THE STORY OF ALCHEMY AND THE BEGINNINGS OF CHEMISTRY
by
M. M. PATTISON MUIR, M.A.
Fellow and Formerly Prælector in Chemistry of Gonville and Caius College,
Cambridge
With Eighteen Illustrations
New and Enlarged Edition
Hodder and Stoughton
London, New York, Toronto
[Illustration: AN ALCHEMICAL LABORATORY]
"It is neither religious nor wise to judge that
of which you know nothing."
_A Brief Guide to the Celestial Ruby_, by PHILALETHES (17th century)
* * * * *
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LOST ENGLAND. By BECKLES WILLSON.
ALCHEMY, OR THE BEGINNINGS OF CHEMISTRY. By M.M. PATTISON MUIR, M.A.
THE CHEMICAL ELEMENTS. By M.M. PATTISON MUIR, M.A.
THE WANDERINGS OF ATOMS. By M.M. PATTISON MUIR, M.A.
GERM LIFE: BACTERIA. By H.W. CONN.
LIFE IN THE SEAS. By SIDNEY J. HICKSON F.R.S.
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REPTILE LIFE. By W.P. PYCRAFT, F.Z.S.
THE GRAIN OF WHEAT. By WILLIAM C. EDGAR.
THE POTTER. By C.F. BINNS.
* * * * *
PREFACE.
The Story of Alchemy and the Beginnings of Chemistry is very
interesting in itself. It is also a pregnant example of the contrast
between the scientific and the emotional methods of regarding nature;
and it admirably illustrates the differences between well-grounded,
suggestive, hypotheses, and baseless speculations.
I have tried to tell the story so that it may be intelligible to the
ordinary reader.
M.M. PATTISON MUIR.
CAMBRIDGE, November 1902.
* * * * *
NOTE TO NEW EDITION.
A few small changes have been made. The last chapter has been
re-written and considerably enlarged.
M.M.P.M.
FARNHAM, September 1913.
* * * * *
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER
I. THE EXPLANATION OF MATERIAL CHANGES GIVEN BY GREEK THINKERS
II. A SKETCH OF ALCHEMICAL THEORY
III. THE ALCHEMICAL NOTION OF THE UNITY AND SIMPLICITY OF NATURE
IV. THE ALCHEMICAL ELEMENTS AND PRINCIPLES
V. THE ALCHEMICAL ESSENCE
VI. ALCHEMY AS AN EXPERIMENTAL ART
VII. THE LANGUAGE OF ALCHEMY
VIII. THE DEGENERACY OF ALCHEMY
IX. PARACELSUS, AND SOME OTHER ALCHEMISTS
X. SUMMARY OF THE ALCHEMICAL DOCTRINE - THE REPLACEMENT OF THE THREE
PRINCIPLES OF THE ALCHEMISTS BY THE SINGLE PRINCIPLE OF PHLOGISTON
XI. THE EXAMINATION OF THE PHENOMENA OF COMBUSTION
XII. THE RECOGNITION OF CHEMICAL CHANGES AS THE INTERACTIONS OF
DEFINITE SUBSTANCES
XIII. THE CHEMICAL ELEMENTS CONTRASTED WITH THE ALCHEMICAL PRINCIPLES
XIV. THE MODERN FORM OF THE ALCHEMICAL QUEST OF THE ONE THING
INDEX
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
FIG.
AN ALCHEMICAL LABORATORY (Frontispiece)
1. THE MORTIFICATION OF METALS PRESENTED BY THE IMAGE OF A KING
DEVOURING HIS SON
2 and 3. THE MORTIFICATION OF METALS PRESENTED BY IMAGES OF DEATH
AND BURIAL
4 and 5. TWO MUST BE CONJOINED TO PRODUCE ONE
6. HERMETICALLY SEALING THE NECK OF A GLASS VESSEL
7. SEALING BY MEANS OF A MERCURY TRAP
8. AN ALCHEMICAL COMMON COLD STILL
9. A _BALNEUM MARIÆ_
10. ALCHEMICAL DISTILLING APPARATUS
11. A PELICAN
12. AN ALCHEMIST WITH A RETORT
13. AN ALCHEMIST PREPARING OIL OF VITRIOL
14. ALCHEMICAL APPARATUS FOR RECTIFYING SPIRITS
15. PURIFYING GOLD PRESENTED BY THE IMAGE OF A SALAMANDER IN THE FIRE
16. PRIESTLEY'S APPARATUS FOR WORKING WITH GASES
17. APPARATUS USED BY LAVOISIER IN HIS EXPERIMENTS ON BURNING MERCURY
IN AIR
CHAPTER I
THE EXPLANATION OF MATERIAL CHANGES GIVEN BY THE GREEK THINKERS.
