The reader may wish to have some description of the Essence. The alchemists could describe it only in contraries. It had a bodily form, but its method of working was spiritual. In The Sodic Hydrolith, or Water Stone of the Wise we are told:—

"The stone is conceived below the earth, born in the earth, quickened in heaven, dies in time, and obtains eternal glory.... It is bluish-grey and green.... It flows like water, yet it makes no wet; it is of great weight, and is small."

Philalethes says, in A Brief Guide to the Celestial Ruby: "The Philosopher's Stone is a certain heavenly, spiritual, penetrative, and fixed substance, which brings all metals to the perfection of gold or silver (according to the quality of the Medicine), and that by natural methods, which yet in their effects transcend Nature.... Know then that it is called a stone, not because it is like a stone, but only because, by virtue of its fixed nature, it resists the action of fire as successfully as any stone. In species it is gold, more pure than the purest; it is fixed and incombustible like a stone, but its appearance is that of very fine powder, impalpable to the touch, sweet to the taste, fragrant to the smell, in potency a most penetrative spirit, apparently dry and yet unctuous, and easily capable of tinging a plate of metal.... If we say that its nature is spiritual, it would be no more than the truth; if we described it as corporeal, the expression would be equally correct."

The same author says: "There is a substance of a metalline species which looks so cloudy that the universe will have nothing to do with it. Its visible form is vile; it defiles metalline bodies, and no one can readily imagine that the pearly drink of bright Phoebus should spring from thence. Its components are a most pure and tender mercury, a dry incarcerate sulphur, which binds it and restrains fluxation.... Know this subject, it is the sure basis of all our secrets.... To deal plainly, it is the child of Saturn, of mean price and great venom.... It is not malleable, though metalline. Its colour is sable, with intermixed argent which mark the sable fields with veins of glittering argent."

In trying to attach definite meanings to the alchemical accounts of Principles, Elements, and the One Thing, and the directions which the alchemists give for changing one substance into others, we are very apt to be misled by the use of such an expression as the transmutation of the elements. To a chemist that phrase means the change of an element into another element, an element being a definite substance, which no one has been able to produce by the combination of two or more substances unlike itself, or to separate into two or more substances unlike itself. But whatever may have been the alchemical meaning of the word element, it was certainly not that given to the same word to-day. Nor did the word transmutation mean to the alchemist what it means to the chemist.

The facts which are known at present concerning the elements make unthinkable such a change as that of lead into silver; but new facts may be discovered which will make possible the separation of lead into things unlike itself, and the production of silver by the combination of some of these constituents of lead. The alchemist supposed he knew such facts as enabled him not only to form a mental picture of the change of lead into silver, or tin into gold, but also to assert that such changes must necessarily happen, and to accomplish them. Although we are quite sure that the alchemist's facts were only imaginings, we ought not to blame him for his reasoning on what he took to be facts.

Every metal is now said to be an element, in the modern meaning of that word: the alchemist regarded the metals as composite substances; but he also thought of them as more simple than many other things. Hence, if he was able to transmute one metal into another, he would have strong evidence in support of his general conception of the unity of all things. And, as transmutation meant, to the alchemist, the bringing of a substance to the condition of greatest perfection possible for that substance, his view of the unity of nature might be said to be proved if he succeeded in changing one of the metals, one of these comparatively simple substances, into the most perfect of all metals, that is, into gold.

The transmutation of the baser metals into gold thus came to be the practical test of the justness of the alchemical scheme of things.

Some alchemists assert they had themselves performed the great transmutation; others tell of people who had accomplished the work. The following story is an example of the accounts given of the making of gold. It is taken from John Frederick Helvetius' Golden Calf, which the world worships and adores (17th century):—

"On the 27th December 1666, in the forenoon, there came to my house a certain man, who was a complete stranger to me, but of an honest grave countenance, and an authoritative mien, clothed in a simple garb.... He was of middle height, his face was long and slightly pock-marked, his hair was black and straight, his chin close-shaven, his age about forty-three or forty-four, and his native province, as far as I could make out, North Holland. After we had exchanged salutations, he asked me whether he might have some conversation with me. He wished to say something to me about the Pyrotechnic Art, as he had read one of my tracts (directed against the Sympathetic Powder of Dr Digby), in which I hinted a suspicion whether the Grand Arcanum of the Sages was not after all a gigantic hoax. He, therefore, took that opportunity of asking me whether I could not believe that such a grand mystery might exist in the nature of things, by means of which a physician could restore any patient whose vitals were not irreparably destroyed. I answered, 'Such a medicine would be a most desirable acquisition for any physician; nor can any man tell how many secrets there may be hidden in Nature; yet, though I have read much about the truth of this art, it has never been my good fortune to meet with a real master of the alchemical science.' ... After some further conversation, the Artist Elias (for it was he) thus addressed me: 'Since you have read so much in the works of the alchemists about this stone, its substance, its colour and its wonderful effects, may I be allowed the question, whether you have not prepared it yourself?' On my answering his question in the negative, he took out of his bag a cunningly-worked ivory box, in which were three large pieces of substance resembling glass, or pale sulphur, and informed me that here was enough of the tincture for the production of twenty tons of gold. When I had held the precious treasure in my hand for a quarter of an hour (during which time I listened to a recital of its wonderful curative properties), I was compelled to restore it to its owner, which I could not help doing with a certain degree of reluctance.... My request that he would give me a piece of his stone (though it were no larger than a coriander seed), he somewhat brusquely refused, adding, in a milder tone, that he could not give it me for all the wealth I possessed, and that not on account of its great preciousness, but for some other reason which it was not lawful for him to divulge.... Then he inquired whether I could not show him into a room at the back of the house, where we should be less liable to the observation of passers-by. On my conducting him into the state parlour (which he entered without wiping his dirty boots), he demanded of me a gold coin, and while I was looking for it, he produced from his breast pocket a green silk handkerchief, in which were folded up five medals, the gold of which was infinitely superior to that of my gold piece." Here follows the inscriptions on the medals. "I was filled with admiration, and asked my visitor whence he had obtained that wonderful knowledge of the whole world. He replied that it was a gift freely bestowed on him by a friend who had stayed a few days at his house." Here follows the stranger's account of this friend's experiments. "When my strange visitor had concluded his narrative, I besought him to give me a proof of his assertion, by performing the transmutatory operation on some metals in my presence. He answered evasively, that he could not do so then, but that he would return in three weeks, and that, if he was then at liberty to do so, he would show me something that would make me open my eyes. He appeared punctually to the promised day, and invited me to take a walk with him, in the course of which we discoursed profoundly on the secrets of Nature in fire, though I noticed that my companion was very chary in imparting information about the Grand Arcanum.... At last I asked him point blank to show me the transmutation of metals. I besought him to come and dine with me, and to spend the night at my house; I entreated; I expostulated; but in vain. He remained firm. I reminded him of his promise. He retorted that his promise had been conditional upon his being permitted to reveal the secret to me. At last, however, I prevailed upon him to give me a piece of his precious stone—a piece no larger than a grain of rape seed.... He bid me take half an ounce of lead ... and melt it in the crucible; for the Medicine would certainly not tinge more of the base metal than it was sufficient for.... He promised to return at nine o'clock the next morning.... But at the stated hour on the following day he did not make his appearance; in his stead, however, there came, a few hours later, a stranger, who told me that his friend the artist was unavoidably detained, but that he would call at three o'clock in the afternoon. The afternoon came; I waited for him till half-past seven o'clock. He did not appear. Thereupon my wife came and tempted me to try the transmutation myself. I determined however to wait till the morrow. On the morrow ... I asked my wife to put the tincture in wax, and I myself ... prepared six drachms of lead; I then cast the tincture, enveloped as it was in wax, on the lead; as soon as it was melted, there was a hissing sound and a slight effervescence, and after a quarter of an hour I found that the whole mass of lead had been turned into the finest gold.... We immediately took it to the goldsmith, who at once declared it the finest gold he had ever seen, and offered to pay fifty florins an ounce for it." He then describes various tests which were made to prove the purity of the gold. "Thus I have unfolded to you the whole story from beginning to end. The gold I still retain in my possession, but I cannot tell you what has become of the Artist Elias."



CHAPTER VI.

ALCHEMY AS AN EXPERIMENTAL ART.

A modern writer, Mr A.E. Waite, in his Lives of the Alchemystical Philosophers, says: "The physical theory of transmutation is based on the composite character of the metals, on their generation in the bowels of the earth, and on the existence in nature of a pure and penetrating matter which applied to any substance exalts and perfects it after its own kind." It must he admitted that the alchemists could cite many instances of transmutations which seemed to lead to the conclusion, that there is no difference of kind between the metals and other substances such as water, acids, oils, resins, and wood. We are able to-day to effect a vast number of transformations wherein one substance is exchanged for another, or made to take the place of another. We can give fairly satisfactory descriptions of these changes; and, by comparing them one with another, we are able to express their essential features in general terms which can be applied to each particular instance. The alchemists had no searching knowledge of what may be called the mechanism of such changes; they gave an explanation of them which we must call incorrect, in the present state of our knowledge. But, as Hoefer says in his Histoire de la Chimie, "to jeer at [the alchemical] theory is to commit at once an anachronism and an injustice.... Unless the world should finish to-morrow, no one can have the pretension to suppose that our contemporaries have said the last word of science, and nothing will remain for our descendants to discover, no errors for them to correct, no theories for them to set straight."



