Quote 7
"Nature knows me as the wisest being in creation," the sun said. "But I don't know how to turn you into the wind." (2.672)
Gee, Santiago, why do you ask the sun stuff it knows? Even the sun, the natural force that supposedly has the most wisdom, has never tried to do something so durn unnatural. But Santiago has learned enough to tap into the soul of the universe, so he ultimately succeeds. Yay Santiago!
Quote 8
"Why do they make things so complicated?" he asked the Englishman one night. [. . .]
"So that those who have the responsibility for understanding can understand," he said. "Imagine if everyone went around transforming lead into gold. Gold would lose its value." (2.189-90)
The Englishman's books on alchemy are super difficult to understand, which is super frustrating for Santiago. But the Englishman has a better attitude: he figures that anything worth doing is going to take some effort, and the secrets of alchemy must be hidden in complicated texts so that only people smart and determined enough to figure them out will gain the special knowledge. (Does that mean calculus is going to turn out to be useful after all?)
Quote 9
"The wise men understood that this natural world is only an image and a copy of paradise. The existence of this world is simply a guarantee that there exists a world that is perfect. God created the world so that, through its visible objects, men could understand his spiritual teachings and the marvels of his wisdom." (2.490)
Santiago is frustrated with the alchemy books, but the alchemist shows him that they're not the only way to learn the wisdom of the world. In fact, all of nature is like a giant text book, complete with built-in tests and quizzes and extra problem sets.