For thousands of years before men had any accurate and exact knowledge
of the changes of material things, they had thought about these
changes, regarded them as revelations of spiritual truths, built on
them theories of things in heaven and earth (and a good many things in
neither), and used them in manufactures, arts, and handicrafts,
especially in one very curious manufacture wherein not the thousandth
fragment of a grain of the finished article was ever produced.
The accurate and systematic study of the changes which material things
undergo is called chemistry; we may, perhaps, describe alchemy as the
superficial, and what may be called subjective, examination of these
changes, and the speculative systems, and imaginary arts and
manufactures, founded on that examination.
We are assured by many old writers that Adam was the first alchemist,
and we are told by one of the initiated that Adam was created on the
sixth day, being the 15th of March, of the first year of the world;
certainly alchemy had a long life, for chemistry did not begin until
about the middle of the 18th century.
No branch of science has had so long a period of incubation as
chemistry. There must be some extraordinary difficulty in the way of
disentangling the steps of those changes wherein substances of one
kind are produced from substances totally unlike them. To inquire how
those of acute intellects and much learning regarded such occurrences
in the times when man's outlook on the world was very different from
what it is now, ought to be interesting, and the results of that
inquiry must surely be instructive.
If the reader turns to a modern book on chemistry (for instance, _The
Story of the Chemical Elements_, in this series), he will find, at
first, superficial descriptions of special instances of those
occurrences which are the subject of the chemist's study; he will
learn that only certain parts of such events are dealt with in
chemistry; more accurate descriptions will then be given of changes
which occur in nature, or can be produced by altering the ordinary
conditions, and the reader will be taught to see certain points of
likeness between these changes; he will be shown how to disentangle
chemical occurrences, to find their similarities and differences; and,
gradually, he will feel his way to general statements, which are more
or less rigorous and accurate expressions of what holds good in a
large number of chemical processes; finally, he will discover that
some generalisations have been made which are exact and completely
accurate descriptions applicable to every case of chemical change.
But if we turn to the writings of the alchemists, we are in a
different world. There is nothing even remotely resembling what one
finds in a modern book on chemistry.
Here are a few quotations from alchemical writings [1]:
[1] Most of the quotations from alchemical writings, in this
book, are taken from a series of translations, published in
1893-94, under the supervision of Mr A.E. Waite.
"It is necessary to deprive matter of its qualities in order to
draw out its soul.... Copper is like a man; it has a soul and a
body ... the soul is the most subtile part ... that is to say, the
tinctorial spirit. The body is the ponderable, material,
terrestrial thing, endowed with a shadow.... After a series of
suitable treatments copper becomes without shadow and better than
gold.... The elements grow and are transmuted, because it is their
qualities, not their substances which are contrary." (Stephanus of
Alexandria, about 620 A.D.)
"If we would elicit our Medecine from the precious metals, we must
destroy the particular metalic form, without impairing its
specific properties. The specific properties of the metal have
their abode in its spiritual part, which resides in homogeneous
water. Thus we must destroy the particular form of gold, and
change it into its generic homogeneous water, in which the spirit
of gold is preserved; this spirit afterwards restores the
consistency of its water, and brings forth a new form (after the
necessary putrefaction) a thousand times more perfect than the
form of gold which it lost by being reincrudated." (Philalethes,
17th century.)
"The bodily nature of things is a concealing outward vesture."
