(on this or any other subject)

I trust that you glimpsed the PBS presentation on the topic (?)
I've not further delved into verifications of the claimed source material. Yet.
I note though, that he was not given to soul-baring self-analyses for the amusement and edification of contemporaries or posterity.

As to

he accepted the goals of alchemy wholeheartedly. Like all alchemists, he thought that lead to gold was a step along the way to completing the Great Work: which was to create a Philosopher's Stone.

The last belief I'd advance, from 2006 - is that I 'understand': the deepest mindset of a one such as this Man. No, you cannot say, "wholeheartedly" any more than I can pretend assurance of his level of awareness of the esoteric aims (of at least some..) of the 'alchemists'.

By that I mean: that the lead/gold plot was for these ones, merely a cover for their delvings; a necessary ploy for keeping at bay, the (variants of) Church Censors and er, incense censers / the pecksniff Ashcrofts and Foulwells du jour.

Still, since any regard at all of the 'Philosophers Stone' is an inherently metaphysical quest - I do not think it presumptuous to imagine that such an intellectual Giant as Newton would have been quite aware of the metaphors he was immersed in: and to suppose that he was seeking not merely.. some mathematical thesis next to 'prove' - on the scale of the physics of the phenomenal world. But that will forever-be: a Guess.

(We shall not ever explicate the mind of Newton, much as anyone would wish to - he be daid.)

Edit PS: of course no one can estimate the motives, %scurrilous/serious of practitioners, though I'd suppose that there has been sufficient interest all along to guesstimate roughly today, with a bit of research.

'Cover' applies only to the ones I'd deem 'serious' obv. But the gullible are ever with us, so we Know there must have been some Duesys of scams; those might be quite more fun to read about than the serious ones, I wot. After all, should a one discover something of a metaphysical 'Truth' -?- s/he couldn't directly transmit/communicate that realization to someone else, anyway!



{Love schemes that render Capitalizing impossible.}