What kind of experimental evidence could an alchemist furnish in support of his theory of transmutation? In answering this question, I cannot do better than give a condensed rendering of certain pages in Hoefer's Histoire de la Chimie.

The reader is supposed to be present at experiments conducted in the laboratory of a Grand Master of the Sacred Art in the 5th or 6th century.

Experiment.—Ordinary water is boiled in an open vessel; the water is changed to a vapour which disappears, and a white powdery earth remains in the vessel.

Conclusion.—Water is changed into air and earth.

Did we not know that ordinary water holds certain substances in solution, and that boiling water acts on the vessel wherein it is boiled, we should have no objection to urge against this conclusion.

It only remained to transmute fire that the transmutation of the four elements might be completed.

Experiment.—A piece of red-hot iron is placed in a bell-jar, filled with water, held over a basin containing water; the volume of the water decreases, and the air in the bell-jar takes fire when a lighted taper is brought into it.

Conclusion.—Water is changed into fire.

That interpretation was perfectly reasonable at a time when the fact was unknown that water is composed of two gaseous substances; that one of these (oxygen) is absorbed by the iron, and the other (hydrogen) collects in the bell-jar, and ignites when brought into contact with a flame.

Experiment.—Lead, or any other metal except gold or silver, is calcined in the air; the metal loses its characteristic properties, and is changed into a powdery substance, a kind of cinder or calx. When this cinder, which was said to be the result of the death of the metal, is heated in a crucible with some grains of wheat, one sees the metal revive, and resume its original form and properties.

Conclusion.—The metal which had been destroyed is revivified by the grains of wheat and the action of fire.

Is this not to perform the miracle of the resurrection?

No objection can he raised to this interpretation, as long as we are ignorant of the phenomena of oxidation, and the reduction of oxides by means of carbon, or organic substances rich in carbon, such as sugar, flour, seeds, etc. Grains of wheat were the symbol of life, and, by extension, of the resurrection and eternal life.



Experiment.—Ordinary lead is calcined in a cupel made of cinders or powdered bones; the lead is changed to a cinder which disappears into the cupel, and a button of silver remains.

Conclusion.—The lead has vanished; what more natural than the conclusion that it has been transformed into silver? It was not known then that all specimens of lead contain more or less silver.



Experiment.-The vapour of arsenic bleaches copper. This fact gave rise to many allegories and enigmas concerning the means of transforming copper into silver.

Sulphur, which acts on metals and changes many of them into black substances, was looked on as a very mysterious thing. It was with sulphur that the coagulation (solidification) of mercury was effected.

Experiment.—Mercury is allowed to fall, in a fine rain, on to melted sulphur; a black substance is produced; this black substance is heated in a closed vessel, it is volatilised and transformed into a beautiful red solid.

One could scarcely suppose that the black and the red substances are identical, if one did not know that they are composed of the same quantities of the same elements, sulphur and mercury.

How greatly must this phenomenon have affected the imagination of the chemists of ancient times, always so ready to be affected by everything that seemed supernatural!

Black and red were the symbols of darkness and light, of the evil and the good principle; and the union of these two principles represented the moral order. At a later time the idea helped to establish the alchemical doctrine that sulphur and mercury are the Principles of all things.

Experiment.—Various organic substances are analysed by heating in a distillation-apparatus; the products are, in each case, a solid residue, liquids which distil off, and certain spirits which are disengaged.

The results supported the ancient theory which asserted that earth, water, air, and fire are the four Elements of the world. The solid residue represented earth; the liquid products of the distillation, water; and the spirituous substances, air. Fire was regarded sometimes as the means of purification, sometimes as the soul, or invisible part, of all substances.

Experiment.-A strong acid is poured on to copper. The metal is attacked, and at last disappears, giving place to a green liquid, as transparent as water. A thin sheet of iron is plunged into the liquid; the copper re-appears, and the iron vanishes.

What more simple than to conclude that the iron has been transformed into copper?

Had lead, silver, or gold been used in place of copper, one would have said that the iron was transformed into lead, silver, or gold.

In their search for "the pure and penetrating matter which applied to any substance exalts and perfects it after its own kind," the alchemists necessarily made many inventions, laid the foundation of many arts and manufactures, and discovered many facts of importance in the science of chemistry.

The practitioners of the Sacred Art of Egypt must have been acquainted with many operations which we now class as belonging to applied chemistry; witness, their jewellery, pottery, dyes and pigments, bleaching, glass-making, working in metals and alloys, and their use of spices, essential oils, and soda in embalming, and for other purposes.

During the centuries when alchemy flourished, gunpowder was invented, the art of printing was established, the compass was brought into use, the art of painting and staining glass was begun and carried to perfection, paper was made from rags, practical metallurgy advanced by leaps and bounds, many new alloys of metals came into use, glass mirrors were manufactured, and considerable advances were made in practical medicine and sanitation.



Basil Valentine, who was one of the greatest alchemists of the 16th century, discovered many of the properties of the metal antimony, and prepared and examined many compounds of that metal; he made green vitriol from pyrites, brandy from fermented grape-juice, fulminating gold, sulphide of potash, and spirits of salt; he made and used baths of artificial mineral waters, and he prepared various metals by what are now called wet methods, for instance, copper, by immersing plates of iron in solutions of bluestone. He examined the air of mines, and suggested practical methods for determining whether the air in a mine was respirable. Hoefer draws attention to a remarkable observation recorded by this alchemist. Speaking of the "spirit of mercury," Basil Valentine says it is "the origin of all the metals; that spirit is nothing else than an air flying here and there without wings; it is a moving wind, which, after it has been chased from its home of Vulcan (that is, fire), returns to the chaos; then it expands and passes into the region of the air from whence it had come." As Hoefer remarks, this is perhaps one of the earliest accounts of the gas discovered by Priestley and studied by Lavoisier, the gas we now call oxygen, and recognise as of paramount importance in chemical reactions.



Besides discovering and recording many facts which have become part and parcel of the science of chemistry, the alchemists invented and used various pieces of apparatus, and conducted many operations, which are still employed in chemical laboratories. I shall reproduce illustrations of some of these processes and pieces of apparatus, and quote a few of the directions, given in a book, published in 1664, called The Art of Distillation, by John French, Dr. in Physick.

The method recommended by French for hermetically sealing the neck of a glass vessel is shown in Fig. VI. p. 80. The neck of the vessel is surrounded by a tray containing burning coals; when the glass melts it is cut off by shears, and then closed by tongs, which are made hot before use.

Fig. VII. p. 81, represents a method for covering an open vessel, air-tight, with a receptacle into which a substance may be sublimed from the lower vessel. The lettering explains the method of using the apparatus.

French gives very practical directions and much sound advice for conducting distillations of various kinds. The following are specimens of his directions and advice:—

"When you put water into a seething Balneum wherein there are glasses let it be hot, or else thou wilt endanger the breaking of the glasses.

"When thou takest any earthen, or glass vessel from the fire, expose it not to the cold aire too suddenly for fear it should break.

"In all your operations diligently observe the processes which you read, and vary not a little from them, for sometimes a small mistake or neglect spoils the whole operation, and frustrates your expectations.

"Try not at first experiments of great cost, or great difficulty; for it will be a great discouragement to thee, and thou wilt be very apt to mistake.

"If any one would enter upon the practices of Chymistry, let him apply himself to some expert artist for to be instructed in the manual operation of things; for by this means he will learn more in two months, than he can by his practice and study in seven years, as also avoid much pains and cost, and redeem much time which else of necessity he will lose."

Fig. VIII. p. 82, represents a common cold still, and Fig. IX. p. 84, is a sketch of an apparatus for distilling by the aid of boiling water. The bath wherein the vessels are placed in Fig. IX. was called by the alchemists balneum Mariae, from Mary the Jewess, who is mentioned in the older alchemical writings, and is supposed to have invented an apparatus of this character. Nothing definite is known of Mary the Jewess. A writer of the 7th century says she was initiated in the sacred art in the temple of Memphis; a legend prevailed among some of the alchemists that she was the sister of Moses.

Fig. X. p. 85, represents methods of distilling with an apparatus for cooling the volatile products; the lower vessel is an alembic, with a long neck, the upper part of which passes through a vessel containing cold water.



Fig. XI. p. 88, shows a pelican, that is a vessel wherein a liquid might be heated for a long time, and the volatile products be constantly returned to the original vessel.

Fig. XII. p. 89, represents a retort with a receiver.

Some of the pieces of apparatus for distilling, which are described by French, are shown in the following figures. Besides describing apparatus for distilling, subliming, and other processes in the laboratory, French gives directions for making tinctures, essences, essential oils, spirits of salt, and pure saltpetre, oil of vitriol, butter of antimony, calces (or as we now say, oxides) of metals, and many other substances. He describes processes for making fresh water from salt, artificial mineral water, medicated hot baths for invalids (one of the figures represents an apparatus very like those advertised to-day as "Turkish baths at home"), and artificial precious stones; he tells how to test minerals, and make alloys, and describes the preparation of many substances made from gold and silver. He also gives many curious receipts; for instance, "To make Firre-trees appear in Turpentine," "To make a Plant grow in two or three hours," "To make the representation of the whole world in a Glass," "To extract a white Milkie substance from the raies of the Moon."



The process of making oil of vitriol, by burning sulphur under a hood fitted with a side tube for the outflow of the oil of vitriol, is represented in Fig. XIII. p. 92.

