# Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition/Alchemy

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​ALCHEMY, Chemy, or Hermetics. Considering the present state of the science and the advance of public opinion, the old definition of alchemy as the pretended art of making gold is no longer correct or adequate.
Modern science dates from three discoveries—that of Copernicus, the effect of which (to borrow St Simon's words) was to expel the astrologers from the society of astronomers; that of Torricelli and Pascal, of the weight of the atmosphere, a discovery which was the foundation of physics; lastly, that of Lavoisier, who, by discovering oxygen, destroyed the theory of Stahl, the last alchemist who can be excused for not being a chemist.
Before these three grand stages in the progress of science, the reign of astrology, magic, and alchemy was universal and almost uncontested. Even a genius like Kepler, who by his three great laws laid the foundations for the Copernican system, was guided in his investigations by astrological and cabalistic considerations. Hence it follows that a philosophical history of modern science is certain to fall into the opposite superstition of idolising abstract reason, if it does not do full justice to this long and energetic intellectual struggle which began in India, Greece, and Egypt, and, continuing through the dark ages down to the very dawn of modern enlightenment, preceded and paved the way for the three above-mentioned discoveries, which inaugurated a new era.
It was the alchemists who first stated, however confusedly, the problems which science is still engaged in solving; and to them, in conclusion, we owe the enormous service of removing the endless obstructions which a purely rationalistic method, born before its time and soon degenerating into verbal quibbles and scholastic jargon, had placed in the path of human progress.
Alchemy was, we may say, the sickly but imaginative infancy through which modern chemistry had to pass before it attained its majority, or, in other words, became a positive science. The search for gold was only one crisis in this infancy. This crisis is over, and alchemy is now a thing of the past. There is no longer any need to exhort adventurous spirits, who hope to find Golconda at the bottom of their crucibles, to leave such visions and turn to the safer paths of science or industry. The battle has been fought and won, the problem of the unity of chemical elements or simple bodies belongs rather to the province of metaphysics than to that of experimental science. If here and there an honest student of the black art still survives, he is regarded as a mad but harmless enthusiast; and as for the pretended searchers for the philosopher's stone, they are, if possible, less interesting objects than the dupes they still continue to cheat. Thus the full time ig come for applying to the occult sciences the same searching analysis to which the other myths of prehistoric times have been so rigorously subjected. To trace its earliest beginnings, to investigate its development by the aid of modern criticism, is the province of physical science, no less than of the sister science of morals. Nay, more, we shall find that both had a common origin. Those ancient cosmogonies, those poetical systems which the genius of each nation and race has struck out to solve the problem of the universe and of the destiny of mankind, were the germs of science no less than of literature, of philosophy as well as of religion. And as in the infancy of science its various branches were confused and confounded, so in a like stage of society we often find the same person uniting the parts of philosopher, savant, and priest. Besides this, it is evident that in the absence of all scientific apparatus or instruments, the ancients, if they had limited themselves to the exercise of their reason, must have remained observers and nothing more. It is true they did observe, and that widely and well; but observation alone, even when aided by the strongest and subtlest reason, can lead to nothing but contradictory theories, irreconcilable, because they cannot be verified. And it is not in human nature to remain a simple spectator. Curiosity was first excited by fancy (and the fancy of primitive man, we must remember, was far more active and vigorous than ours), and when it found itself baffled by a natural reaction, it had recourse to divination.
In a word, the ambition of these earliest philosophers was more intense, because its sphere was narrower. In the first stages of civilisation the magician was the man of science. The mysteries of this magic art being inseparable from those of religion and philosophy, were preserved, as it were, hermetically sealed in the adyta of the temple. Its philosophy was the cabala. We must consequently look on the various cabalas or oral traditions, transmitted from age to age as the oracles of various faiths and creeds, as constituting the elements of that theory which the Jewish, cabala promulgated some centuries later in a condensed and mutilated form. Astrology and magic were the efforts ​made in various ways to verify and apply this theory; magic, indeed, or rather magical power, was at starting purely cosmogonic, i.e., regarded as an attribute of God or nature, before it was counterfeited by the magicians of various countries. But, as St Simon has well observed, chemical phenomena are much more complicated than astronomical—the latter requiring only observation, the former experiment—and hence astrology preceded alchemy. But there was then no hard and fast line between the several branches of science, and hence the most opposite were united, not, as now, by a common philosophical or philanthropical object, but by reason of their common theological origin. Thus alchemy was the daughter of astrology, and it was not till the end of the 16th century A.D. that she passed from a state of tutelage. Just in the same way medicine as a magical or sacred art was prior to alchemy; for, as was natural, before thinking of forming new substances, men employed already existing herbs, stones, drugs, perfumes, and vapours. The medical art was indissolubly bound up with astrology, but, judging from the natural inventiveness of the ancients, we should have expected beforehand that chemical preparations would have played a more important part among the instruments of priestly thaumaturgy.
As in the middle ages invention busied itself with instruments of torture, and as in our days it is taken up almost as much with the destructive engines of war as with the productive arts of peace, so in those early ages it applied itself to the fabrication of idols, to the mechanism and theatrical contrivances for mysteries and religious ceremonies. There was then no desire to communicate discoveries; science was a sort of freemasonry, and silence was effectually secured by priestly anathemas; men of science were as jealous of one another as they were of all other classes of society. If we wish to form a clear picture of this earliest stage of civilisation, an age which represents at once the naïveté of childhood and the suspicious reticence of senility, we must turn our eyes to the priest, on the one hand, claiming as his own all art and science, and commanding respect by his contemptuous silence; and, on the other hand, to the mechanic plying the loom, extracting the Tyrian dye, practising chemistry, though ignorant of its very name, despised and oppressed, and only tolerated when he furnished Religion with her trappings or War with arms. Thus the growth of chemistry was slow, and by reason of its backwardness it was longer than any other art in ridding itself of the loading-strings of magic and astrology. Practical discoveries must have been made many times without science acquiring thereby any new fact. For to prevent a new discovery from being lost there must be such a combination of favourable circumstances as was rare in that age and for many succeeding ages. There must be publicity, and publicity is of quite recent growth; the application of the discovery must be not only possible but obvious, as satisfying some want. But wants are only felt as civilisation progresses. Nor is this all; for a practical discovery to become a scientific fact, it must serve to demonstrate the error of one hypothesis, and to suggest a new one, better fitted for the synthesis of existing facts. But old beliefs are proverbially obstinate and virulent in their opposition to newer and truer theories which are destined to eject and replace them. To sum up, even in our own day chemistry rests on a less sound basis than either physics, which had the advantage of originating as late as the 17th century, or astronomy, which dates from the time when the Chaldean shepherd had sufficiently provided for his daily wants to find leisure for gazing into the starry heavens.
After this general introduction we may now proceed to consider the subject in detail under the following heads:—First, we will cast a rapid glance at certain cosmologies and philosophical systems, in order to bring prominently before the reader those points which throw light on chemical theories. Secondly, we will consider alchemy at the moment when it ceased to be purely religious and began an independent existence; that is to say, during the 3d and 4th centuries A.D., and in that city which was the battlefield on which the various philosophical and religious creeds of the East met. In the fierce struggles which ensued, in the strange alliances which they there made, we shall find them, by their mutual recriminations, involuntarily revealing to us their hidden secrets. As the darkness of the middle ages approaches, we shall follow our science in its journey to Arabia; from Arabia we shall trace it back to Europe, and hear it taught with stammering lips and feeble tongue by subtile or solemn doctors. We shall attempt to analyse its ambitious aspirations and its barren performances. During the Renaissance we shall see it at its zenith, inspired by a mad enthusiasm which was near akin to genius, an enthusiasm which gave birth to medicine and modern chemistry. Lastly, in the 17th and 18th centuries we shall see it degenerate into pure charlatanism. In conclusion, we shall attempt to recover the few grains of pure ore which may be extracted from its broken alembics.
