ry, susceptible to evolution, lying in
mankind, common to all, but differently worked out? Hitchcock answers,
conscience. Conscience is not equally "pure" with all men, and not equally
developed; the difficulty of discovering it, of which the alchemists tell,
is the difficulty of arousing it in the heart of man for the heart's
improvement and elevation. The starting point in the education of man is
indeed to awaken in his heart an enduring, permanent sense of the
absolutely right, and the consistent purpose of adhering to this sense. It
is above all one of the hardest things in the world "to take a man in what
is called his natural state, St. Paul's natural man, after he has been for
years in the indulgence of all his passions, having a view to the world,
to honors, pleasures, wealth, and make him sensible of the mere abstract
claims of right, and willing to relinquish one single passion in deference
to it." Surely that is the one great task of the educator; if it be
accomplished, the work of improvement is easy and can properly be called
mere child's play, as the hermetics like to call the later phases of their
work. (H. A., pp. 45 ff.)

No one is so suspicious and so sensitive as those whose conscience is not
sensitive enough. Such people who wander in error themselves, are like
porcupines: it is very difficult to approach them. The alchemists have
suitable names for them as arsenic, vipers, etc., and yet they seek in all
these substances, and in antimony, lead, and many other materials, for a
true mercury that has just as many names as there are substances in which
it is found; oil, vinegar, honey, wormwood, etc. Under all its names
mercury is still, however, a single immutable thing. It was also called an
incombustible sulphur for whoever has his conscience once rightly
awakened, has in his heart an endlessly burning flame that eats up
everything that is contrary to his nature. This fire that can burn like
"poison" is a powerful medicine, the only right one for a (morally) sick
soul.

Conscience in the crude state is generally called by the alchemists
"common quicksilver" in contrast to "our quicksilver." To replace the
first by the second and, according to the demands of nature, not forcibly,
is the one great aim that the hermetics follow. This first goal is a
preparation for a further work. Whither this leads we can represent in one
word--"God"--and even here we may be struck with the "circular" character of
the