Fig. XIV. p. 93, is interesting; it is an apparatus for rectifying spirits, by distilling, and liquefying only the most volatile portions of the distillate. The spirituous liquor was heated, and the vapours caused to traverse a long zigzag tube, wherein the less volatile portions condensed to liquid, which flowed back into the vessel; the vapour then passed into another vessel, and then through a second zigzag tube, and was finally cooled by water, and the condensed liquid collected. This apparatus was the forerunner of that used to-day, for effecting the separation of liquids which boil at different temperatures, by the process called fractional distillation.

We should never forget that the alchemists were patient and laborious workers, their theories were vitally connected with their practice, and there was a constant action and reaction between their general scheme of things and many branches of what we now call chemical manufactures. We may laugh at many of their theories, and regret that much useless material was accumulated by them; we may agree with Boyle (end of 17th century) when he likens the "hermetick philosophers," in their search for truth, to "the navigators of Solomon's Tarshish fleet, who brought home from their long and tedious voyages, not only gold, and silver, and ivory, but apes and peacocks too; for so the writings of several of your hermetick philosophers present us, together with divers substantial and noble experiments, theories, which either like peacocks' feathers make a great show but are neither solid nor useful; or else like apes, if they have some appearance of being rational, are blemished with some absurdity or other, that, when they are attentively considered make them appear ridiculous." But however we may condemn their method, because it rested on their own conception of what the order of nature must be, we cannot but praise their assiduity in conducting experiments and gathering facts.

As Bacon says, in De Augmentis Scientiarum:

"Alchemy may be compared to the man who told his sons that he had left them gold buried somewhere in his vineyard; where they by digging found no gold, but by turning up the mould about the roots of the vines, procured a plentiful vintage. So the search and endeavours to make gold have brought many useful inventions and instructive experiments to light."



CHAPTER VII.

THE LANGUAGE OF ALCHEMY

The vagueness of the general conceptions of alchemy, and the attribution of ethical qualities to material things by the alchemists, necessarily led to the employment of a language which is inexact, undescriptive, and unsuggestive to modern ears. The same name was given to different things, and the same thing went under many names. In Chapter IV. I endeavoured to analyse two terms which were constantly used by the alchemists to convey ideas of great importance, the terms Element and Principle. That attempt sufficed, at any rate, to show the vagueness of the ideas which these terms were intended to express, and to make evident the inconsistencies between the meanings given to the words by different alchemical writers. The story quoted in Chapter III., from Michael Sendivogius, illustrates the difficulty which the alchemists themselves had in understanding what they meant by the term Mercury; yet there is perhaps no word more often used by them than that. Some of them evidently took it to mean the substance then, and now, called mercury; the results of this literal interpretation were disastrous; others thought of mercury as a substance which could be obtained, or, at any rate, might be obtained, by repeatedly distilling ordinary mercury, both alone and when mixed with other substances; others used the word to mean a hypothetical something which was liquid but did not wet things, limpid yet capable of becoming solid, volatile yet able to prevent the volatilisation of other things, and white, yet ready to cause other white things to change their colour; they thought of this something, this soul of mercury, as having properties without itself being tangible, as at once a substance and not a substance, at once a bodily spirit and a spiritual body.

It was impossible to express the alchemical ideas in any language save that of far-fetched allegory. The alchemical writings abound in such allegories. Here are two of them.

The first allegory is taken from The Twelve Keys, of Basilius Valentinus, the Benedictine:—

"The eleventh key to the knowledge of the augmentation of our Stone I will put before you in the form of a parable.

"There lived in the East a gilded knight, named Orpheus, who was possessed of immense wealth, and had everything that heart can wish. He had taken to wife his own sister, Euridice, who did not, however, bear him any children. This he regarded as the punishment of his sin in having wedded his own sister, and was instant in prayer to God both by day and by night, that the curse might be taken from him. One night when he was buried in a deep sleep, there came to him a certain winged messenger, named Phoebus, who touched his feet, which were very hot, and said: 'Thou noble knight, since thou hast wandered through many cities and kingdoms and suffered many things at sea, in battle, and in the lists, the heavenly Father has bidden me make known to thee the following means of obtaining thy prayer: Take blood from thy right side, and from the left side of thy spouse. For this blood is the heart's blood of your parents, and though it may seem to be of two kinds, yet, in reality, it is only one. Mix the two kinds of blood, and keep the mixture tightly enclosed in the globe of the seven wise Masters. Then that which is generated will be nourished with its own flesh and blood, and will complete its course of development when the Moon has changed for the eighth time. If thou repeat this process again and again, thou shalt see children's children, and the offspring of thy body shall fill the world.' When Phoebus had thus spoken, he winged his flight heavenward. In the morning the knight arose and did the bidding of the celestial messenger, and God gave to him and to his wife many children, who inherited their father's glory, wealth, and knightly honours from generation to generation."

In the "Dedicatory Epistle" to his Triumphal Chariot of Antimony, Basil Valentine addresses his brother alchemists as follows:—

"Mercury appeared to me in a dream, and brought me back from my devious courses to the one way. 'Behold me clad not in the garb of the vulgar, but in the philosopher's mantle.' So he said, and straightway began to leap along the road in headlong bounds. Then, when he was tired, he sat down, and, turning to me, who had followed him in the spirit, bade me mark that he no longer possessed that youthful vigour with which he would at the first have overcome every obstacle, if he had not been allowed a free course. Encouraged by his friendly salutation, I addressed him in the following terms: 'Mercury, eloquent scion of Atlas, and father of all Alchemists, since thou hast guided me hitherto, shew me, I pray thee, the way to those Blessed Isles, which thou hast promised to reveal to all thine elect children. 'Dost thou remember,' he replied, that when I quitted thy laboratory, I left behind me a garment so thoroughly saturated with my own blood, that neither the wind could efface it, nor all-devouring time destroy its indelible essence? Fetch it hither to me, that I may not catch a chill from the state of perspiration in which I now am; but let me clothe myself warmly in it, and be closely incited thereto, so that I may safely reach my bride, who is sick with love. She has meekly borne many wrongs, being driven through water and fire, and compelled to ascend and descend times without number—yet has she been carried through it all by the hope of entering with me the bridal chamber, wherein we expect to beget a son adorned from his birth with the royal crown which he may not share with others. Yet may he bring his friends to the palace, where sits enthroned the King of Kings, who communicates his dignity readily and liberally to all that approach him.'

"I brought him the garment, and it fitted him so closely, that it looked like an iron skin securing him against all the assaults of Vulcan. 'Let us proceed,' he then said, and straightway sped across the open field, while I boldly strove to keep up with my guide.

"Thus we reached his bride, whose virtue and constancy were equal to his own. There I beheld their marvellous conjugal union and nuptial consummation, whence was born the son crowned with the royal diadem. When I was about to salute him as King of Kings and Lord of Lords, my Genius stood by me and warned me not to be deceived, since this was only the King's forerunner, but not the King himself whom I sought.

"When I heard the admonition, I did not know whether to be sad or joyful. 'Depart,' then said Mercury, 'with this bridal gift, and when you come to those disciples who have seen the Lord himself, show them this sign.' And therewith he gave me a gold ring from his son's finger. 'They know the golden branch which must be consecrated to Proserpina before you can enter the palace of Pluto. When he sees this ring, perhaps one will open to you with a word the door of that chamber, where sits enthroned in his magnificence the Desire of all Nations, who is known only to the Sages.'

"When he had thus spoken, the vision vanished, but the bridal gift which I still held in my hand shewed me that it had not been a mere dream. It was of gold, but to me more precious than the most prized of all metals. Unto you I will shew it when I am permitted to see your faces, and to converse with you freely. Till that earnestly wished-for time, I bid you farewell."

One result of the alchemical modes of expression was, that he who tried to follow the directions given in alchemical books got into dire confusion. He did not know what substances to use in his operations; for when he was told to employ "the homogeneous water of gold," for example, the expression might mean anything, and in despair he distilled, and calcined, and cohobated, and tried to decompose everything he could lay hands on. Those who pretended to know abused and vilified those who differed from them.

In A Demonstration of Nature, by John A. Mehung (17th century), Nature addresses the alchemical worker in the following words:—

"You break vials, and consume coals, only to soften your brains still more with the vapours. You also digest alum, salt, orpiment, and altrament; you melt metals, build small and large furnaces, and use many vessels; nevertheless I am sick of your folly, and you suffocate me with your sulphurous smoke.... You would do better to mind your own business, than to dissolve and distil so many absurd substances, and then to pass them through alembics, cucurbits, stills, and pelicans."

Henry Madathanas, writing in 1622, says:—

"Then I understood that their purgations, sublimations, cementations, distillations, rectifications, circulations, putrefactions, conjunctions, calcinations, incinerations, mortifications, revivifications, as also their tripods, athanors, reverberatory alembics, excrements of horses, ashes, sand, stills, pelican-viols, retorts, fixations, etc., are mere plausible impostures and frauds."

The author of The Only Way (1677) says:

"Surely every true Artist must look on this elaborate tissue of baseless operations as the merest folly, and can only wonder that the eyes of those silly dupes are not at last opened, that they may see something besides such absurd sophisms, and read something besides those stupid and deceitful books.... I can speak from bitter experience, for I, too, toiled for many years ... and endeavoured to reach the coveted goal by sublimation, distillation, calcination, circulation, and so forth, and to fashion the Stone out of substances such as urine, salt, atrament, alum, etc. I have tried hard to evolve it out of hairs, wine, eggs, bones, and all manner of herbs; out of arsenic, mercury, and sulphur, and all the minerals and metals.... I have spent nights and days in dissolving, coagulating, amalgamating, and precipitating. Yet from all these things I derived neither profit nor joy."