I. Cosmogonies and Philosophies.
In India, as is well known, the contempt in which the caste of artizans was held was still farther increased by the tendency of religion to consider birth and life, and the actions and desires which are part and parcel of man's life, as an unmixed evil. Consequently, outside the workshop, practical chemistry can have made but little progress. Nevertheless, among the priests of India, as in later times in Europe, we find the ordeal of fire and of serpents commonly practised. It follows that the Brahmins must have possessed some chemical secrets to enable them to kill or save those they thought guilty or innocent. These secrets, too, must from time to time have been divulged by indiscretion or perfidy, and spread beyond the temple; for we read of accused persons escaping unharmed from the ordeal, even when their accuser was a Brahmin. But the Mussulman traveller of the 9th century, who has preserved this curious detail, allows that the trial was in his day becoming more elaborate and complicated, and that it was next to impossible for an accused person to escape. However this may be, it is certain that the meditative genius which distinguishes the race had, even before they conquered the yellow and black races, led these first speculators to certain conceptions which have an important bearing on the present subject. Some had conceived ether as composed of distinct atoms, others imagined an ether decomposing itself into atoms by the free play of its own forces. These two theories, the one dualistic, the other unitarian, strangely foreshadow the discoveries of modern dynamics. We find the speculators of another race indulging the singular fancy that they could observe in atoms what we may call oscultations of the play of forces. This, at any rate, is the most natural explanation of the term nodes by which the Phœnicians designated atoms. The Persians, who considered the first tree and the first bull as the two ancestors of man, discovered in physics generally two antagonistic principles, one male and one female, primordial fire and primordial water, corresponding to the good and bad principles of their religion. Over all creatures and all things there were presiding genii, Tzeds or Feroners. They had already formulated the parallelism between the Sephiroth, the empyrean, the primum mobile, the firmament, Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Sun, Mercury, Moon, and the parts of the body, the brain, lungs, heart, &c. In this correspondence between the heavenly bodies and the human frame which the ancient Persians laid down, and the Hindu belief in the peregrination of sinful souls through the animal, vegetable, and even the mineral world, till, by these pilgrimages, they at last won absorption into the Deity, or Moncti, we have, in their original form, the two fundamental beliefs of alchemy.
The Greeks, unrivalled as they were in poetry, art, and ethics, made little way in occult philosophy. The Greek intellect, precise and anthropomorphic, with no leaning to transcendentalism, was a protest against the boldness of oriental metaphysics. Thus they contented themselves with inventing a strange gamut of deities corresponding to different types of men. This gamut—Jupiter, Saturn, ​Apollo, Mercury, Mars, and Venus—was afterwards completed in the cabala by the addition of the moon, typifying the phlegmatic character of northern races, and forms a connecting link between astrology and alchemy, by establishing a double correspondence between planets of the same name and metals. The whole was systematised in the works of Paracelsus and Böhme, and called the theory of signatures. Whether the Greek philosophers taught that the principle of all things was water, like Thales, or air, like Anaximander, or air and water, as Xenophanes, or the four elements, earth, air, fire, and water, as the school of Hippocrates, the tendency of Greek speculation was to establish those profound distinctions which resulted later in the theory of the four elements, the four humours, &c., which the disciples of Aristotle held. Hippocrates, for example, thought that if man was composed of a single element, he would never be ill; but as he is composed of many elements, complex remedies are required. Thus Hippocrates may be called an anti-alchemist; and though the theory of the four elements reigned supreme throughout the middle ages, it easily lent itself to the search for the philosopher's stone and the universal panacea, because the oriental idea of the transmutation of elements, from the time when the various systems of the East were syncretised at Alexandria and received their final development in Arabia in the writings of Geber Rhasis and Ibn Sina (Avicenna), was a universal article of belief. But even in the palmiest days of Greek anthropomorphism there was a gradual infiltration of Asiatic ideas, partly through the mysteries of Eleusis, partly through the doctrines of certain philosophers, who were by nature susceptive of barbaric influences. For, besides Greece proper, there was a second Greece in Asia Minor and a third in Italy, not to mention the Pelasgic tribes who adhered tenaciously to the primitive ideas of the race.
Among the Greek philosophers, then, who appreciably influenced physics, chemistry, and physiology (the three sciences were then one), we may notice in particular 1. Heraclitus of Ephesus, surnamed the "Obscure." Maintaining that fire alone was the principle of all things, he regarded generation as an ascending road, i.e., a volatilisation; and decomposition as a descending road, i.e., a fixation. Here we have the first idea of Jacob's ladder or "Homer's Chain" of the alchemists. 2. Empedocles, who is indeed the first who mentions the four elements; but he subordinates them as complex products to his primordial indestructible atoms, which were animated by love and hatred. 3. Democritus, who, investing these atoms with a movement of their own, proceeds to construct the universe by shocks and harmonies of shocks or vortices. 4. Anaxagoras, who saw "the all-in-all" (Aristotle, Met. 4, 5), the infinitely great universe in the infinitely small atom, and ingeniously applied the principle of analogy to unravel the tangled skein of ancient science. 5. Aristotle, who added to the four elements a fifth, ether, eternal and unchangeable, itself the primum mobile (Arist., De Cœlo, 1, 2). In the 4th century A.D., Nemesius, bishop of Emesa (the modern Homs, on the east bank of the Orontes), is one of the most distinguished representatives of Alexandrian syncretism. A single quotation will suffice to show that the idea of the transmutation of metals, from the time when Platonism, magic, and neo-Christianity were combined in a species of eclectic mysticism, was regarded as an article of orthodox belief:—"To prevent the destruction of elements, or things which are compounded of elements, the Creator has wisely ordained that elements should be capable of transmutation one into the other, or into their component parts, or that their component parts should be resolved again into their original elements. Thus the perpetuity of things is secured by the continual succession of these reciprocal generations." This statement of the pious bishop is all the more weighty, inasmuch as the author of The Nature of Man was only treating of psychology and physiology. The study of gnosticism would carry us too far; and one more quotation from this work, which has long fallen into unmerited oblivion, will prove to what an extent the most scientific theories of this day were tinged and vitiated by mysticism:—"Porphyry, in his treatise on sensation, tells us that vision is produced neither by a cone nor an image, nor any other object, but that the mind, being placed en rapport with visible objects, only sees itself in these objects, which are nothing else than itself, seeing that the mind embraces everything, and that all that exists is nothing but the mind, which contains bodies of all kinds."
Another step, and we are landed in realism. It is not surprising, then, to find that the alchemists, while working in the laboratory, aspired at the same time to find the moral quintessence and verify the doctrines of revealed religion. For mysticism in theory is nothing but a reaction against the positivism of reason and science: the mystic, dissatisfied with these, seeks in nature a reflection of his inner feelings. And in practice mysticism rests on confusions or exaggerations, like those of Porphyry, or some such dictum as the one which Nemesius quotes with the following uncritical comment:—"Now, since Porphyry asserts that there is but one reasoning soul for all things, he is right in saying that the soul sees itself in everything."
Such visionaries, though they may to a certain extent have observed, were not likely to experiment. Thus, at Babylon, where similar theories prevailed, the college of philosophers was divided into three classes, the "Hhartumim," or soothsayers; the "Asaphim," who were more agriculturists than zoologists, more zoologists than physicists, more physicists than chemists; the "Mechasphim," or doctors, who were consulted by the great, as often to rid them of their enemies as to cure their families and dependants; lastly, the "Chasedim" or Chaldeans, properly so called; i.e., the astronomers or astrologers. In this classification of sciences as pursued at Babylon by a peculiar caste, chemistry was little regarded. Science was the monopoly of a privileged class before it became the common property of the human race. A class is sure to cling to a monopoly; an individual is obliged by his feebleness to impart his knowledge to others.
