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Not long afterwards I discovered the following “allegory” in an obscure alchemical treatise. In his Speculativae philosophiae11 the Frankfurt physician Gerard Dorn, who lived in the second half of the sixteenth century, describes the “Mundi peregrinatio, quam erroris viam appellamus” (Tour of the world, which we call the way of error) on the one hand and the “Via veritatis” on the other. Of the first way the author says: The human race, whose nature it is to resist God, does not cease to ask how it may, by its own efforts, escape the pitfalls which it has laid for itself. But it does not ask help from Him on whom alone depends every gift of mercy. Hence it has come about that men have built for themselves a great Workshop on the left-hand side of the road … presided over by Industry. After this has been attained, they turn aside from Industry and bend their steps towards the second region of the world, making their crossing on the bridge of infirmity…. But because the good God desires to draw them back. He allows their infirmities to rule over them; then, seeking as before a remedy in themselves [industry!], they flock to the great Hospital likewise built on the left, presided over by Medicine. Here there is a great multitude of apothecaries, surgeons, and physicians, [etc.].12