Another writer speaks of many would-be alchemists as "floundering about in a sea of specious book-learning."

If alchemists could speak of their own processes and materials as those authors spoke whom I have quoted, we must expect that the alchemical language would appear mere jargon to the uninitiated. In Ben Jonson's play The Alchemist, Surley, who is the sceptic of the piece, says to Subtle, who is the alchemist—

... Alchemy is a pretty kind of game, Somewhat like tricks o' the cards, to cheat a man With charming ... What else are all your terms, Whereon no one of your writers 'grees with other? Of your elixir, your lac virginis, Your stone, your med'cine, and your chrysosperme, Your sal, your sulphur, and your mercury, Your oil of height, your tree of life, your blood, Your marchesite, your tutie, your magnesia, Your toad, your crow, your dragon, and your panther; Your sun, your moon, your firmament, your adrop, Your lato, azoch, zernich, chibrit, heutarit, And then your red man, and your white woman, With all your broths, your menstrues, and materials, Of lye and egg-shells, women's terms, man's blood, Hair o' the head, burnt clout, chalk, merds, and clay, Powder of bones, scalings of iron, glass, And moulds of other strange ingredients, Would burst a man to name?

To which Subtle answers,

And all these named Intending but one thing; which art our writers Used to obscure their art. Was not all the knowledge Of the Egyptians writ in mystic symbols? Speak not the Scriptures oft in parables? Are not the choicest fables of the poets, That were the fountains and first springs of wisdom, Wrapp'd in perplexed allegories?

The alchemists were very fond of using the names of animals as symbols of certain mineral substances, and of representing operations in the laboratory by what may be called animal allegories. The yellow lion was the alchemical symbol of yellow sulphides, the red lion was synonymous with cinnabar, and the green lion meant salts of iron and of copper. Black sulphides were called eagles, and sometimes crows. When black sulphide of mercury is strongly heated, a red sublimate is obtained, which has the same composition as the black compound; if the temperature is not kept very high, but little of the red sulphide is produced; the alchemists directed to urge the fire, "else the black crows will go back to the nest."



The salamander was called the king of animals, because it was supposed that he lived and delighted in fire; keeping a strong fire alight under a salamander was sometimes compared to the purification of gold by heating it.

Fig. XV., reduced from The Book of Lambspring represents this process.

The alchemists employed many signs, or shorthand expressions, in place of writing the names of substances. The following are a few of the signs which were used frequently.

[Symbol: Saturn] Saturn, also lead; [Symbol: Jupiter] Jupiter, also tin; [Symbol: Mars-1] and [Symbol: Mars-2] Mars, also iron; [Symbol: Sun] Sol, also gold; [Symbol: Venus] Venus, also copper; [Symbol: Mercury-1], [Symbol: Mercury-2] and [Symbol: Mercury-3] Mercury; [Symbol: Moon] Luna, also silver; [Symbol: Sulphur] Sulphur; [Symbol: Vitriol] Vitriol; [Symbol: Fire] fire; [Symbol: Air] air; [Symbol: Water] and [Symbol: Aquarius] water; [Symbol: Earth] earth; [Symbol: Aqua Fortis] aqua fortis; [Symbol: Aqua Regis] aqua regis; [Symbol: Aqua Vitae] aqua vitae; [Symbol: Day] day; [Symbol: Night] night; [Symbol: Amalgam] Amalgam; [Symbol: Alembic] Alembic.



CHAPTER VIII.

THE DEGENERACY OF ALCHEMY.

I have tried to show that alchemy aimed at giving experimental proof of a certain theory of the whole system of nature, including humanity. The practical culmination of the alchemical quest presented a threefold aspect; the alchemists sought the stone of wisdom, for by gaining that they gained the control of wealth; they sought the universal panacea, for that would give them the power of enjoying wealth and life; they sought the soul of the world, for thereby they could hold communion with spiritual existences, and enjoy the fruition of spiritual life.

The object of their search was to satisfy their material needs, their intellectual capacities, and their spiritual yearnings. The alchemists of the nobler sort always made the first of these objects subsidiary to the other two; they gave as their reason for desiring to make gold, the hope that gold might become so common that it would cease to be sought after by mankind. The author of An Open Substance says: "Would to God ... all men might become adepts in our art, for then gold, the common idol of mankind, would lose its value, and we should prize it only for its scientific teaching."

But the desire to make gold must always have been a very powerful incentive in determining men to attempt the laborious discipline of alchemy; and with them, as with all men, the love of money was the root of much evil. When a man became a student of alchemy merely for the purpose of making gold, and failed to make it—as he always did—it was very easy for him to pretend he had succeeded in order that he might really make gold by cheating other people. Such a man rapidly degenerated into a charlatan; he used the language of alchemy to cover his frauds, and with the hope of deluding his dupes by high-sounding phrases. And, it must be admitted, alchemy lent itself admirably to imposture. It promised unlimited wealth; it encouraged the wildest dreams of the seeker after pleasure; and over these dreams it cast the glamour of great ideas, the idea of the unity of nature, and the idea of communion with other spheres of life, of calling in the help of 'inheritors of unfulfilled renown,' and so it seemed to touch to fine issues the sordidness of unblushing avarice.

Moreover, the working with strange ingredients and odd-fashioned instruments, and the employment of mouth-filling phrases, and scraps of occult learning which seemed to imply unutterable things, gave just that pleasing dash of would-be wickedness to the process of consulting the alchemist which acts as a fascination to many people. The earnest person felt that by using the skill and knowledge of the alchemists, for what he deemed a good purpose, he was compelling the powers of evil to work for him and his objects.

It was impossible that such a system as alchemy should appear to the plain man of the middle ages, when the whole scheme of life and the universe rested on a magical basis, to be more than a kind of magic which hovered between the black magic of the Sorcerer and the white magic of the Church. Nor is it to be wondered at that a system which lends itself to imposture so easily as alchemy did, should be thought of by the plain man of modern times as having been nothing but a machinery of fraud.

It is evident from the Canon's Yeoman's Tale in Chaucer, that many of those who professed to turn the base metals into gold were held in bad repute as early as the 14th century. The "false chanoun" persuaded the priest, who was his dupe, to send his servant for quicksilver, which he promised to make into "as good silver and as fyn, As ther is any in youre purse or myn"; he then gave the priest a "crosselet," and bid him put it on the fire, and blow the coals. While the priest was busy with the fire,

This false chanoun—the foule feend hym fecche!— Out of his bosom took a bechen cole, In which ful subtilly was maad an hole, And therinne put was of silver lemaille An ounce, and stopped was withouten faille The hole with wex, to kepe the lemaille in.

The "false chanoun" pretended to be sorry for the priest, who was so busily blowing the fire:—

Ye been right hoot, I se wel how ye swete; Have heer a clooth, and wipe awey the we't. And whyles that the preest wiped his face, This chanoun took his cole with harde grace, And leyde it above, upon the middeward Of the crosselet, and blew wel afterward. Til that the coles gonne faste brenne.

As the coal burned the silver fell into the "crosselet." Then the canon said they would both go together and fetch chalk, and a pail of water, for he would pour out the silver he had made in the form of an ingot. They locked the door, and took the key with them. On returning, the canon formed the chalk into a mould, and poured the contents of the crucible into it. Then he bade the priest,

Look what ther is, put in thin hand and grope, Thow fynde shalt ther silver, as I hope. What, devel of helle! Sholde it ellis be? Shavyng of silver silver is, parde! He putte his hand in, and took up a teyne Of silver fyn, and glad in every veyne Was this preest, when he saugh that it was so.

The conclusion of the Canon's Yeoman's Tale shows that, in the 14th century, there was a general belief in the possibility of finding the philosopher's stone, and effecting the transmutation, although the common practitioners of the art were regarded as deceivers. A disciple of Plato is supposed to ask his master to tell him the "name of the privee stoon." Plato gives him certain directions, and tells him he must use magnasia; the disciple asks—

'What is Magnasia, good sire, I yow preye?' 'It is a water that is maad, I seye, Of elementes foure,' quod Plato. 'Telle me the roote, good sire,' quod he tho, Of that water, if it be youre wille.' 'Nay, nay,' quod Plato, 'certein that I nylle; The philosophres sworn were everychoon That they sholden discovers it unto noon, Ne in no book it write in no manere, For unto Crist it is so lief and deere, That he wol nat that it discovered bee, But where it liketh to his deitee Man for tenspire, and eek for to deffende Whom that hym liketh; lo, this is the ende.'

The belief in the possibility of alchemy seems to have been general sometime before Chaucer wrote; but that belief was accompanied by the conviction that alchemy was an impious pursuit, because the transmutation of baser metals into gold was regarded as trenching on the prerogative of the Creator, to whom alone this power rightfully belonged. In his Inferno (which was probably written about the year 1300), Dante places the alchemists in the eighth circle of hell, not apparently because they were fraudulent impostors, but because, as one of them says, "I aped creative nature by my subtle art."

In later times, some of those who pretended to have the secret and to perform great wonders by the use of it, became rich and celebrated, and were much sought after. The most distinguished of these pseudo-alchemists was he who passed under the name of Cagliostro. His life bears witness to the eagerness of human beings to be deceived.