(Michael Sendivogius, 17th century.)
"Nothing of true value is located in the body of a substance, but
in the virtue ... the less there is of body, the more in
proportion is the virtue." (Paracelsus, 16th century.)
"There are four elements, and each has at its centre another
element which makes it what it is. These are the four pillars of
the world.... It is their contrary action which keeps up the
harmony and equilibrium of the mundane machinery." (Michael
Sendivogius.)
"Nature cannot work till it has been supplied with a material: the
first matter is furnished by God, the second matter by the sage."
(Michael Sendivogius.)
"When corruptible elements are united in a certain substance,
their strife must sooner or later bring about its decomposition,
which is, of course, followed by putrefaction; in putrefaction,
the impure is separated from the pure; and if the pure elements
are then once more joined together by the action of natural heat,
a much nobler and higher form of life is produced.... If the
hidden central fire, which during life was in a state of
passivity, obtain the mastery, it attracts to itself all the pure
elements, which are thus separated from the impure, and form the
nucleus of a far purer form of life." (Michael Sendivogius.)
"Cause that which is above to be below; that which is visible to
be invisible; that which is palpable to become impalpable. Again
let that which is below become that which is above; let the
invisible become visible, and the impalpable become palpable. Here
you see the perfection of our Art, without any defect or
diminution." (Basil Valentine, 15th century.)
"Think most diligently about this; often bear in mind, observe and
comprehend, that all minerals and metals together, in the same
time, and after the same fashion, and of one and the same
principal matter, are produced and generated. That matter is no
other than a mere vapour, which is extracted from the elementary
earth by the superior stars, or by a sidereal distillation of the
macrocosm; which sidereal hot infusion, with an airy sulphurous
property, descending upon inferiors, so acts and operates as that
there is implanted, spiritually and invisibly, a certain power and
virtue in those metals and minerals; which fume, moreover,
resolves in the earth into a certain water, wherefrom all metals
are thenceforth generated and ripened to their perfection, and
thence proceeds this or that metal or mineral, according as one of
the three principles acquires dominion, and they have much or
little of sulphur and salt, or an unequal mixture of these; whence
some metals are fixed - that is, constant or stable; and some are
volatile and easily changeable, as is seen in gold, silver,
copper, iron, tin, and lead." (Basil Valentine.)
"To grasp the invisible elements, to attract them by their
material correspondences, to control, purify, and transform them
by the living power of the Spirit - this is true Alchemy."
(Paracelsus.)
"Destruction perfects that which is good; for the good cannot
appear on account of that which conceals it.... Each one of the
visible metals is a concealment of the other six metals."
(Paracelsus.)
These sayings read like sentences in a forgotten tongue.
Humboldt tells of a parrot which had lived with a tribe of American
Indians, and learnt scraps of their language; the tribe totally
disappeared; the parrot alone remained, and babbled words in the
language which no living human being could understand.
Are the words I have quoted unintelligible, like the parrot's prating?
Perhaps the language may be reconstructed; perhaps it may be found to
embody something worth a hearing. Success is most likely to come by
considering the growth of alchemy; by trying to find the ideas which
were expressed in the strange tongue; by endeavouring to look at our
surroundings as the alchemists looked at theirs.
Do what we will, we always, more or less, construct our own universe.
The history of science may be described as the history of the
attempts, and the failures, of men "to see things as they are."
"Nothing is harder," said the Latin poet Lucretius, "than to separate
manifest facts from doubtful, what straightway the mind adds on of
itself."
Observations of the changes which are constantly happening in the sky,
and on the earth, must have prompted men long ago to ask whether there
are any limits to the changes of things around them. And this question
must have become more urgent as working in metals, making colours and
dyes, preparing new kinds of food and drink, producing substances with
smells and tastes unlike those of familiar objects, and other pursuits
like these, made men acquainted with transformations which seemed to
penetrate to the very foundations of things.
Can one thing be changed into any other thing; or, are there classes
of things within each of which change is possible, while the passage
from one class to another is not possible? Are all the varied
substances seen, tasted, handled, smelt, composed of a limited number
of essentially different things; or, is each fundamentally different
from every other substance? Such questions as these must have pressed
for answers long ago.
