have lived a little later than the time of Moses.

Representations of Hermes Trismegistus are found on ancient Egyptian monuments.

We are told that Alexander the Great found his tomb near Hebron; and that the tomb contained a slab of emerald whereon thirteen sentences were written.