Like Plato, Aristotle exerted a long and profound influence on alchemical thought through both his genuine works and the many pseudonymous writings attributed to him. Among the latter, the Secreta Secretorum purported to be a treatise written by Aristotle to his pupil Alexander the Great, but was in fact compiled from Syriac sources in the eighth century, then translated into Arabic, then into Latin in the thirteenth century by Philip of Paris, and from Latin into the modern languages of western Europe. The work's popularity – its diverse topics included the importance of religion, the proper appearance of a king, the principles of wise governing, the means to good health, astronomy, and alchemy – was such that Elias Ashmole included a version of its alchemical content in the Theatrum Chemicum Britannicum of 1652, entitled “John Lydgate Monke of St. Edmunds Bury, In his Translation of the second Epistle that King Alexander sent to his Master Aristotle.”

Among the genuine writings, Aristotle's Meteorology, despite its title, included important material on the “natural” subterranean formation of metals and minerals, and since alchemists believed that their Art imitated Nature, this treatise also became an established text on the artificial production of metals and related matters. In the following selection, Aristotle begins familiarly with the four elements, their “principles” (coldness, moistness, hotness, and dryness), and interconvertibility.