Joseph Balsamo was born in 1743 at Palermo, where his parents were tradespeople in a good way of business.[5] In the memoir of himself, which he wrote in prison, Balsamo seeks to surround his birth and parentage with mystery; he says, "I am ignorant, not only of my birthplace, but even of the parents who bore me.... My earliest infancy was passed in the town of Medina, in Arabia, where I was brought up under the name of Acharat."

[5] The account of the life of Cagliostro is much condensed from Mr A.E. Waite's Lives of the Alchemystical Philosophers.

When he was thirteen years of age, Balsamo's parents determined he should be trained for the priesthood, but he ran away from his school. He was then confined in a Benedictine monastery. He showed a remarkable taste for natural history, and acquired considerable knowledge of the use of drugs; but he soon tired of the discipline and escaped. For some years he wandered about in different parts of Italy, living by his wits and by cheating. A goldsmith consulted him about a hidden treasure; he pretended to invoke the aid of spirits, frightened the goldsmith, got sixty ounces of gold from him to carry on his incantations, left him in the lurch, and fled to Messina. In that town he discovered an aged aunt who was sick; the aunt died, and left her money to the Church. Balsamo assumed her family name, added a title of nobility, and was known henceforward as the Count Alessandro Cagliostro.

In Messina he met a mysterious person whom he calls Altotas, and from whom, he says in his Memoir, he learnt much. The following account of the meeting of Balsamo and the stranger is taken from Waite's book: "As he was promenading one day near the jetty at the extremity of the port he encountered an individual singularly habited and possessed of a most remarkable countenance. This person, aged apparently about fifty years, seemed to be an Armenian, though, according to other accounts, he was a Spaniard or Greek. He wore a species of caftan, a silk bonnet, and the extremities of his breeches were concealed in a pair of wide boots. In his left hand he held a parasol, and in his right the end of a cord, to which was attached a graceful Albanian greyhound.... Cagliostro saluted this grotesque being, who bowed slightly, but with satisfied dignity. 'You do not reside in Messina, signor?' he said in Sicilian, but with a marked foreign accent. Cagliostro replied that he was tarrying for a few days, and they began to converse on the beauty of the town and on its advantageous situation, a kind of Oriental imagery individualising the eloquence of the stranger, whose remarks were, moreover, adroitly adorned with a few appropriate compliments."

Although the stranger said he received no one at his house he allowed Cagliostro to visit him. After various mysterious doings the two went off to Egypt, and afterwards to Malta, where they performed many wonderful deeds before the Grand Master, who was much impressed. At Malta Altotas died, or, at anyrate, vanished. Cagliostro then travelled for some time, and was well received by noblemen, ambassadors, and others in high position. At Rome he fell in love with a young and beautiful lady, Lorenza Feliciani, and married her.

Cagliostro used his young wife as a decoy to attract rich and foolish men. He and his wife thrived for a time, and accumulated money and jewels; but a confederate betrayed them, and they fled to Venice, and then wandered for several years in Italy, France, and England. They seem to have made a living by the sale of lotions for the skin, and by practising skilful deceptions.

About the year 1770 Cagliostro began to pose as an alchemist. After another period of wandering he paid a second visit to London and founded a secret society, based on (supposed) Egyptian rites, mingled with those of freemasonry. The suggestion of this society is said to have come from a curious book he picked up on a second-hand stall in London. The society attracted people by the strangeness of its initiatory rites, and the promises of happiness and wellbeing made by its founder to those who joined it. Lodges were established in many countries, many disciples were obtained, great riches were amassed, and Cagliostro flourished exceedingly.

In his Histoire du Merveilleux dans les Temps modernes, Figuier, speaking of Cagliostro about this period of his career, says:

"He proclaimed himself the bearer of the mysteries of Isis and Anubis from the far East.... He obtained numerous and distinguished followers, who on one occasion assembled in great force to hear Joseph Balsamo expound to them the doctrines of Egyptian freemasonry. At this solemn convention he is said to have spoken with overpowering eloquence;... his audience departed in amazement and completely converted to the regenerated and purified masonry. None doubted that he was an initiate of the arcana of nature, as preserved in the temple of Apis at the era when Cambyses belaboured that capricious divinity. From this moment the initiations into the new masonry were numerous, albeit they were limited to the aristocracy of society. There are reasons to believe that the grandees who were deemed worthy of admission paid exceedingly extravagantly for the honour."

Cagliostro posed as a physician, and claimed the power of curing diseases simply by the laying on of hands. He went so far as to assert he had restored to life the dead child of a nobleman in Paris; the discovery that the miracle was effected by substituting a living child for the dead one caused him to flee, laden with spoil, to Warsaw, and then to Strassburg.

Cagliostro entered Strassburg in state, amid an admiring crowd, who regarded him as more than human. Rumour said he had amassed vast riches by the transmutation of base metals into gold. Some people in the crowd said he was the wandering Jew, others that he had been present at the marriage feast of Cana, some asserted he was born before the deluge, and one supposed he might be the devil. The goldsmith whom he had cheated of sixty ounces of gold many years before was in the crowd, and, recognising him, tried to stop the carriage, shouting: "Joseph Balsamo! It is Joseph! Rogue, where are my sixty ounces of gold?" "Cagliostro scarcely deigned to glance at the furious goldsmith; but in the middle of the profound silence which the incident occasioned among the crowd, a voice, apparently in the clouds, uttered with great distinctness the following words: 'Remove this lunatic, who is possessed by infernal spirits.' Some of the spectators fell on their knees, others seized the unfortunate goldsmith, and the brilliant cortege passed on" (Waite).

From Strassburg Cagliostro* went to Paris, where he lived in great splendour, curing diseases, making gold and diamonds, mystifying and duping people of all ranks by the splendid ritual and gorgeous feasting of his secret society, and amassing riches. He got entangled in the affair of the Diamond Necklace, and left Paris. Trying to advance his society in Italy he was arrested by the agents of the Inquisition, and imprisoned, then tried, and condemned to death. The sentence was commuted to perpetual imprisonment. After two years in the prison of San Angelo he died at the age of fifty.

*Transcriber's Note: Original "Cagliosto".



CHAPTER IX.

PARACELSUS AND SOME OTHER ALCHEMISTS.

The accounts which have come to us of the men who followed the pursuit of the One Thing are vague, scrappy, and confusing.

Alchemical books abound in quotations from the writings of Geber. Five hundred treatises were attributed to this man during the middle ages, yet we have no certain knowledge of his name, or of the time or place of his birth. Hoefer says he probably lived in the middle of the 8th century, was a native of Mesopotamia, and was named Djabar Al-Konfi. Waite calls him Abou Moussah Djafar al-Sofi. Some of the mediaeval adepts spoke of him as the King of India, others called him a Prince of Persia. Most of the Arabian writers on alchemy and medicine, after the 9th century, refer to Geber as their master.

All the MSS. of writings attributed to Geber which have been examined are in Latin, but the library of Leyden is said to possess some works by him written in Arabic. These MSS. contain directions for preparing many metals, salts, acids, oils, etc., and for performing such operations as distillation, cupellation, dissolution, calcination, and the like.

Of the other Arabian alchemists, the most celebrated in the middle ages were Rhasis, Alfarabi, and Avicenna, who are supposed to have lived in the 9th and 10th centuries.

The following story of Alfarabi's powers is taken from Waite's Lives of the Alchemystical Philosophers:—

"Alfarabi was returning from a pilgrimage to Mecca, when, passing through Syria, he stopped at the Court of the Sultan, and entered his presence, while he was surrounded by numerous sage persons, who were discoursing with the monarch on the sciences. Alfarabi ... presented himself in his travelling attire, and when the Sultan desired he should be seated, with astonishing philosophical freedom he planted himself at the end of the royal sofa. The Prince, aghast at his boldness, called one of his officers, and in a tongue generally unknown commanded him to eject the intruder. The philosopher, however, promptly made answer in the same tongue: 'Oh, Lord, he who acts hastily is liable to hasty repentance.' The Prince was equally astounded to find himself understood by the stranger as by the manner in which the reply was given. Anxious to know more of his guest he began to question him, and soon discovered that he was acquainted with seventy languages. Problems for discussion were then propounded to the philosophers, who had witnessed the discourteous intrusion with considerable indignation and disgust, but Alfarabi disputed with so much eloquence and vivacity that he reduced all the doctors to silence, and they began writing down his discourse. The Sultan then ordered his musicians to perform for the diversion of the company. When they struck up, the philosopher accompanied them on a lute with such infinite grace and tenderness that he elicited the unmeasured admiration of the whole distinguished assembly. At the request of the Sultan he produced a piece of his own composing, sang it, and accompanied it with great force and spirit to the delight of all his hearers. The air was so sprightly that even the gravest philosopher could not resist dancing, but by another tune he as easily melted them to tears, and then by a soft unobtrusive melody he lulled the whole company to sleep."