In Egypt the doctrine of the Palingenesis was symbolised by the Scarabæus, which suggested to St Augustine the following strange comparison:—"Jesus Christus bonus ille scarabæus meus, non ea tantum de causa quod unigenitus, quod ipsemet sui auctor mortalium speciem induxerit, sed quod in hac fæce nostra sese volutarit et ex ipsa nasci homo voluerit."
These ideas, which St Augustine borrowed from the religious beliefs of Egypt, were adopted by certain alchemists; and Egypt, which saw in the Scarabæus "the Father, Man, a world of trial, a ladder whereby fallen souls may rise," justly claimed to be the birthplace of ancient chemistry, to which it assigned a peculiar rank, calling it the "sacred art." But although certain Egyptian priests may have spread the report that they owed their enormous fortunes to their knowledge of chemical secrets, this veneration produced but few practical results. It was, however, this report which made the emperors Severus and Diocletian issue an edict that all their magical books should be burned.
II. The Sacred Art.
Paganism, at the time when it was engaged in its last struggle with Christianity, had long ceased to be exclusively Greek or Roman. It had assimilated Mithratic, Chaldean, and Egyptian mysteries, and even allied itself to a certain extent with the Helleno-Hebraism of the Cabala. It was not likely, then, to reject what purer times would have regarded as an utter profanation. The narrow ground on which the battle was fought, the intellectual affinities between such men as St Basil and the emperor Julian rendered the struggle as desperate and sanguinary as any struggle can be when the combatants are only rival creeds. The sacred and divine art (τέχνη θεία καὶ ἱερά), the sacred science (ἐπιστήμη ἱερά), was one of the mysteries which paganism derived from the dim religious light of the temple. But we may presume that the sacred art of the Alexandrians was no longer the same as that of the ancient Egyptians, that their Hermes was not the Hermes of Egypt, that the pseudo-Democritus is not the true Democritus, that Pythagoras, as retouched by Iamblicus, is not the original Pythagoras. No epoch was so full of forgeries as the 3d and 4th centuries A.D.; and these forgeries were in one sense fabricated in good, faith. An age of eclecticism is as eager for original documents as a parvenu is for a coat of arms or a genealogical tree. These forgeries were no obstacle to human progress; but in an age when the learning of Egypt was the fashion, it was natural that Persian, Jewish, and Platonic doctrines should be tricked out in an Egyptian dress. One of the masters of the sacred art, Alexander of Aphrodisias, invented the term chyics (χυικόν, from χέω, to pour, χευέω to fuse or melt), to describe the operations of the laboratory. Hence the word chemics, a word unknown in the 4th century, and only popular some centuries later. The reason is, that the ​true etymology of the word chemic is logical, and had therefore no charms for the psychological spirit of the age. Later on, when men began to reflect that the ancient name for Egypt was Cham or Chemia, because, according to Plutarch, its soil was black like the pupil of the eye (χημεία τοῡ ὀφθάλμου), it flattered the chemists to call chemistry "the art of the ancient Chemi." Hence from a false derivation the art received a fresh impulse.
The discovery of the principal manuscripts of the sacred art we owe to the labour of M. Ferdinand Hoefer. We can take no safer guide than the judicious and profound author of the History of Chemistry in investigating the delusions into which a master of the sacred art was most likely to fall.
"Let us forget for an instant the advances which this science has made since the 5th century. Let us fancy ourselves for a moment transported to the laboratory of one of the great masters of the sacred art, and watch as neophytes some of his operations. 1st Experiment.—Some common water is heated in an open vessel. The water boils and changes to an aeriform body (steam), leaving at the bottom of the vessel a white earth in the form of powder. Conclusion—water changes into air and earth. What objection could we make to this inference, if we were wholly ignorant of the substances which water holds in solution, and which are, after evaporation, deposited at the bottom of the vessel? 2d Experiment.—A piece of red-hot iron is put under a bell which rests in a basin full of water. The water diminishes in volume, and a candle being introduced into the bell sets fire at once to the gas inside. Conclusion—water changes into fire. Is not this the natural conclusion which would present itself to any one who was ignorant that water is a composite body, consisting of two gases, one of which, oxygen, is absorbed by the iron, while the other, hydrogen, is ignited by contact with the flame? 3d Experiment.—A piece of lead, or any other metal except gold or silver, is burned (calcined) in contact with the air. It immediately loses its primitive properties, and is transformed into a powder or species of ashes or lime. The ashes, which are the product of the death of the metal, are again taken and heated in a crucible together with some grains of wheat, and the metal is seen rising from its ashes and reassuming its original form and properties. Conclusion—metals are destroyed by fire and revivified by wheat and heat. No objection could be raised against this inference, for the reduction of oxides by means of carbon, such as wheat, was as little known as the phenomenon of the oxidation of metals. It was from this power of resuscitating and reviving dead, i.e., calcined metals, that grains of wheat were made the symbol of the resurrection and life eternal. 4th Experiment.—Argentiferous lead is burned in cupels composed of ashes or pulverised bones, the lead disappears, and at the end of the operation there remains in the cupel a nugget of pure silver. Nothing was more natural than to conclude that the lead was transformed into silver; and to build on this and analogous facts, the theory of the transmutation of metals, a theory which, later on, led to the search for the philosopher's stone. 5th Experiment.—A strong acid is poured on copper, the metal is acted upon, and in process of time disappears, or rather is transformed into a green transparent liquid. Then a thin plate of iron is plunged into this liquid, and the copper is seen to reappear in its ordinary aspect, while the iron in its turn is dissolved. What more natural than to conclude that iron is transformed into copper? If instead of the solution of copper, a solution of lead, silver, or gold had been employed, they would have held that iron was transformed into lead, silver, or gold. 6th Experiment.—Mercury is poured in a gentle shower on melted sulphur, and a substance is produced as black as a raven's wing. This substance, when warmed in a closed vessel, is volatilised without changing, and assumes a brilliant red colour. Must not this curious phenomenon, which even science in the present day is unable to explain, have struck with amazement the worshippers of the sacred art, the more as in their eyes black and red were nothing less than the symbols of light and darkness, the good and evil principles, and that the union of these two principles represented in the moral order of things their God-universe. 7th and last Experiment.—Organic substances are heated in a still, and from the liquids which are removed by distillation and the essences which escape, there remains a solid residuum. Was it not likely that results such as these would go far to establish the theory which made earth, air, fire, and water the four elements of the world?"
But neither M. F. Hoefer's explanation of the appearances which the first master of the sacred art mistook for fact, nor the metaphysical theory of Nemesius, will enable us to understand how Zosimus the Theban, in the very infancy of the art, succeeded in discovering in sulphuric acid a solvent of metals; in assigning to mercury (which he called "holy water") its proper function, a function which succeeding generations of alchemists so monstrously exaggerated; and finally in disengaging from the red oxide of mercury oxygen gas, that Proteus which so often eluded the grasp of the alchemists, till at last it was held fast by the subtle analysis of Lavoisier. For we must remember that solid metals were considered as living bodies, and gases as souls which they allowed to escape. Of all the ingenious inventions of the Jewess Maria for regulating fusions and distillations, the only one that has survived is the Balneum Mariæ. The principle it depends on, viz., that the calcination of violent heat is less powerful as a solvent or component than the liquefaction produced by gentle heat, was afterwards reasserted by the Arabian Geber, and advocated by Francis Bacon. M. Hoefer imagines that Maria the Jewess discovered hydrochloric acid, the formidable rival of sulphuric acid. Succeeding writers on the history of chemistry have remarked that the band ages of Egyptian mummies were not more numerous than the mysteries of the sacred art, and the injunctions not to divulge its secrets, "under pain of the peach tree," or, to translate into modern English the language of an ancient papyrus, under pain of being poisoned by prussic acid. We should be wrong in thinking that all these allegories had no meaning for the initiated, and that this mystical tendency of the sacred art arrested its growth at starting. Rather the truth is, that these myths, which at a later stage prevented the free development of alchemy, at first served to stimulate its nascent powers.