Some of the Greek philosophers who lived four or five hundred years
before Christ formed a theory of the transformations of matter, which
is essentially the theory held by naturalists to-day.
These philosophers taught that to understand nature we must get
beneath the superficial qualities of things. "According to
convention," said Democritus (born 460 B.C.), "there are a sweet and a
bitter, a hot and a cold, and according to convention there is
colour. In truth there are atoms and a void." Those investigators
attempted to connect all the differences which are observed between
the qualities of things with differences of size, shape, position, and
movement of atoms. They said that all things are formed by the
coalescence of certain unchangeable, indestructible, and impenetrable
particles which they named atoms; the total number of atoms is
constant; not one of them can be destroyed, nor can one be created;
when a substance ceases to exist and another is formed, the process is
not a destruction of matter, it is a re-arrangement of atoms.
Only fragments of the writings of the founders of the atomic theory
have come to us. The views of these philosophers are preserved, and
doubtless amplified and modified, in a Latin poem, _Concerning the
Nature of Things_, written by Lucretius, who was born a century before
the beginning of our era. Let us consider the picture given in that
poem of the material universe, and the method whereby the picture was
produced.[2]
[2] The quotations from Lucretius are taken from Munro's
translation (4th Edition, 1886).
All knowledge, said Lucretius, is based on "the aspect and the law of
nature." True knowledge can be obtained only by the use of the senses;
there is no other method. "From the senses first has proceeded the
knowledge of the true, and the senses cannot be refuted. Shall reason,
founded on false sense, be able to contradict [the senses], wholly
founded as it is on the senses? And if they are not true, then all
reason as well is rendered false." The first principle in nature is
asserted by Lucretius to be that "Nothing is ever gotten out of
nothing." "A thing never returns to nothing, but all things after
disruption go back to the first bodies of matter." If there were not
imperishable seeds of things, atoms, "first-beginnings of solid
singleness," then, Lucretius urges, "infinite time gone by and lapse
of days must have eaten up all things that are of mortal body."
The first-beginnings, or atoms, of things were thought of by Lucretius
as always moving; "there is no lowest point in the sum of the
universe" where they can rest; they meet, clash, rebound, or sometimes
join together into groups of atoms which move about as wholes. Change,
growth, decay, formation, disruption - these are the marks of all
things. "The war of first-beginnings waged from eternity is carried on
with dubious issue: now here, now there, the life-bringing elements of
things get the mastery, and are o'ermastered in turn; with the funeral
wail blends the cry which babies raise when they enter the borders of
light; and no night ever followed day, nor morning night, that heard
not, mingling with the sickly infant's cries, the attendants' wailings
on death and black funeral."
Lucretius pictured the atoms of things as like the things perceived by
the senses; he said that atoms of different kinds have different
shapes, but the number of shapes is finite, because there is a limit
to the number of different things we see, smell, taste, and handle; he
implies, although I do not think he definitely asserts, that all atoms
of one kind are identical in every respect.
We now know that many compounds exist which are formed by the union of
the same quantities by weight of the same elements, and, nevertheless,
differ in properties; modern chemistry explains this fact by saying
that the properties of a substance depend, not only on the kind of
atoms which compose the minute particles of a compound, and the number
of atoms of each kind, but also on the mode of arrangement of the
atoms.[3] The same doctrine was taught by Lucretius, two thousand
years ago. "It often makes a great difference," he said, "with what
things, and in what positions the same first-beginnings are held in
union, and what motions they mutually impart and receive." For
instance, certain atoms may be so arranged at one time as to produce
fire, and, at another time, the arrangement of the same atoms may be
such that the result is a fir-tree. The differences between the
colours of things are said by Lucretius to be due to differences in
the arrangements and motions of atoms. As the colour of the sea when
wind lashes it into foam is different from the colour when the waters
are at rest, so do the colours of things change when the atoms whereof
the things are composed change from one arrangement to another, or
from sluggish movements to rapid and tumultuous motions.