The most remarkable of the alchemists was he who is generally known as Paracelsus. He was born about 1493, and died about 1540. It is probable that the place of his birth was Einsiedeln, near Zurich. He claimed relationship with the noble family of Bombast von Hohenheim; but some of his biographers doubt whether he really was connected with that family. His name, or at any rate the name by which he was known, was Aureolus Philippus Theophrastus Bombast von Hohenheim. His father in alchemy, Trimethius, Abbot of Spannheim and then of Wurzburg, who was a theologian, a poet, an astronomer, and a necromancer, named him Paracelsus; this name is taken by some to be a kind of Graeco-Latin paraphrase of von Hohenheim (of high lineage), and to mean "belonging to a lofty place"; others say it signifies "greater than Celsus," who was a celebrated Latin writer on medicine of the 1st century. Paracelsus studied at the University of Basle; but, getting into trouble with the authorities, he left the university, and for some years wandered over Europe, supporting himself, according to one account, by "psalm-singing, astrological productions, chiromantic soothsaying, and, it has been said, by necromantic practices." He may have got as far as Constantinople; as a rumour floated about that he received the Stone of Wisdom from an adept in that city. He returned to Basle, and in 1527 delivered lectures with the sanction of the Rector of the university. He made enemies of the physicians by abusing their custom of seeking knowledge only from ancient writers and not from nature; he annoyed the apothecaries by calling their tinctures, decoctions, and extracts, mere soup-messes; and he roused the ire of all learned people by delivering his lectures in German. He was attacked publicly and also anonymously. Of the pamphlets published against him he said, "These vile ribaldries would raise the ire of a turtle-dove." And Paracelsus was no turtle-dove. The following extract from (a translation of) the preface to The Book concerning the Tinctures of the Philosophers written against those Sophists born since the Deluge, shews that his style of writing was abusive, and his opinion of himself, to say the least, not very humble:—

"From the middle of this age the Monarchy of all the Arts has been at length derived and conferred on me, Theophrastus Paracelsus, Prince of Philosophy and Medicine. For this purpose I have been chosen by God to extinguish and blot out all the phantasies of elaborate and false works, of delusive and presumptuous words, be they the words of Aristotle, Galen, Avicenna, Mesva, or the dogmas of any among their followers. My theory, proceeding as it does from the light of Nature, can never, through its consistency, pass away or be changed; but in the fifty-eighth year after its millennium and a half it will then begin to flourish. The practice at the same time following upon the theory will be proved by wonderful and incredible signs, so as to be open to mechanics and common people, and they will thoroughly understand how firm and immovable is that Paracelsic Art against the triflings of the Sophists; though meanwhile that sophistical science has to have its ineptitude propped up and fortified by papal and imperial privileges.... So then, you wormy and lousy Sophist, since you deem the monarch of Arcana a mere ignorant, fatuous, and prodigal quack, now, in this mid age, I determine in my present treatise to disclose the honourable course of procedure in these matters, the virtues and preparation of the celebrated Tincture of the Philosophers for the use and honour of all who love the truth, and in order that all who despise the true arts may be reduced to poverty."

The turbulent and restless spirit of Paracelsus brought him into open conflict with the authorities of Basle. He fled from that town in 1528, and after many wanderings, he found rest at Salzburg, under the protection of the archbishop. He died at Salzburg in 1541, in his forty-eighth year.

The character and abilities of Paracelsus have been vastly praised by some, and inordinately abused by others. One author says of him: "He lived like a pig, looked like a drover, found his greatest enjoyment in the company of the most dissolute and lowest rabble, and throughout his glorious life he was generally drunk." Another author says: "Probably no physician has grasped his life's task with a purer enthusiasm, or devoted himself more faithfully to it, or more fully maintained the moral worthiness of his calling than did the reformer of Einsiedeln." He certainly seems to have been loved and respected by his pupils and followers, for he is referred to by them as "the noble and beloved monarch," "the German Hemes," and "our dear Preceptor and King of Arts."

There seems no doubt that Paracelsus discovered many facts which became of great importance in chemistry: he prepared the inflammable gas we now call hydrogen, by the reaction between iron filings and oil of vitriol; he distinguished metals from substances which had been classed with metals but lacked the essential metalline character of ductility; he made medicinal preparations of mercury, lead and iron, and introduced many new and powerful drugs, notably laudanum. Paracelsus insisted that medicine is a branch of chemistry, and that the restoration of the body of a patient to a condition of chemical equilibrium is the restoration to health.

Paracelsus trusted in his method; he was endeavouring to substitute direct appeal to nature for appeal to the authority of writers about nature. "After me," he cries, "you Avicenna, Galen, Rhasis, Montagnana and the others. You after me, not I after you. You of Paris, you of Montpellier, you of Swabia, of Meissen and Vienna; you who come from the countries along the Danube and the Rhine; and you, too, from the Islands of the Ocean. Follow me. It is not for me to follow you, for mine is the monarchy." But the work was too arduous, the struggle too unequal. "With few appliances, with no accurate knowledge, with no help from the work of others, without polished and sharpened weapons, and without the skill that comes from long handling of instruments of precision, what could Paracelsus effect in his struggle to wrest her secrets from nature? Of necessity, he grew weary of the task, and tried to construct a universe which should be simpler than that most complex order which refused to yield to his analysis." And so he came back to the universe which man constructs for himself, and exclaimed—

"Each man has ... all the wisdom and power of the world in himself; he possesses one kind of knowledge as much as another, and he who does not find that which is in him cannot truly say that he does not possess it, but only that he was not capable of successfully seeking for it."

We leave a great genius, with his own words in our ears: "Have no care of my misery, reader; let me bear my burden myself. I have two failings: my poverty and my piety. My poverty was thrown in my face by a Burgomaster who had perhaps only seen doctors attired in silken robes, never basking in tattered rags in the sunshine. So it was decreed I was not a doctor. For my piety I am arraigned by the parsons, for ... I do not at all love those who teach what they do not themselves practise."



CHAPTER X.

SUMMARY OF THE ALCHEMICAL DOCTRINE.—THE REPLACEMENT OF THE THREE PRINCIPLES OF THE ALCHEMISTS BY THE SINGLE PRINCIPLE OF PHLOGISTON.

The Sacred Art, which had its origin and home in Egypt, was very definitely associated with the religious rites, and the theological teaching, recognised by the state. The Egyptian priests were initiated into the mysteries of the divine art: and as the initiated claimed to imitate the work of the deity, the priest was regarded by the ordinary people as something more than a representative, as a mirror, of the divinity. The sacred art of Egypt was transmuted into alchemy by contact with European thought and handicrafts, and the tenets and mysticism of the Catholic Church; and the conception of nature, which was the result of this blending, prevailed from about the 9th until towards the end of the 18th century.

Like its predecessor, alchemy postulated an orderly universe; but alchemy was richer in fantastic details, more picturesquely embroidered, more prodigal of strange fancies, than the sacred art of Egypt.

The alchemist constructed his ordered scheme of nature on the basis of the supposed universality of life. For him, everything lived, and the life of things was threefold. The alchemist thought he recognised the manifestation of life in the form, or body, of a thing, in its soul, and in its spirit. Things might differ much in appearance, in size, taste, smell, and other outward properties, and yet be intimately related, because, according to the alchemist, they were produced from the same principles, they were animated by the same soul. Things might resemble one another closely in their outward properties and yet differ widely in essential features, because, according to the alchemist, they were formed from different elements, in their spiritual properties they were unlike. The alchemists taught that the true transformation, in alchemical language the transmutation, of one thing into another could be effected only by spiritual means acting on the spirit of the thing, because the transmutation consisted essentially in raising the substance to the highest perfection whereof it was capable; the result of this spiritual action might become apparent in the material form of the substance. In attempting to apply such vague conceptions as these, alchemy was obliged to use the language which had been developed for the expression of human emotions and desires, not only for the explanation of the facts it observed, but also for the bare recital of these facts.

The outlook of alchemy on the world outside human beings was essentially anthropomorphic. In the image of man, the alchemist created his universe.

In the times when alchemy was dominant, the divine scheme of creation, and the place given to man in that scheme, were supposed to be thoroughly understood. Everything had its place, designed for it from the beginning, and in that place it remained unless it were forced from it by violent means. A great part of the business of experimental alchemy was to discover the natural position, or condition, of each substance; and the discovery was to be made by interpreting the facts brought to light by observation and experiment by the aid of hypotheses deduced from the general scheme of things which had been formed independently of observation or experiment. Alchemy was a part of magic; for magic interprets and corrects the knowledge gained by the senses by the touchstone of generalisations which have been supplied, partly by the emotions, and partly by extra-human authority, and accepted as necessarily true.

The conception of natural order which regulates the life of the savage is closely related to that which guided the alchemists. The essential features of both are the notion that everything is alive, and the persuasion that things can be radically acted on only by using life as a factor. There is also an intimate connexion between alchemy and witchcraft. Witches were people who were supposed to make an unlawful use of the powers of life; alchemists were often thought to pass beyond what is permitted to the creature, and to encroach on the prerogative of the Creator.

The long duration of alchemy shows that it appealed to some deep-seated want of human beings. Was not that want the necessity for the realisation of order in the universe? Men were unwilling to wait until patient examination of the facts of their own nature, and the facts of nature outside themselves, might lead them to the realisation of the interdependence of all things. They found it easier to evolve a scheme of things from a superficial glance at themselves and their surroundings; naturally they adopted the easier plan. Alchemy was a part of the plan of nature produced by this method. The extraordinary dominancy of such a scheme is testified to by the continued belief in alchemy, although the one experiment, which seems to us to be the crucial experiment of the system, was never accomplished. But it is also to be remembered that the alchemists were acquainted with, and practised, many processes which we should now describe as operations of manufacturing and technical chemistry; and the practical usefulness of these processes bore testimony, of the kind which convinces the plain man, to the justness of their theories.