Modern critics have pronounced some traditional sayings of Hermes Trismegistus to be apocryphal, but they have not given sufficient weight to the remarkable circumstance that it is precisely because these sayings are a medley of the cabalistic, gnostic, and Greek ideas with which Alexandria was then seething, that the seven golden chapters, the Emerald Table, and the Pimander obtained their authority—an authority they would never have possessed had they been only a translation of some obscure Egyptian treatise. No Egyptian priest could have written a sentence like that we find so often quoted as an axiom by subsequent alchemists: "Natura naturam superat; deinde verò natura naturæ congaudet; tandem natura naturam continet." Plato adds (not the disciple of Socrates, but a pseudo-Plato in the famous collection called Turba Philosophorum)—"continens autem omnia terra est." For, translated into modern language, this means that there may indeed be in this universe things which pass our intellectual ken; but that all that exists, all that is produced by the strife and changes of the elements, all, in a word, that appears to us supernatural, is really natural. That this is his meaning we may gather from the singularly bold comment which Plato himself adds, and which we may thus translate "Everything, even heaven and hell, are of this earth." It is true that the alchemists failed to draw any very definite conclusions from this fundamental axiom. But if we consider it carefully, we shall see that this earliest doctrine of the sacred art, which was now rapidly passing into alchemy, by thus excluding the supernatural, was making a great advance in the direction of positive science. This early advance was, however, counterbalanced by an early error (which itself arose from a noble ambition), viz., that art is as powerful as nature. The Emerald Table begins with a sentence no less celebrated than that quoted above:—"This is true, and far distant from a lie; whatsoever is below is like that which is above, and that which is above is like that which is below. By this are acquired and perfected the miracles of the one thing." To understand the importance of this emphatic and categorical exordium, we must forget the sharp distinction we now draw between ​art, science, and literature; we must think of that foolish ness of which St Paul speaks, by which he sought to save those that believe, because of the insufficiency of human reason. The seekers for the philosopher's stone were in the same case. In the absence of clear facts and just notions, reason for them was not sufficient. Thus it was that they and the masters of the sacred art, and after them the Arabs, and in later times the alchemists, one and all listened eagerly to the "foolishness" of Trismegistus's doctrine, which, in a modern form, would run thus: "We go further than the Zohar—the sacred book of the cabala—which says that as soon as man appeared, the world above and the world beneath were consummated, seeing that man is the crown of creation and unites all forms. We go further than the Zohar, which says in another place that the lower world was created after the similitude of the upper world. We perfect the doctrine of a microcosm and a macrocosm, and declare that there is no such thing as high or low—as heaven or earth, for the earth is a planet, and the planets are earths; we affirm that the chemical processes of our alembics are similar to those of the sidereal laboratories. All is in all. Everywhere analogy infers the same laws." From analogy to identity was an easy step for the theorists; and in the full light of the 19th century we find Hegel a devoted admirer of the mystic Böhme falling into this pitfall. If the spectrum analysis had been known, the Alexandrians, the Arabs, and the alchemists would have been able to verify and limit the sweeping generalisation by which they established a vast system of correspondencies between the three worlds, the physical or material, the rational or intermediary, and the psychical or spiritual. Between the heavens and earth and man's nature they were ever seeking to discover affinities, and ignoring differences which would have been fatal to their system. Thus, according to them, even heaven—the abode of spirits—was partly physical; and even in the mineral world there was a spiritual element—viz., colour, brightness, or, in their language, tincture. Neither Linnæus, Berzelius, nor Cuvier had yet classified living beings and things. The distinction between the animal, the vegetable, and the inorganic world was unknown, and indeed it was impossible that it should be known. The alchemists sought for physical conditions in the invisible and spiritual world, and for a spirit even in stocks and stones. This explains the magic which they found in nature, and which they tried to imitate by their art. But to establish this harmony between heaven, man, and nature, they required some fixed standard or scale, for in their eclectic system they were bound to find room for Pythagoras. Where was this scale to be found? In the heavens; for there must be the sphere of true music. Hence arose chemical, medical, and physionomical astrology. (See Astrology.) Hence the sun, which vivifies all nature, the most active heavenly energy, or rather being—for with them everything had life—in the συνγαμία, or marriage between heaven and earth, represented the male principle, ita ut cœlum agat et terra patiatur; and appearing in all terrestrial objects, since everything is penetrated by heat, fire, or sulphur, presided principally over the generation of gold—his image or antitype—in the bowels of the earth. Hence, too, the moon represented silver, Venus copper, Mercury (the planet and the god) the metal of the same name, Mars iron, Jupiter tin; while to Saturn, the most distant and coldest of the planets, lead, the most unsightly of metals, was dedicated. It was an old belief that there was a time when gods and men dwelt together on earth, a belief, moreover, for which they could quote chapter and verse. Was it not written πᾱσιν οὐρανίοις κοινὴν γαῑαν? Further, seeing that there were three worlds, it followed that there were three heavens, three suns, and three golds. For spirits still engrossed with matter the philosopher's stone meant the search for riches—the gold of the third world. For other spirits which belonged to the first world it signified the healing art—the preservation of humanity by means of the universal panacea and a universal theory of morals. Hence two rival systems, the first of which culminated in the great doctor Paracelsus, the second in the great Illuminato Postel. Did not Dante, the bitter foe, not of the science of alchemy, but of that miserable search for gold for the riches of this world—which, with keen irony, he calls Peltro (tin whitened by mercury)—did not Dante himself write his great poem in order to bring back humanity to the right road from which it had strayed (svia), misled by those who should have been its true guides, the pope and the emperor? For the symbolism of those ancient masters included an alchemy of morals as well as an alchemy of medicine and metallurgy, though the first was even less known and less appreciated.
Recurring to our former illustration, it was this "foolishness" of St Paul—this divine madness—which inspired the Alexandrians, the Arabs, Roger Bacon, Albertus Magnus, and the host of anonymous alchemists of the middle ages: such was the madness which cast a ray of genius over the daring spirit of even a second-rate author like Raymond Lully, which sustained Robert Fludd, Paracelsus, and Postel, who tried to find the universal panacea in universal peace. The fundamental axiom, the stronghold from which these terribly logical madmen were never wholly dislodged, may perhaps be summarised in a single sentence. The saying of Galen, in natura nihil planè sincerum, was adopted by his implacable adversaries:—Nature, they said, is in appearance an illegible scrawl, but when deciphered there will be found a single element, a single force, to separate and reunite, to produce decay and growth—knowledge is power. To know the process of generation in this triple universe, wherein one world resembles another; to know by its signatures this universe, which is a living organism in the eyes of all alchemists (save indeed Jacob Böhme, who, anticipating Hegel, regarded it as a mighty tree); this is the first step towards counterfeiting nature. Monstrosities are the production of diseased metals (really alloys), which, if properly treated, may be cured, and will turn to gold, or at least silver. The second stage in this imitation of nature is to obtain by tincture or projection solid or liquid gold—the cure of all evils. Finally, to surpass material and rational nature, this is the crowning end. For God delegates his power to the sage.
