Quotes from H. Stanley Redgrove

every substance contains undeveloped resources and potentialities, and can be brought outward and forward into perfection.

We have said that "Alchemy was the attempt to demonstrate experimentally on the material plane the validity of a certain philosophical view of the Cosmos"; now, this "philosophical view of the Cosmos" was Mysticism. Alchemy had its origin in the attempt to apply, in a certain manner, the principles of Mysticism to the things of the physical plane, and was, therefore, of a dual nature, on the one hand spiritual and religious, on the other, physical and material.

Robert Boyle (1626-1691) had defined an element as a substance which could not be decomposed, but which could enter into combination with other elements giving compounds capable of decomposition into these original elements.