[3] See the chapter _Molecular Architecture_ in the _Story of
the Chemical Elements_.
Lucretius pictured a solid substance as a vast number of atoms
squeezed closely together, a liquid as composed of not so many atoms
less tightly packed, and a gas as a comparatively small number of
atoms with considerable freedom of motion. Essentially the same
picture is presented by the molecular theory of to-day.
To meet the objection that atoms are invisible, and therefore cannot
exist, Lucretius enumerates many things we cannot see although we know
they exist. No one doubts the existence of winds, heat, cold and
smells; yet no one has seen the wind, or heat, or cold, or a smell.
Clothes become moist when hung near the sea, and dry when spread in
the sunshine; but no one has seen the moisture entering or leaving the
clothes. A pavement trodden by many feet is worn away; but the minute
particles are removed without our eyes being able to see them.
Another objector urges - "You say the atoms are always moving, yet the
things we look at, which you assert to be vast numbers of moving
atoms, are often motionless." Him Lucretius answers by an analogy.
"And herein you need not wonder at this, that though the
first-beginnings of things are all in motion, yet the sum is seen to
rest in supreme repose, unless when a thing exhibits motions with its
individual body. For all the nature of first things lies far away from
our senses, beneath their ken; and, therefore, since they are
themselves beyond what you can see, they must withdraw from sight
their motion as well; and the more so, that the things which we can
see do yet often conceal their motions when a great distance off.
Thus, often, the woolly flocks as they crop the glad pastures on a
hill, creep on whither the grass, jewelled with fresh dew, summons or
invites each, and the lambs, fed to the full, gambol and playfully
butt; all which objects appear to us from a distance to be blended
together, and to rest like a white spot on a green hill. Again, when
mighty legions fill with their movements all parts of the plains,
waging the mimicry of war, the glitter lifts itself up to the sky, and
the whole earth round gleams with brass, and beneath a noise is raised
by the mighty tramplings of men, and the mountains, stricken by the
shouting, echo the voices to the stars of heaven, and horsemen fly
about, and suddenly wheeling, scour across the middle of the plains,
shaking them with the vehemence of their charge. And yet there is some
spot on the high hills, seen from which they appear to stand still and
to rest on the plains as a bright spot."
The atomic theory of the Greek thinkers was constructed by reasoning
on natural phenomena. Lucretius constantly appeals to observed facts
for confirmation of his theoretical teachings, or refutation of
opinions he thought erroneous. Besides giving a general mental
presentation of the material universe, the theory was applied to many
specific transmutations; but minute descriptions of what are now
called chemical changes could not be given in terms of the theory,
because no searching examination of so much as one such change had
been made, nor, I think, one may say, could be made under the
conditions of Greek life. More than two thousand years passed before
investigators began to make accurate measurements of the quantities of
the substances which take part in those changes wherein certain
things seem to be destroyed and other totally different things to be
produced; until accurate knowledge had been obtained of the quantities
of the definite substances which interact in the transformations of
matter, the atomic theory could not do more than draw the outlines of
a picture of material changes.
A scientific theory has been described as "the likening of our
imaginings to what we actually observe." So long as we observe only in
the rough, only in a broad and general way, our imaginings must also
be rough, broad, and general. It was the great glory of the Greek
thinkers about natural events that their observations were accurate,
on the whole, and as far as they went, and the theory they formed was
based on no trivial or accidental features of the facts, but on what
has proved to be the very essence of the phenomena they sought to
bring into one point of view; for all the advances made in our own
times in clear knowledge of the transformations of matter have been
made by using, as a guide to experimental inquiries, the conception
that the differences between the qualities of substances are connected
with differences in the weights and movements of minute particles; and
this was the central idea of the atomic theory of the Greek
philosophers.
The atomic theory was used by the great physicists of the later
Renaissance, by Galileo, Gassendi, Newton and others. Our own
countryman, John Dalton, while trying (in the early years of the 19th
century) to form a mental presentation of the atmosphere in terms of
the theory of atoms, rediscovered the possibility of differences
between the sizes of atoms, applied this idea to the facts concerning
the quantitative compositions of compounds which had been established
by others, developed a method for determining the relative weights of
atoms of different kinds, and started chemistry on the course which it
has followed so successfully.