Alchemy in Arabia.—How the sacred art passed into Moslem lands it is hard, from dearth of evidence, to say. Modern criticism now does more justice to the part which Arabia took in the accumulation of scientific facts, and in the scientific theories which we find in the books of Rhazès and Geber. It is certain that in their treaties with the European Greeks of Constantinople the Arabs always stipulated for the delivery of a fixed number of manuscripts. Their enthusiasm for Aristotle is equally notorious; but it would be unjust to imagine that, in adopting the Aristotelian method, together with the astrology and alchemy of Persia, and of the Jews of Mesopotamia and Arabia, they were wholly devoid of originality. On the other hand, we must not understand Arabia in the ethnological sense of the word, but as signifying an agglomeration of various races united by a common religion. Thus Djafar (who lived in the middle of the 8th century), better known to us as Geber, was a Sabæan. Avicenna, born in 978, was a native of Shiraz. The remarkable geographer and geologist Kazwyny (geology was then a part of alchemy), derived his name from his birthplace, Casbin, in ​Persia. Mohammed-ben-Zakaria, so celebrated in mediæval Europe under the name of Rhazès, was also a Persian. In Spain the Jews of the famous school of Saadia and Juda Halevy exercised considerable influence over the academy of Cordova. Lastly, European historians have systematically exaggerated the ignorance of the Arabs before the time of Mahomet and their intolerance after the establishment of Moslemism, either from the zeal which prompted them to carry on a sort of literary crusade in honour of Christianity, or because in the 18th century they directed against Mahomet attacks which were intended for Christianity itself.
Alchemy received from the Arabians many significant titles. It was the science of the key, because it opened all the mysteries of creation, physiology, and medicine; it was the science of the letter M (misam is the Arabic for balance), because by means of the balance the gain or loss of all bodies could be determined, even while undergoing chemical combinations. Later on, as is well known, it was by a rigorous and obstinate use of the balance in the hands of Priestley, Cavendish, and Lavoisier, that positive chemistry was founded. Lastly, Rhazès gave to the science of the philosopher's stone a name which plunges us again into the mythological ages of chemistry. He called it the astrology of the lower world.
The discoveries of Geber as a chemist do not form part of our subject; but we may mention, in passing, the infernal stone, the corrosive sublimate, the exact process of the cupellation of gold and silver, and three sorts of distillation by evaporation, condensation, and simple nitration. In another direction Geber, by re-inventing aqua fortis, and by discovering ammoniacal salts for his aqua regalis, laid the foundation both of alchemy and chemistry. The salt of ammonia, so easy to volatilise, was the source of many baseless dreams, as is proved by its various names—anima sensibilis, aqua duorum fratrum ex sorore, cancer, lapis angeli conjungentis, &c. Geber believed in the parallelism between metals and planets; lie thought that metals were all equally composed of mercury, arsenic, and sulphur, and that in the descending scale from gold to lead, mercury, arsenic, and sulphur were each present in a greater or less degree of purity in proportion to the colour and quality of each metal. Later on, the addition of the four elements—heat, cold, dryness, and moisture—complicated still more the reasonings by which the alchemists sought to prove that the transmutation of metals was in the power of any man who imitated nature—i.e., perfected the imperfect metal by correcting its excess of heat or moisture. Geber did not think that an operation of the laboratory could counterfeit the natural work of purification, which demanded a thousand years. But with him moisture played the same part as phlogiston in Stahl's system. In other words, the philosopher to whom all succeeding searchers for the philosopher's stone swore allegiance was contented to formulate his theory without considering the possibility of putting it in practice. He was an alchemist indeed, but no gold-seeker. This forerunner of positive science foresaw the part which the gases would be found to play in the composition of bodies; he called them spirits—a figure which took strong hold on the imagination of Geber, as well as of the masters of the sacred art, and which was formalised by the alchemists of the middle ages. Khazès, who re-invented sulphuric acid and aqua vitæ, was par excellence a doctor. The same remark applies to Avicenna, whose works are a methodical, but not very profound, systematisation of the current ideas and science of his day. Artephius was a cabalist, as his theory of the apparent and latent parts of man's nature shows. The author of The Key of Wisdom and A Secret Book on the Philosopher's Stone was the reputed possessor of an elixir vitæ. We do not know whether this was potable gold or a quintessence of all the active elements of the three kingdoms. However this may be, this mysterious alchemist, who lived about 1130, was the inventor of soap, and, what is of more importance for our subject the promoter of a new interpretation of Jacob's ladder or Homer's chain. Minerals, he said, come from the primitive elements, plants from minerals, animals from plants, and as each body is resolved into another body of the order immediately below it, animals become vegetables and vegetables minerals. We see that in this view of the interdependence of the three kingdoms there is as much truth as error. With Calid, the author of the Book of the Three Words and of the Book of the Secrets of Alchemy, the parallelism between the metals and planets takes a retrograde step towards astrology. This Calid, a soi-disant king of Egypt, held that before engaging in any operation of alchemy the stars ought to be consulted. This recommendation was literally followed by the thaumaturgists of the middle ages and the Renaissance. The effect was fatal; if, when Calid or one of his school saw the metals obstinately refuse to be purified in his crucible, he did not wait for a happy conjunction of constellations above in order to try his chance again with the operations of inferior astrology.
The East, when it accepted from Aristotle the theory of form and matter, invested it with a signification of its own never dreamed of by the Stagyrite, and invented, as it were, an Arabian Aristotle—that is, the Aristotle of the middle ages. Not only at Alexandria had the students of the sacred art evolved the theory of the trans mutation of the four elements (Cicero assigns the doctrine to the Stoics), but in the East the translators of Aristotle added to the theory a corollary more important than the proposition itself, viz., that every body by its form and natural motions indicates its soul, its natural properties, &c.; that the resemblance between the external appearance of things and beings indicates their natural likenesses, &c. The idea of destiny, which all nations who accepted the doctrine of the Logos expressed by some term or other analogous to the Latin fatum (what is spoken), Mahomet translated by his famous phrase ncctoub (it was written). We find a Turkish writer, the declared enemy of astrology and elixirs, Nabi Eil endi, in his remarkable book, Counsels to my Son, Aboul Khair, saying that heaven is covered with a writing that only God can read, and seeking what letter the eyes, the eyebrows, the mouth, &c., form to find therein the secret of their better use. Like one of the Talmudists, the obscure Kallir for instance, he decomposes the name Mahomet in order the better to offer the prophet, as it were, the quintessence of praise, more worthy of God, who in that sacred name, as in all terrestrial things, has written at least one letter of the Word which will serve as a key to open all their hidden virtues. By pursuing an analogous direction, mediævalism, and more especially the Renaissance, introduced new subtleties into the astrological branch of alchemy—tetragrams, pentacles, and other mysterious characters and figures.
It is not surprising, then, to find that Nabi Effendi, who lived in the second half of the 17th century, can produce no other reasons for dissuading his son from joining the alchemists than the fact that some were poor, others quacks, and, as the most important ground of all, that God had declared his wrath against those who dare to imitate his works. Indeed, the peculiar symbolism of the various nations of the East had been broken up by revolutions and conquests, and the disjecta membra again reunited, so as to form a wonderful phantasmagoria of ideas and images—a sort of scientific Arabian Nights.