I have always regarded two facts as most interesting and instructive: that the doctrine of the essential unity of all things, and the simplicity of natural order, was accepted for centuries by many, I think one may say, by most men, as undoubtedly a true presentation of the divine scheme of things; and, secondly, that in more recent times people were quite as certain of the necessary truth of the doctrine, the exact opposite of the alchemical, that the Creator had divided his creation into portions each of which was independent of all the others. Both of these schemes were formed by the same method, by introspection preceding observation; both were overthrown by the same method, by observation and experiment proceeding hand in hand with reasoning. In each case, the humility of science vanquished the conceit of ignorance.

The change from alchemy to chemistry is an admirable example of the change from a theory formed by looking inwards, and then projected on to external facts, to a theory formed by studying facts, and then thinking about them. This change proceeded slowly; it is not possible to name a time when it may be said, here alchemy finishes and chemistry begins. To adapt a saying of one of the alchemists, quoted in a former chapter; alchemy would not easily give up its nature, and fought for its life; but an agent was found strong enough to overcome and kill it, and then that agent also had the power to change the lifeless remains into a new and pure body. The agent was the accurate and imaginative investigation of facts.

The first great step taken in the path which led from alchemy to chemistry was the substitution of one Principle, the Principle of Phlogiston, for the three Principles of salt, sulphur, and mercury. This step was taken by concentrating attention and investigation, by replacing the superficial examination of many diverse phenomena by the more searching study of one class of occurrences. That the field of study should be widened, it was necessary that it should first be narrowed.

Lead, tin, iron, or copper is calcined. The prominent and striking feature of these events is the disappearance of the metal, and the formation of something very unlike it. But the original metal is restored by a second process, which is like the first because it also is a calcination, but seems to differ from the first operation in that the burnt metal is calcined with another substance, with grains of wheat or powdered charcoal. Led thereto by their theory that destruction must precede re-vivification, death must come before resurrection, the alchemists confined their attention to one feature common to all calcinations of metals, and gave a superficial description of these occurrences by classing them together as processes of mortification. Sulphur, wood, wax, oil, and many other things are easily burned: the alchemists said, these things also undergo mortification, they too are killed; but, as "man can restore that which man has destroyed," it must be possible to restore to life the thing which has been mortified. The burnt sulphur, wood, wax, or oil, is not really dead, the alchemists argued; to use the allegory of Paracelsus, they are like young lions which are born dead, and are brought to life by the roaring of their parents: if we make a sufficiently loud noise, if we use the proper means, we shall bring life into what seems to be dead material. As it is the roaring of the parents of the young lions which alone can cause the still-born cubs to live, so it is only by the spiritual agency of life, proceeded the alchemical argument, that life can be brought into the mortified sulphur, wood, wax, and oil.

The alchemical explanation was superficial, theoretical, in the wrong meaning of that word, and unworkable. It was superficial because it overlooked the fact that the primary calcination, the mortification, of the metals, and the other substances, was effected in the air, that is to say, in contact with something different from the thing which was calcined; the explanation was of the kind which people call theoretical, when they wish to condemn an explanation and put it out of court, because it was merely a re-statement of the facts in the language of a theory which had not been deduced from the facts themselves, or from facts like those to be explained, but from what were supposed to be facts without proper investigation, and, if facts, were of a totally different kind from those to which the explanation applied; and lastly, the explanation was unworkable, because it suggested no method whereby its accuracy could be tested, no definite line of investigation which might be pursued.

That great naturalist, the Honourable Robert Boyle (born in 1626, died in 1691), very perseveringly besought those who examined processes of calcination to pay heed to the action of everything which might take part in the processes. He was especially desirous they should consider what part the air might play in calcinations; he spoke of the air as a "menstruum or additament," and said that, in such operations as calcination, "We may well take the freedom to examine ... whether there intervene not a coalition of the parts of the body wrought upon with those of the menstruum, whereby the produced concrete may be judged to result from the union of both."

It was by examining the part played by the air in processes of calcination and burning that men at last became able to give approximately complete descriptions of these processes.

Boyle recognised that the air is not a simple or elementary substance; he spoke of it as "a confused aggregate of effluviums from such differing bodies, that, though they all agree in constituting by their minuteness and various motions one great mass of fluid matter, yet perhaps there is scarce a more heterogeneous body in the world." Clement of Alexandria who lived in the end of the 2nd, and the early part of the 3rd, century A.D., seems to have regarded the air as playing a very important part in combustions; he said—"Airs are divided into two categories; an air for the divine flame, which is the soul; and a material air which is the nourisher of sensible fire, and the basis of combustible matter." Sentences like that I have just quoted are found here and there in the writings of the earlier and later alchemists; now and again we also find statements which may be interpreted, in the light of the fuller knowledge we now have, as indicating at least suspicions that the atmosphere is a mixture of different kinds of air, and that only some of these take part in calcining and burning operations. Those suspicions were confirmed by experiments on the calcination of metals and other substances, conducted in the 17th century by Jean Rey a French physician, and by John Mayow of Oxford. But these observations and the conclusions founded on them, did not bear much fruit until the time of Lavoisier, that is, towards the close of the 18th century. They were overshadowed and put aside by the work of Stahl (1660-1724). Some of the alchemists of the 14th, 15th and 16th centuries taught that combustion and calcination are processes wherein the igneous principle is destroyed, using the word "destroyed" in its alchemical meaning. This description of processes of burning was much more in keeping with the ideas of the time than that given by Boyle, Rey and Mayow. It was adopted by Stahl, and made the basis of a general theory of those changes wherein one substance disappears and another, or others, very unlike it, are produced.

That he might bring into one point of view, and compare the various changes effected by the agency of fire, Stahl invented a new Principle, which he named Phlogiston, and constructed an hypothesis which is generally known as the phlogistic theory. He explained, and applied, this hypothesis in various books, especially in one published at Halle in 1717.

Stahl observed that many substances which differed much from one another in various respects were alike in one respect; they were all combustible. All the combustible substances, he argued, must contain a common principle; he named this supposed principle, phlogiston (from the Greek word phlogistos = burnt, or set on fire). Stahl said that the phlogiston of a combustible thing escapes as the substance burns, and, becoming apparent to the senses, is named fire or flame. The phlogiston in a combustible substance was supposed to be so intimately associated with something else that our senses cannot perceive it; nevertheless, the theory said, it is there; we can see only the escaping phlogiston, we can perceive only the phlogiston which is set free from its combination with other things. The theory thought of phlogiston as imprisoned in the thing which can be burnt, and as itself forming part of the prison; that the prisoner should be set free, the walls of the prison had to be removed; the freeing of the prisoner destroyed the prison. As escaping, or free, phlogiston was called fire, or flame, so the phlogiston in a combustible substance was sometimes called combined fire, or flame in the state of combination. A peculiarity of the strange thing called phlogiston was that it preferred to be concealed in something, hidden, imprisoned, combined; free phlogiston* was supposed to be always ready to become combined phlogiston.

*Transcriber's Note: Original "phlogstion".

The phlogistic theory said that what remains when a substance has been burnt is the original substance deprived of phlogiston; and, therefore, to restore the phlogiston to the product of burning is to re-form the combustible substance. But how is such a restoration of phlogiston to be accomplished? Evidently by heating the burnt thing with something which is very ready to burn. Because, according to the theory, everything which can be burnt contains phlogiston, the more ready a substance is to burn the richer it is in phlogiston; burning is the outrush of phlogiston, phlogiston prefers to be combined with something; therefore, if you mix what remains after burning, with something which is very combustible, and heat the mixture, you are bringing the burnt matter under conditions which are very favourable for the reception of phlogiston by it, for you are bringing it into intimate contact with something from which freedom-hating phlogiston is being forced to escape.

Charcoal, sulphur, phosphorus, oils and fats are easily burnt; these substances were, therefore, chosen for the purpose of changing things which had been burnt into things which could again be burnt; these, and a few other substances like these, were classed together, and called phlogisticating agents.

Very many of the substances which were dealt with by the experimenters of the last quarter of the 17th, and the first half of the 18th, century, were either substances which could be burned, or those which had been produced by burning; hence the phlogistic theory brought into one point of view, compared, and emphasised the similarities between, a great many things which had not been thought of as connected before that theory was promulgated. Moreover, the theory asserted that all combustible, or incinerable, things are composed of phlogiston, and another principle, or, as was often said, another element, which is different in different kinds of combustible substances. The metals, for instance, were said to be composed of phlogiston and an earthy principle or element, which was somewhat different in different metals. The phlogisteans taught that the earthy principle of a metal remains in the form of ash, cinders, or calx, when the metal is calcined, or, as they expressed it, when the metal is deprived of its phlogiston.

The phlogistic theory savoured of alchemy; it postulated an undefined, undefinable, intangible Principle; it said that all combustible substances are formed by the union of this Principle with another, which is sometimes of an earthy character, sometimes of a fatty nature, sometimes highly volatile in habit. Nevertheless, the theory of Stahl was a step away from purely alchemical conceptions towards the accurate description of a very important class of changes. The principle of phlogiston could be recognised by the senses as it was in the act of escaping from a substance; and the other principle of combustible things was scarcely a Principle in the alchemical sense, for, in the case of metals at any rate, it remained when the things which had contained it were burnt, and could be seen, handled, and weighed. To say that metals are composed of phlogiston and an earthy substance, was to express facts in such a language that the expression might be made the basis of experimental inquiry; it was very different from the assertion that metals are produced by the spiritual actions of the three Principles, salt, mercury and sulphur, the first of which is not salt, the second is not mercury, and the third is not sulphur. The followers of Stahl often spoke of metals as composed of phlogiston and an element of an earthy character; this expression also was an advance, from the hazy notion of Element in purely alchemical writings, towards accuracy and fulness of description. An element was now something which could he seen and experimented with; it was no longer a semi-spiritual existence which could not be grasped by the senses.