Instead of blaming the Greek philosophers for lack of quantitatively
accurate experimental inquiry, we should rather be full of admiring
wonder at the extraordinary acuteness of their mental vision, and the
soundness of their scientific spirit.
The ancient atomists distinguished the essential properties of things
from their accidental features. The former cannot be removed,
Lucretius said, without "utter destruction accompanying the
severance"; the latter may be altered "while the nature of the thing
remains unharmed." As examples of essential properties, Lucretius
mentions "the weight of a stone, the heat of fire, the fluidity of
water." Such things as liberty, war, slavery, riches, poverty, and the
like, were accounted accidents. Time also was said to be an accident:
it "exists not by itself; but simply from the things which happen, the
sense apprehends what has been done in time past, as well as what is
present, and what is to follow after."
As our story proceeds, we shall see that the chemists of the middle
ages, the alchemists, founded their theory of material changes on the
difference between a supposed essential substratum of things, and
their qualities which could be taken off, they said, and put on, as
clothes are removed and replaced.
How different from the clear, harmonious, orderly, Greek scheme, is
any picture we can form, from such quotations as I have given from
their writings, of the alchemists' conception of the world. The Greeks
likened their imaginings of nature to the natural facts they observed;
the alchemists created an imaginary world after their own likeness.
While Christianity was superseding the old religions, and the
theological system of the Christian Church was replacing the
cosmogonies of the heathen, the contrast between the power of evil and
the power of good was more fully realised than in the days of the
Greeks; a sharper division was drawn between this world and another
world, and that other world was divided into two irreconcilable and
absolutely opposite parts. Man came to be regarded as the centre of a
tremendous and never-ceasing battle, urged between the powers of good
and the powers of evil. The sights and sounds of nature were regarded
as the vestments, or the voices, of the unseen combatants. Life was at
once very real and the mere shadow of a dream. The conditions were
favourable to the growth of magic; for man was regarded as the measure
of the universe, the central figure in an awful tragedy.
Magic is an attempt, by thinking and speculating about what we
consider must be the order of nature, to discover some means of
penetrating into the secret life of natural things, of realising the
hidden powers and virtues of things, grasping the concealed thread of
unity which is supposed to run through all phenomena however seemingly
diverse, entering into sympathy with the supposed inner oneness of
life, death, the present, past, and future. Magic grows, and gathers
strength, when men are sure their theory of the universe must be the
one true theory, and they see only through the glasses which their
theory supplies. "He who knows himself thoroughly knows God and all
the mysteries of His nature," says a modern writer on magic. That
saying expresses the fundamental hypothesis, and the method, of all
systems of magic and mysticism. Of such systems, alchemy was one.
CHAPTER II.
A SKETCH OF ALCHEMICAL THEORY.
The system which began to be called _alchemy_ in the 6th and 7th
centuries of our era had no special name before that time, but was
known as _the sacred art, the divine science, the occult science, the
art of Hermes_.
A commentator on Aristotle, writing in the 4th century A.D., calls
certain instruments used for fusion and calcination "_chuika organa_,"
that is, instruments for melting and pouring. Hence, probably, came
the adjective _chyic_ or _chymic_, and, at a somewhat later time, the
word _chemia_ as the name of that art which deals with calcinations,
fusions, meltings, and the like. The writer of a treatise on
astrology, in the 5th century, speaking of the influences of the stars
on the dispositions of man, says: "If a man is born under Mercury he
will give himself to astronomy; if Mars, he will follow the profession
of arms; if Saturn, he will devote himself to the science of alchemy
(_Scientia alchemiae_)." The word _alchemia_ which appears in this
treatise, was formed by prefixing the Arabic _al_ (meaning _the_) to
_chemia_, a word, as we have seen, of Greek origin.
It is the growth, development, and transformation into chemistry, of
this _alchemia_ which we have to consider.