III. Alchemy of the Middle Ages.
The care we have taken to note down at the moment of its birth each of the ideas which influenced alchemy, allows us to sketch more rapidly the history of its decline and fall. Albert Groot, commonly known as Albertus Magnus (1193-1280), revived the theory of Geber; and, in spite of the tendencies of the time, entertained the same doubts as his illustrious master on the possibility of transmutation. He is the first to speak of the affinity of bodies, a term he uses in reference to the action of sulphur on metals. He gives the savans of the day the sage advice not to take service with princes, who are sure to treat as thieves those who do not succeed. And, indirectly, he warns princes that philosopher's gold is only tinsel. Beginning with nitric acid, which he calls prime water, and so on, through a regular series of secondary, tertiary waters, &c., he proposed a method for dissolving all metals. Roger Bacon, while opposing magic, calls oxygen aer cibus ignis, and regards the elixir as a substitute for time, that agent of which nature takes no account. Gold is perfect, because nature has consummated her work. But Roger Bacon seems to have turned his genius principally to physics and mechanism. St Thomas Aquinas, in his theological writings, forbids the sale of alchemist's gold, and in his special treatise on the subject unmasks an imposture of the charlatans of the day, who pretended to make silver by projecting a sublimate of white arsenic on copper. Further, Aquinas, by reducing the primitive elements of metals to two, revives and corroborates the theory of Galen and Albertus Magnus. About the same time we find a pope, John XXII., and a king, Alphonso X. of Leon and Castile, occupying themselves with alchemy. But the pope in a well-known bull denounced all those searchers for gold "who promised more than they could perform;" another proof that alchemy and the search for gold, though distinguished by ​the true alchemist, were confounded by many adepts, it is evident that the science, as far as the seeker for gold was concerned, was approaching the times of king John and Philip the Fair, who found in unscrupulous charlatans abettors in their debasement of the currency, and that for disinterested alchemists those evil days were at hand when, disgusted at attaining no practical result, the most serious of them sought in the physiological mysteries of generation, in the Adam and Eve, the red man and the white woman, of the first chapters of Genesis, what they failed to find in Rhazès, in Geber, and the Arabian Aristotle. The science was still called chemy. It was as a compliment to the Arabian masters, who were still quoted side by side with Genesis, that they added to the word the Arabic article al. The popular etymology of the day was likewise Arabic, or, more correctly speaking, Semitic; the Hebrew chom or the Arabic cham signified heat. Hence their furnaces for heating, the alembics for modifying heat, and the Bains-Marie for imitating the temperature of warm blood; for they could only proceed by analogy. Nevertheless, the great men of the day were the alchemists. The boldness of their actions, the eccentricity of their genius, prove it.
Few novels are as interesting as the story of Raymond Lully (1235-1315). He began life as the passionate lover of the Lady Eleanor of Castello. He was cured of his passion by the lady herself, who discovered to him the ulcer which was eating away her breast. At her desire he consecrated himself to God, to the service of humanity in general, and especially to the conversion of Mussulmans. Christianity, in the mouths of the European disciples of Geber and Rhazès, was better adapted than it now is for converting infidels, whose knowledge it respected while deploring all the more their errors. In his eightieth year Raymond Lully died in sight of the island of Minorca, from the consequences of a stoning he had received at Tunis a few days before while preaching the gospel. This was on his third mission, and he did not hide from his friends that he sought the crown of martyrdom. He had invited the support of all the princes of Europe, and in particular of the kings of France, England, and Castile. Alchemy, indeed, with him seems to have been mainly a means of recommending himself to these kings, and at the same time a search for the panacea. But his trust was placed much more in his rhetoric, which he borrowed from the cabala, in his oriental eloquence, and his Christian faith. By the number of conversions he made at Algiers, at Tunis, and at Bugia, where during his second voyage he was snatched from imminent martyrdom by his friends among the converted Mussulmans—that is to say, in the very strongholds of Islamism—he succeeded in demonstrating that his idea of uniting all worshippers of the true God in a common faith was not chimerical. Lully's principal success was with the disciples of Averroes; and no one who reflects will be surprised at this. As the moral difficulties of missions were less than they are now, so the practical dangers were greater. This too needs no explanation.
Raymond Lully's works on alchemy are hopelessly obscure, notwithstanding elucidations, compendiums, vade-mecums, and a certain dialogus demogorgon, which, if the title is to be believed, Lullianis scriptis multam præclarè lucem adfert. Nor need we wonder at this. Eirenæus Philalethes, the pseudonym under which some English adept, whose real name has not been discovered, wrote, states positively that he has learned nothing from Raymond Lully, adding at the same time a curious reason "Some who are no adepts give more instruction to a beginner than one whom perfect knowledge makes cautious." Eirenæus is fond of quoting Bernard of Trevisa, who, he tells us, has given him, more especially in his letter to Thomas of Bologna, "the main light in the hidden secret." But of all writers he gives the palm to Sir George Ripley. Bernard of Trevisa, whom he mentions, spent a long life and a considerable fortune in romantic travels, in the purchase of books, and in the pursuit of chemical experiments. When depressed and weary with chasing shadows which were ever eluding his grasp, he used, as a pastime and relaxation, to read the Turba Philosophorum, or the Great Rosary, just as Don Quixote would read the romances of chivalry. At last, when seventy-five years old, the good Bernard, for so the adepts called him, thought he had discovered the secret,—at least the joy of what he considered a real success served for a while to lull his restless energies. His letter to Thomas of Bologna shows no ordinary man. "Dissolutions of this sort," he writes, "by acids or aquafortis, are not the true foundations of the art of transmuting metals; but rather the impostures of sophistical alchemists, who think that in them resides the secret of that sacred art. They affirm that they produce dissolutions (solutiones), but what they can never do is to produce the various kinds of metals in their perfection; because metals when dissolved by corrosives do not remain in the same proportion and original form as they do when dissolved by mercury, which may be truly called the water of metals. Bodies dissolved by mercury are not decomposed (separabuntur); their nature remains hidden in mercury till they fill up its intervals (usque ad sui reinspissationem). Mercury contains interstices (latentia), and therefore metals can lie hidden in mercury." He then goes on to compare the part that mercury plays in amalgams to that of water (simplex aqua) in vegetable and animal structures. He is well acquainted with what the French now call l'eau de composition; but, as usual, he pushes his analogies too far. We may remark in passing that it was his opponents the alchemists who, by the discovery of their aquæ fortes, provided modern chemistry with one of its most powerful agents.
In speaking of Bernard, we incidentally hit upon a word which exactly characterises mediæval works on alchemy—they are romances, romances full of interminable allegories; they sometimes begin and always end with an invocation to Christ and the Trinity. From time to time, amid the old abortive attempts to read the riddle of the universe, we find some new idea cropping up. The generation of plants and animals had failed to explain the generation of metals; so they turned to digestion and fermentation for analogies, and though they never reached their goal, they picked up much that was valuable on the way. The road itself was barred, and therefore to profit by their works we must follow them into bypaths and digressions. Thus, for instance, we may study with advantage their dialectics. Whilst refuting their adversaries, they were gradually laying the foundations of the logic of science. True alchemists were generally haughty and contemptuous; the mechanic often grew rich on the scraps which the alchemist was too proud to touch. We cannot always make sure of understanding them, yet from the medley of their writings more fragments of real chemistry may be gathered than is generally supposed. There is rhythm and harmony, a ring of true genius about the best of their works, which charms us if it does not send us to sleep with its sweet but monotonous music. In reading Laurent Ventura's book, De Ratione Conficiendi Lapidis Philosophici, we are tempted for a moment to endorse the strange fancy of the Dutch Rabbins, "that even if a man do not understand the language of the Zohar, he ought no less to read it; for this language, as the cabalists have written it, is a medicine for the soul."
Often what appeared a work of pure fiction (as the Roman de la Rose) concealed a treatise on alchemy; often, on the other hand, what purported to be a work of pure alchemy was a medium for heretical theology, sometimes for the ideas of Spinosa and Goethe. The times, moreover, were sad, and all could appreciate the advantage of a romance. It was not given to every one to follow the terrible logic of Danstin, the contemporary of Raymond Lully, the author of a Rosarius, which has never been published, from which M. F. Höfer gives the following extract:—"All bodies may be divided into three classes—1. Sensible and intellectual beings (animals and men); 2. Vegetables; 3. Minerals. Like always tends to unite with like. Intellectual elements are homogeneous with the Supreme Intelligence; that is why the soul yearns to be absorbed into the Deity. The elements of the body are of the same nature as the surrounding physical world; hence their tendency to unite the one with the other. Death is then for all a moment to be desired." Dico Amen tibi, reverende mi Doctor, to borrow Bernard's favourite expression.
After so much mist and fog we need a breath of fresh air. Let us pass at once, then, to the Luther of science, who reproached so bitterly the Luther of theology with only going half-way—to an epoch which witnessed the new birth of intellectual life, and to a man who was carried by the new movement into every sort of extravagance, though his errors were those of a generous and unselfish nature. Let us treat of the Renaissance and Paracelsus.
