If we regard the premodern search for truth and explanation for being in the materials of this earth as guided largely by superstition, as medieval alchemists sought to resolve the spiritual substance, contained in the materials of this earth as if they were vessels for it, in one potent object or formula – the lapis philosophorum – we would nonetheless be mistaken, Carl Jung posits, if we believed too that our own motive for modern, scientific investigation has changed all that much from theirs. It may be less superstitious, but it is no less impelled by desperation, wild desire, and fantasy.

 

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