Alchemy, that is, _the_ art of melting, pouring, and transforming,
must necessarily pay much attention to working with crucibles,
furnaces, alembics, and other vessels wherein things are fused,
distilled, calcined, and dissolved. The old drawings of alchemical
operations show us men busy calcining, cohobating, distilling,
dissolving, digesting, and performing other processes of like
character to these.
The alchemists could not be accused of laziness or aversion to work in
their laboratories. Paracelsus (16th century) says of them: "They are
not given to idleness, nor go in a proud habit, or plush and velvet
garments, often showing their rings on their fingers, or wearing
swords with silver hilts by their sides, or fine and gay gloves on
their hands; but diligently follow their labours, sweating whole days
and nights by their furnaces. They do not spend their time abroad for
recreation, but take delight in their laboratories. They put their
fingers among coals, into clay and filth, not into gold rings. They
are sooty and black, like smiths and miners, and do not pride
themselves upon clean and beautiful faces."
In these respects the chemist of to-day faithfully follows the
practice of the alchemists who were his predecessors. You can nose a
chemist in a crowd by the smell of the laboratory which hangs about
him; you can pick him out by the stains on his hands and clothes. He
also "takes delight in his laboratory"; he does not always "pride
himself on a clean and beautiful face"; he "sweats whole days and
nights by his furnace."
Why does the chemist toil so eagerly? Why did the alchemists so
untiringly pursue their quest? I think it is not unfair to say: the
chemist experiments in order that he "may liken his imaginings to the
facts which he observes"; the alchemist toiled that he might liken the
facts which he observed to his imaginings. The difference may be put
in another way by saying: the chemist's object is to discover "how
changes happen in combinations of the unchanging"; the alchemist's
endeavour was to prove the truth of his fundamental assertion, "that
every substance contains undeveloped resources and potentialities, and
can be brought outward and forward into perfection."
Looking around him, and observing the changes of things, the alchemist
was deeply impressed by the growth and modification of plants and
animals; he argued that minerals and metals also grow, change,
develop. He said in effect: "Nature is one, there must be unity in all
the diversity I see. When a grain of corn falls into the earth it
dies, but this dying is the first step towards a new life; the dead
seed is changed into the living plant. So it must be with all other
things in nature: the mineral, or the metal, seems dead when it is
buried in the earth, but, in reality, it is growing, changing, and
becoming more perfect." The perfection of the seed is the plant. What
is the perfection of the common metals? "Evidently," the alchemist
replied, "the perfect metal is gold; the common metals are trying to
become gold." "Gold is the intention of Nature in regard to all
metals," said an alchemical writer. Plants are preserved by the
preservation of their seed. "In like manner," the alchemist's argument
proceeded, "there must be a seed in metals which is their essence; if
I can separate the seed and bring it under the proper conditions, I
can cause it to grow into the perfect metal." "Animal life, and human
life also," we may suppose the alchemist saying, "are continued by the
same method as that whereby the life of plants is continued; all life
springs from seed; the seed is fructified by the union of the male and
the female; in metals also there must be the two characters; the union
of these is needed for the production of new metals; the conjoining of
metals must go before the birth of the perfect metal."
"Now," we may suppose the argument to proceed, "now, the passage from
the imperfect to the more perfect is not easy. It is harder to
practise virtue than to acquiesce in vice; virtue comes not naturally
to man; that he may gain the higher life, he must be helped by grace.
Therefore, the task of exalting the purer metals into the perfect
gold, of developing the lower order into the higher, is not easy. If
Nature does this, she does it slowly and painfully; if the exaltation
of the common metals to a higher plane is to be effected rapidly, it
can be done only by the help of man."
So far as I can judge from their writings, the argument of the
alchemists may be rendered by some such form as the foregoing. A
careful examination of the alchemical argument shows that it rests on
a (supposed) intimate knowledge of nature's plan of working, and the
certainty that simplicity is the essential mark of that plan.
That the alchemists were satisfied of the great simplicity of nature,
and their own knowledge of the ways of nature's work, is apparent from
their writings.