The phlogistic theory regarded the calcination of a metal as the separation of it into two things, unlike the metal, and unlike each other; one of these things was phlogiston, the other was an earth-like residue. The theory thought of the re-formation of a metal from its calx, that is, the earthy substance which remains after combustion, as the combination of two things to produce one, apparently homogeneous, substance. Metals appeared to the phlogisteans, as they appeared to the alchemists, to be composite substances. Processes of burning were regarded by alchemists and phlogisteans alike, as processes of simplification.

The fact had been noticed and recorded, during the middle ages, that the earth-like matter which remains when a metal is calcined is heavier than the metal itself. From this fact, modern investigators of natural phenomena would draw the conclusion, that calcination of a metal is an addition of something to the metal, not a separation of the metal into different things. It seems impossible to us that a substance should be separated into portions, and one of these parts should weigh as much as, or more than, the whole.

The exact investigation of material changes called chemistry rests on the statement that mass, and mass is practically measured by weight, is the one property of what we call matter, the determination whereof enables us to decide whether a change is a combination, or coalescence, of different things, or a separation of one thing into parts. That any part of a material system can be removed without the weight of the portion which remains being less than the original weight of the whole system, is unthinkable, in the present state of our knowledge of material changes.

But in the 17th century, and throughout most of the 18th, only a few of those who examined changes in the properties of substances paid heed to changes of weight; they had not realised the importance of the property of mass, as measured by weight. The convinced upholder of the phlogistic theory had two answers to the argument, that, because the earth-like product of the calcination of a metal weighs more than the metal itself, therefore the metal cannot have lost something in the process; for, if one portion of what is taken away weighs more than the metal from which it has been separated, it is evident that the weight of the two portions into which the metal is said to have been divided must be considerably greater than the weight of the undivided metal. The upholders of the theory sometimes met the argument by saying, "Of course the calx weighs more than the metal, because phlogiston tends to lighten a body which contains it; and therefore the body weighs more after it has lost phlogiston than it did when the phlogiston formed part of it;" sometimes, and more often, their answer was—"loss or gain of weight is an accident, the essential thing is change of qualities."

If the argument against the separation of a metal into two constituents, by calcination, were answered to-day as it was answered by the upholders of the phlogistic theory, in the middle of the 18th century, the answers would justly be considered inconsequent and ridiculous. But it does not follow that the statements were either far-fetched or absurd at the time they were made. They were expressed in the phraseology of the time; a phraseology, it is true, sadly lacking in consistency, clearness, and appropriateness, but the only language then available for the description of such changes as those which happen when metals are calcined. One might suppose that it must always have sounded ridiculous to say that the weight of a thing can be decreased by adding something to it, that part of a thing weighs more than the whole of it. But the absurdity disappears if it can be admitted that mass, which is measured by weight, may be a property like colour, or taste, or smell; for the colour, taste, or smell of a thing may certainly be made less by adding something else, and the colour, taste, or smell of a thing may also be increased by adding something else. If we did not know that what we call quantity of substance is measured by the property named mass, we might very well accept the proposition that the entrance of phlogiston into a substance decreases the quantity, hence the mass, and, therefore, the weight, of the substance.

Although Stahl and his followers were emerging from the trammels of alchemy, they were still bound by many of the conceptions of that scheme of nature. We have learned, in previous chapters, that the central idea of alchemy was expressed in the saying: "Matter must be deprived of its properties in order to draw out its soul." The properties of substances are everything to the modern chemist—indeed, such words as iron, copper, water, and gold are to him merely convenient expressions for certain definable groups of properties—but the phlogisteans regarded the properties of things, including mass, as of secondary importance; they were still trying to get beneath the properties of a thing, to its hypothetical essence, or substance.

Looking back, we cannot think of phlogiston as a substance, or as a thing, in the modern meanings of these terms as they are used in natural science. Nowadays we think, we are obliged to think, of the sum of the quantities of all the things in the universe as unchanging, and unchangeable by any agency whereof we have definite knowledge. The meaning we give to the word thing rests upon the acceptance of this hypothesis. But the terms substance, thing, properties were used very vaguely a couple of centuries ago; and it would be truly absurd to carry back to that time the meanings which we give to these terms to-day, and then to brand as ridiculous the attempts of the men who studied, then, the same problems which we study now, to express the results of their study in generalisations which employed the terms in question, in what seems to us a loose, vague, and inexact manner.

By asserting, and to some extent experimentally proving, the existence of one principle in many apparently very different substances (or, as would be said to-day, one property common to many substances), the phlogistic theory acted as a very useful means for collecting, and placing in a favourable position for closer inspection, many substances which would probably have remained scattered and detached from one another had this theory not been constructed. A single assumption was made, that all combustible substances are alike in one respect, namely, in containing combined fire, or phlogiston; by the help of this assumption, the theory of phlogiston emphasised the fundamental similarity between all processes of combustion. The theory of phlogiston was extraordinarily simple, compared with the alchemical vagaries which preceded it. Hoefer says, in his Histoire de la Chimie, "If it is true that simplicity is the distinctive character of verity, never was a theory so true as that of Stahl."

The phlogistic theory did more than serve as a means for bringing together many apparently disconnected facts. By concentrating the attention of the students of material changes on one class of events, and giving descriptions of these events without using either of the four alchemical Elements, or the three Principles, Stahl, and those who followed him, did an immense service to the advancement of clear thinking about natural occurrences. The principle of phlogiston was more tangible, and more readily used, than the Salt, Sulphur, and Mercury of the alchemists; and to accustom people to speak of the material substance which remained when a metal, or other combustible substance, was calcined or burnt, as one of the elements of the thing which had been changed, prepared the way for the chemical conception of an element as a definite substance with certain definite properties.

In addition to these advantages, the phlogistic theory was based on experiments, and led to experiments, the results of which proved that the capacity to undergo combustion might be conveyed to an incombustible substance, by causing it to react with some other substance, itself combustible, under definite conditions. The theory thus prepared the way for the representation of a chemical change as an interaction between definite kinds of substances, marked by precise alterations both of properties and composition.

The great fault of the theory of phlogiston, considered as a general conception which brings many facts into one point of view, and leads the way to new and exact knowledge, was its looseness, its flexibility. It was very easy to make use of the theory in a broad and general way; by stretching it here, and modifying it there, it seemed to cover all the facts concerning combustion and calcination which were discovered during two generations after the publication of Stahl's books. But many of the subsidiary hypotheses which were required to make the theory cover the new facts were contradictory, or at any rate seemed to be contradictory, of the primary assumptions of the theory. The addition of this ancillary machinery burdened the mechanism of the theory, threw it out of order, and finally made it unworkable. The phlogistic theory was destroyed by its own cumbersomeness.

A scientific theory never lasts long if its fundamental assumptions are stated so loosely that they may be easily modified, expanded, contracted, and adjusted to meet the requirements of newly discovered facts. It is true that the theories which have been of the greatest service in science, as summaries of the relations between established facts, and suggestions of lines of investigation, have been stated in terms whose full meaning has gradually unfolded itself. But the foundations of these theories have been at once so rigidly defined and clearly stated as to be incapable of essential modification, and so full of meaning and widely applicable as to cover large classes of facts which were unknown when the theories were constructed. Of the founders of the lasting and expansible theories of natural science, it may be said, that "thoughts beyond their thoughts to those high bards were given."



CHAPTER XI.

THE EXAMINATION OF THE PHENOMENA OF COMBUSTION.

The alchemists thought that the most effectual method of separating a complex substance into more simple substances was to subject it to the action of heat. They were constantly distilling, incinerating, subliming, heating, in order that the spirit, or inner kernel of things, might be obtained. They took for granted that the action of fire was to simplify, and that simplification proceeded whatever might be the nature of the substance which was subjected to this action. Boyle insisted that the effect of heating one substance may be, and often is, essentially different from the effect of heating another substance; and that the behaviour of the same substance when heated, sometimes varies when the conditions are changed. He takes the example of heating sulphur or brimstone: "Exposed to a moderate fire in subliming pots, it rises all into dry, and almost tasteless, flowers; whereas being exposed to a naked fire, it affords store of a saline and fretting liquor." Boyle thought that the action of fire was not necessarily to separate a thing into its principles or elements, but, in most cases, was either to rearrange the parts of the thing, so that new, and it might be, more complex things, were produced, or to form less simple things by the union of the substance with what he called, "the matter of fire." When the product of heating a substance, for example, tin or lead, weighed more than the substance itself, Boyle supposed that the gain in weight was often caused by the "matter of fire" adding itself to the substance which was heated. He commended to the investigation of philosophers this "subtil fluid," which is "able to pierce into the compact and solid bodies of metals, and add something to them that has no despicable weight upon the balance, and is able for a considerable time to continue fixed in the fire." Boyle also drew attention to the possibility of action taking place between a substance which is heated and some other substance, wherewith the original thing may have been mixed. In a word, Boyle showed that the alchemical assumption—fire simplifies—was too simple; and he taught, by precept and example, that the only way of discovering what the action of fire is, on this substance or on that, is to make accurate experiments. "I consider," he says, "that, generally speaking, to render a reason of an effect or phenomenon, is to deduce it from something else in nature more known than itself; and that consequently there may be divers kinds of degrees of explication of the same thing."