IV. Paracelsus and his Influence.
Tempting as the subject is, we must not linger either on the philosophical doctrine or the medical system of this extraordinary man, for fear of encroaching on the article Medicine or the article Paracelsus. We only wish to show that he is the pioneer of modern chemists, and the prophet of a revolution in general science. Those who only know Bacon in manuals of philosophy are never tired of repeating that the great English philosopher is the father of experimental science. This is true, indeed, in the sense that Bacon insisted with inexhaustible eloquence on the necessity of experimental science, but it is false if it means that Bacon inaugurated modern science by personal experiments. It was this popular conception of Bacon which Liebig attacked, and he thus found no difficulty in drawing up a long and crushing indictment. Bacon was ​the prophet of experimentation, and this title is sufficient to secure his fame against the abuse of modern dogmatists, who think that science increases little by little, with here a fact and there an idea, without a single pause, a single relapse or revolution. Few take the trouble to consider how far Bacon's philosophy belongs to the past; most are satisfied with cut and dried phrases about the part he played in modern science. Just in the same way, Paracelsus, the great innovator, who thought himself even more enfranchised from the bondage of Aristotle and Galen than he really was, is dispatched with ready-made phrases, but, unlike Bacon, he gets nothing but ridicule and abuse. Madman, charlatan, impostor—no name is too bad for him with the historians; and yet they are forced to confess that this impudent adventurer brought about a necessary revolution. Thomas Thomson is very severe; he goes so far as to reproach Paracelsus with declining the word tonitru. He would have wished, forsooth, the revolutionist of Basle to have delivered before his young and enthusiastic audience "the sober lectures of a professor in a university." Dryasdusts are fond of falling into such anachronisms; a far truer estimate of Paracelsus has been given us by Mr Browning in the drama which bears his name. There are self-deceived visionaries who are always thinking that the problem is solved, who compose elaborate romances with which enthusiasts are enchanted. Raymond Lully was one of this class. There are spirits of light who point out and trace the road along which humanity travels slowly in their wake. Bacon belongs to the first category, but has played the part of a genius of the second order. Thirdly, there are souls of fire always enveloped in clouds, from which ever and anon the lightnings of genius flash forth, who bear humanity towards a goal foreseen rather than seen by themselves, by a rough and rugged road with endless turns and windings. Such a nature was Paracelsus. His pride was more towering than the mountains of his native Switzerland. He believed that through him a new race, the Germans, were destined to succeed to science. The Greeks, the Arabians, and the Italians, their immediate disciples, had had their day with him, and through him the German era was to begin. He studied under Trithema, the abbot of Spanheim, and under his father, a distinguished alchemist: Agrippa was his fellow-student. Afterwards he resorted to strange masters—old wives and workmen, his beloved miners, who confided to him their secrets. He was the greatest traveller in that age of scientific travellers. Lastly, he practised medicine as the doctor of the poor, and inaugurated lectures in the vulgar tongue. Van Helmont, his real successor, who inherited his goodness of nature, established clinical medicine, i.e., lessons at the bedside of the patient. Stahl, who inherited his arrogance and his love of symbolism, developed from one of the ideas of his master the phlogistic theory, the elaboration of which theory was for chemistry a prosperous period of incubation, while from the refutation of this theory the science may be truly said to date its birth. Paracelsus's work, like his genius, oscillates perpetually between magic and science, but what has not been sufficiently observed is, that science invariably ends by carrying the day. If, for instance, he is giving us "the green lion," a recipe for making gold, he ends by breaking a lance with the seekers for gold:—"Away with these false disciples who hold that this divine science, which they dishonour and prostitute, has no other end but that of making gold and silver. True alchemy has but one aim and object, to extract the quintessence of things, and to prepare arcana, tinctures, and elixirs, which may restore to man the health and soundness he has lost." He beards the "white-gloved" disciples of Galen, and, in spite of their juleps and draughts, asserts that alchemy is indispensable, and that without it there is no such thing as medical knowledge. He rejects the easy explanation of the universe by means of an entity, stigmatising it as paganity, meaning thereby a necessary consequence of paganism, which as a theosophist he holds in abhorrence. He rejects the favourite instrument of the schoolmen, the syllogism. Nature, as he views it, is not a clear and intelligible system of which the form declares the essence; no, it is mysterious. There is a spirit at work beneath the outside shell. What is written on this shell no one can read but the initiated who have learned to separate the real and the apparent. "At the same time, everything is not active. To separate the active portion (the spirit) of this outside shell from the passive, is the proper province of alchemy." Thus we see that with Paracelsus alchemy ceased to be the search for the first principles of bodies, and made one step in advance towards chemistry. His innate genius for medicine, as he boasted, but more truly his noble heart, urged him to learn a study which better satisfied his pride, but which had not the practical usefulness of medical chemistry to recommend it. The name iatrochemics marks this transition from alchemy to chemistry. A remarkable saying of Paracelsus shows us the close connection between his alchemy and his medicine: "Vita ignis, corpus lignum." This notion of the importance of combustion was taken up again by Becker and his disciple Stahl, the inventors of the term phlogiston, which they thought was of an earthy nature, because resin, phosphorus, sulphur, and other combustible bodies are insoluble in water. Paracelsus was too well initiated in the cabalistic theory of astral light, which symbolised the universal agent of light and heat, to have accepted such a gross materialistic theory. A distinguished Frenchman of the present century, who prided himself on being a follower of the cabalists, has in one of his novels, called La Peau de Chagrin, reproduced the theory of Paracelsus, vita ignis, corpus lignum. Each act, each wish of the possessor of the talisman, causes the skin to shrink; and Mr Huxley, in his remarkable lecture on The Physical Basis of Life, has not been ashamed to borrow this illustration from Balzac. What renders Paracelsus's saying so valuable is, that it is neither materialistic nor spiritualistic, but merely dynamical.
Another instance of Paracelsus's oscillating between the modern and the ancient world is seen in the hesitation he shows when discussing the influence of the planets over the internal organs of the body. Sometimes he seems to take the symbol for the thing itself, but he ends by admitting only the parallelism of the macrocosm and the microcosm. When he assigns the brain to the moon and the heart to the sun, he seems to say: "I do not think with Plato that the brain is all; it is but the reflector and guide—the heart is the regulator of the organism. I place my archeus a little above the heart, as a connecting-link between the nervous and sanguine circulation, as Hippocrates has his enormon." If he had lived in calmer times, and known the true Aristotle, Paracelsus would have allowed that μορφή does not represent the ἐντελεχεία of the Stagyrite, that ἐνεργέία is the true meaning. But in those times of false Aristotelianism the Spagirism of Paracelsus was pitted against the Stagyrism of Aristotle. By making the viscera the seat of diseases, Paracelsus claims to be the founder of the organicists; by his chemistry of the blood—mercury which evaporates, sulphur which burns, salt which is constant—he is answerable for the blunderings of Maitre Purgon; by his archeus, the grand motor and regulator of the astrology of the body, he is the ancestor in a direct line of animism, and collaterally of modern Hippocratism or vitalism of the Montpellier school. In short, it is hard to name anything that cannot be found in the works of this mad genius, who, in spite of the jars and jolts of his wild ​career, still manages to keep the road without upsetting either at Paris or Montpellier. What, we may ask, would modern therapeutics be without the opium and mercury of Paracelsus—without the laudanum of his disciple Quercetan, physician to Henry IV., &c.? When this charlatan had substituted for astrological influence a simple parallelism, it was easy for Van Helmont to rid modern science of this simple parallelism. Besides all this, Paracelsus was a real doctor. The death of Erasmus's friend, whom he was attending, did him less harm than the cure of another patient, who was dining with him ninety-nine days after he had been pronounced in extremis; more fatal still was the case of Cornelius de Liechtenfels, who, when cured by him of the gout, refused to pay his benefactor the stipulated price. Paracelsus would not hold his tongue or submit to the magistrates, and in consequence had to resign his professorship at Basle. A double interest attaches to this story; it hastened Paracelsus's death, and it proves that he would never have accepted the vis medicatrix naturæ of Stahl. We have seen that those strange bodies which escaped from the retorts of the masters of the sacred art were called by them souls; their successors, on a closer acquaintance with them, called them spirits. Basil Valentin and Paracelsus, recognising their importance in the trans mutation of bodies, gave to them the name of mercury. Van Helmont studied them more minutely, and invented the name gas. He was acquainted with carbonic acid under the name of woody gas. But his ignorance of the action of the oxygen of the atmosphere prevented him from making the fundamental distinctions between experiments per formed in a closed vessel and in one open to the air. Priest ley, Lavoisier, and Scheele, by the use of the test-tube and the balance (both Van Helmont and Stahl had also turned the balance to good account), weighed and tested the results of ancient alchemy. Hence modern chemistry was born. But we must in justice add that the work had already been begun by men of genius, such as Bernard Palissy, Boyle the eminent critic and experimentalist, Homberg, the two Geoffroys, Margraff, Bergmann, Rouelle the master of Lavoisier, who may be called the Diderot of chemistry. Moreover, the most important discoveries in chemistry have been made by men who combined with chemical experiments a marked taste for alchemic theories. We may instance Glauber, ablest of mystics; Kunkel, who thought he had found in the "shining pills" of his phosphorus mirabilis as efficacious a remedy as the potable gold in which he also believed; Glaser the alchemist, master of Lemery, who has been called the father of chemistry; Robert Fludd, &c.