The author of _The New Chemical Light_ (17th century) says:
"Simplicity is the seal of truth.... Nature is wonderfully simple, and
the characteristic mark of a childlike simplicity is stamped upon all
that is true and noble in Nature." In another place the same author
says: "Nature is one, true, simple, self-contained, created of God,
and informed with a certain universal spirit." The same author,
Michael Sendivogius, remarks: "It may be asked how I come to have this
knowledge about heavenly things which are far removed beyond human
ken. My answer is that the sages have been taught by God that this
natural world is only an image and material copy of a heavenly and
spiritual pattern; that the very existence of this world is based upon
the reality of its heavenly archetype.... Thus the sage sees heaven
reflected in Nature as in a mirror, and he pursues this Art, not for
the sake of gold or silver, but for the love of the knowledge which it
reveals."
The _Only True Way_ advises all who wish to become true alchemists to
leave the circuitous paths of pretended philosophers, and to follow
nature, which is simple; the complicated processes described in books
are said to be the traps laid by the "cunning sophists" to catch the
unwary.
In _A Catechism of Alchemy_, Paracelsus asks: "What road should the
philosopher follow?" He answers, "That exactly which was followed by
the Great Architect of the Universe in the creation of the world."
One might suppose it would be easier, and perhaps more profitable, to
examine, observe, and experiment, than to turn one's eyes inwards with
the hope of discovering exactly "the road followed by the Great
Architect of the Universe in the creation of the world." But the
alchemical method found it easier to begin by introspection. The
alchemist spun his universe from his own ideas of order, symmetry, and
simplicity, as the spider spins her web from her own substance.
A favourite saying of the alchemists was, "What is above is as what is
below." In one of its aspects this saying meant, "processes happen
within the earth like those which occur on the earth; minerals and
metals live, as animals and plants live; all pass through corruption
towards perfection." In another aspect the saying meant "the human
being is the world in miniature; as is the microcosm, so is the
macrocosm; to know oneself is to know all the world."
Every man knows he ought to try to rise to better things, and many men
endeavour to do what they know they ought to do; therefore, he who
feels sure that all nature is fashioned after the image of man,
projects his own ideas of progress, development, virtue, matter and
spirit, on to nature outside himself; and, as a matter of course, this
kind of naturalist uses the same language when he is speaking of the
changes of material things as he employs to express the changes of his
mental states, his hopes, fears, aspirations, and struggles.
The language of the alchemists was, therefore, rich in such
expressions as these; "the elements are to be so conjoined that the
nobler and fuller life may be produced"; "our arcanum is gold exalted
to the highest degree of perfection to which the combined action of
nature and art can develop it."
Such commingling of ethical and physical ideas, such application of
moral conceptions to material phenomena, was characteristic of the
alchemical method of regarding nature. The necessary results were;
great confusion of thought, much mystification of ideas, and a
superabundance of _views_ about natural events.
When the author of _The Metamorphosis of Metals_ was seeking for an
argument in favour of his view, that water is the source and primal
element of all things, he found what he sought in the Biblical text:
"In the beginning the spirit of God moved upon the face of the
waters." Similarly, the author of _The Sodic Hydrolith_ clenches his
argument in favour of the existence of the Philosopher's Stone, by the
quotation: "Therefore, thus saith the Lord; behold I lay in Zion for a
foundation a Stone, a tried Stone, a precious corner Stone, a sure
foundation. He that has it shall not be confounded." This author works
out in detail an analogy between the functions and virtues of the
_Stone_, and the story of man's fall and redemption, as set forth in
the Old and New Testaments. The same author speaks of "Satan, that
grim pseudo-alchemist."
That the attribution, by the alchemists, of moral virtues and vices to
natural things was in keeping with some deep-seated tendency of human
nature, is shown by the persistence of some of their methods of
stating the properties of substances: we still speak of "perfect and
imperfect gases," "noble and base metals," "good and bad conductors of
electricity," and "laws governing natural phenomena."
Convinced of the simplicity of nature, certain that all natural events
follow one course, sure that this course was known to them and was
represented by the growth of plants and animals, the alchemists set