As _Subtle_ says in _The Alchemist_-- 'twere absurd To think that nature in the earth bred gold Perfect in the instant; something went before, There must be remote matter....
Nature doth first beget the imperfect, then Proceeds she to the perfect.
At this stage the alchemical argument becomes very ultra-physical.

It may, perhaps, be rendered somewhat as follows:-- Man is the most perfect of animals; in man there is a union of three parts, these are body, soul, and spirit.

Metals also may be said to have a body, a soul, and a spirit; there is a specific bodily, or material, form belonging to each metal; there is a metalline soul characteristic of this or that class of metals; there is a spirit, or inner immaterial potency, which is the very essence of all metals.
The soul and spirit of man are clogged by his body.

If the spiritual nature is to become the dominating partner, the body must be mortified: the alchemists, of course, used this kind of imagery, and it was very real to them.

In like manner the spirit of metals will be laid bare and enabled to exercise its transforming influences, only when the material form of the individual metal has been destroyed.