It is curious to observe that soon after chemistry was established as a science there was a regular deluge of searchers for the philosopher's stone. The limits of this article prevent us from giving a full list of their names. Suffice it to mention, among Frenchmen, De Lisle, who died in the Bastile of the wounds his guardians inflicted on him to extort his secret; among Englishmen, Dr Price, who committed suicide to escape from a public trial of his pretended discovery. As to the theoretical possibility of making gold, the great French chemist Dumas considered that a solution might be found in the doctrine of isomerism; and the great English chemist Sir Humphrey Davy refused to pronounce that the alchemists must be wrong. Before concluding this short sketch of a vast subject, we must give a brief list of titles of the most important authorities on the subject, and enumerate the principal words which alchemy has bequeathed to scientific terminology, or which have passed into the language of common life:—
Authorities. Roger Bacon, Thesaurus Chimicus, 8vo, Francof., 1603; Francis Bacon Lord Verulam, History of Metals, fol., London, 1670; J. J. Becher, Opera Omnia, Francof., 1680; Chymia Philosophica, 8vo, Nuremberg, 1639; John Espagnet, Enchiridion Philosophiæ Hermeticæ, Paris, 1638; Robert Fludd, Clavis Alchimiæ, 2 vols., Francof.; T. R. Glauber, Works, Chimistry, fol., London, 1689; Hermis Trismegisti, Traduction par J. Mesnard, 8vo, Paris (edited by Didier); J. Kunkel, Experiments, 8vo, London, 1705; Paracelsi Opera Omnia (with a remarkable preface by Fred. Bitiski), 2 vols. fol.; J. B. Porta, De Æris Transmutationibus, 4to, Romæ, 1610; Quercetan, Hermetical Physic, 4to, London, 1605; Georgii Ripley, Opera Omnia, 8vo, Cassel, 1649; J. Trithemius, De Lapide Philosophico, 8vo, Par. 1611; Basil Valentin, Last Will, &c., 8vo, London, 1671. Of compilations we may mention—Artis Auriferæ quam Chemiam vocant Duo Volumina (this work includes the Turba Philosophorum), Basileæ, 1610; J. J. Manget, Bibliotheca Chemica Curiosa, 2 vols. fol., 1702; Theatrum Chimicum, 6 vols. 8vo, Argent., 1662; The Lives of the Adepts in Alchemystical Philosophy, with a critical catalogue of the books in this science, and a selection of the most celebrated treatises, &c., 8vo, London, 1814; Essai sur la Conservation de la Vie par le Vcte. Le Lapasse, 8vo, Paris. Among the best historical and critical works with which we are acquainted we will mention—Petr. Gregor. Tholozanus Syntaxeōn Artis Mirabilis, 2 vols., Lugduni, 1576; O. Borrichius de Ortu et Progressu Chemiæ, 4to, 1668; The History of Chemistry, by Thomas Thomson, 2 vols. 8vo, London, 1830; Eusebe Salverte, Les Sciences Occultes, 8vo, Paris, 1829; Ferd. Hoefer, Histoire de la Chimie, 2 vols. 8vo, Paris, and an abridgment by the same author; Histoire de la Physique et de la Chimie, 8vo, Paris, 1872; Louis Cruveilhier, Philosophie des Sciences Médicales, Œuvres Choisies, 8vo, Paris, 1862; Fred. Morin, Genèse de la Science (an important work, which we only know from quotations in French reviews and encyclopædias); Dumas, Philosophie Chimique. Lastly, if we wish to trace the transition of alchemy to chemistry we shall find valuable information in Le Dictionnaire de Physique, dedicated to Mons. le Due de Berry, 3 vols. 4to, Avignon, 1761, under the words Alkali, Alum, Chimie, Pierre Philosophale, Homberg. The reader will observe that in this encyclopædia, written with the express purpose of propagating the Newtonian theory in France, the classical science could bring no real arguments against alchemy. He may also consult the remarkable work of La Metherie, which has been undeservedly forgotten—Essai Analytique sur l'Air pur et les Differentes Espèces d'Air, 3 vols. Paris, 1785; and The Birth of Chemistry, by G. F. Rodwell, London, 1874.
Etymology.—The idea that nature must be tortured to make her reveal her secrets is preserved in the word crucible: Fr. creuset, Ital. cruciolo, Span, crisol—all from the Latin crux, a cross. The word matrass, Fr. matras, is probably from the Celtic matara, an arrow, through the old French verb matrasser, to harass. Bain-Marie and amalgam (μάλαγμα) are a legacy of the sacred art. We can trace the two principles, male and female, of the alchemists in the word arsenic (ἀρσενικόν, male). From the Arabs we get alcohol (al kohl), properly anything burnt, then a powder of antimony to darken the eyelids, and lastly, spirits of wine; alkali, ashes; borax, the white substance; lacker, from lac, resin; elixir, from el kesir, essence; alembic, Arab, alanbiq. Potash is obviously the ash of the pot. Germ, potasch; laudanum is a corruption of laudandum. The derivation of tartar, Fr. tartre, is strange. Paracelsus considered tartar to be the cause of the gout, and borrowed the name from the infernal regions (Tartarus). The Spaniards have borrowed from the Arabs, azogue, mercury; azogar, to overlay with quicksilver; azoguero, a worker in mercury; azogamiento, agitation; azogadamente, with agitation. The same Celtic root which gave to Latin the word vertragus, used by Martial for greyhound, and to Greek οὐέρταγος, found in Ælian, from which Dante took the word veltro, has also created a large family of words—the Ital. peltro, tin and mercury; Span. peltre, lead and tin; old Fr. peautre = peltro; Eng. pewter, pewterer, &c. The Place Maubert at Paris derives its name from the fact that Magister Albertus lived there (Maubert = Ma' Albert). From the alchemists we get both the ideas and the words affinity (Albertus Magnus), precipitate (B. Valentin), reduce (Paracelsus), saturation (Van Helmont), distillation, calcination, quintessence, aqua vitæ (brandy was originally only employed as a medicine), aqua regalis, aqua secunda, gas, cobalt, from Kobolds, the genii of mines, &c. (j. a.)