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Title: The Story of Alchemy and the Beginnings of Chemistry

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE STORY OF
ALCHEMY AND THE BEGINNINGS OF CHEMISTRY ***

The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Story of Alchemy and the Beginnings of
Chemistry, by M. M. Pattison Muir

AN ALCHEMICAL LABORATORY

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
"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)

Hodder and Stoughton
London, New York, Toronto

Click here for Table of Contents

The Useful Knowledge series

Cloth, One Shilling net each

List of the first thirty-four volumes issued in the new style with Pictorial
Wrappers:—

Wireless Telegraphy. By ALFRED T. STORY.
A Piece of Coal. By K.A. MARTIN, F.G.S.
Architecture. By P.L. WATERHOUSE.
The Cotton Plant. By F. WILKINSON, F.G.S.
Plant Life. By GRANT ALLEN.
Wild Flowers. By Rev. Prof. G. HENSLOW, F.L.S., F.G. S.
The Solar System. By G.F. CHAMBERS, F.R. A.S.
Eclipses. By G.F. CHAMBERS, F.R.A.S.
The Stars. By G.F.CHAMBERS, F.R.A.S.

The Weather. By G.F. CHAMBERS, F.R.A.S.
Animal Life. By B. LINDSAY.
Geographical Discovery. By JOSEPH JACOBS.
The Atmosphere. By DOUGLAS ARCHIBALD, M.A.
Alpine Climbing. By FRANCIS GRIBBLE
Forest and Stream. By JAMES RODWAY, F.L.S.
Fish Life. By W.P. PYCRAFT, F.Z.S.
Bird Life. By W.P. PYCRAFT, F.Z.S.
Primitive Man. By EDWARD CLODD.
Ancient Egypt. By ROBINSON SOUTTAR, M.A., D.C.L.
Story of Locomotion. By BECKLES WILLSON.
The Earth in Past Ages. By H.G. SEELEY, F.R.S.
The Empire. By E. SALMON.
King Alfred. By Sir WALTER BESANT.
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.
Life's Mechanism. BY H.W. CONN.
Reptile Life. By W.P. PYCRAFT, F.Z.S.
The Grain of Wheat. By WILLIAM C. EDGAR.
The Potter. By C.F. BINNS.

LONDON: HODDER & STOUGHTON

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.
CHAP.
THE EXPLANATION OF MATERIAL CHANGES GIVEN BY
I. 9
GREEK THINKERS
II. A SKETCH OF ALCHEMICAL THEORY 21
THE ALCHEMICAL NOTION OF THE UNITY AND
III. 37
SIMPLICITY OF NATURE
IV. THE ALCHEMICAL ELEMENTS AND PRINCIPLES 45
V. THE ALCHEMICAL ESSENCE 58
VI. ALCHEMY AS AN EXPERIMENTAL ART 79
VII. THE LANGUAGE OF ALCHEMY 96
VIII. THE DEGENERACY OF ALCHEMY 105
IX. PARACELSUS, AND SOME OTHER ALCHEMISTS 115
SUMMARY OF THE ALCHEMICAL DOCTRINE—THE
REPLACEMENT OF THE THREE PRINCIPLES OF THE
X. 122
ALCHEMISTS BY THE SINGLE PRINCIPLE OF
PHLOGISTON
THE EXAMINATION OF THE PHENOMENA OF
XI. 140
COMBUSTION
THE RECOGNITION OF CHEMICAL CHANGES AS THE
XII. 157
INTERACTIONS OF DEFINITE SUBSTANCES
THE CHEMICAL ELEMENTS CONTRASTED WITH THE
XIII. 165
ALCHEMICAL PRINCIPLES
THE MODERN FORM OF THE ALCHEMICAL QUEST OF
XIV. 179
THE ONE THING
INDEX 205

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
FIG. PAGE
AN ALCHEMICAL LABORATORY Frontispiece
THE MORTIFICATION OF METALS PRESENTED
1. BY THE IMAGE OF A KING DEVOURING HIS 66
SON
2 and THE MORTIFICATION OF METALS PRESENTED
67,68
3. BY IMAGES OF DEATH AND BURIAL
4 and
TWO MUST BE CONJOINED TO PRODUCE ONE 70,71
5.
HERMETICALLY SEALING THE NECK OF A
6. 80
GLASS VESSEL
7. SEALING BY MEANS OF A MERCURY TRAP 81
8. AN ALCHEMICAL COMMON COLD STILL 82
9. A BALNEUM MARIÆ 84
10. ALCHEMICAL DISTILLING APPARATUS 85
11. A PELICAN 88
12. AN ALCHEMIST WITH A RETORT 89
13. AN ALCHEMIST PREPARING OIL OF VITRIOL 92
ALCHEMICAL APPARATUS FOR RECTIFYING
14. 93
SPIRITS
PURIFYING GOLD PRESENTED BY THE IMAGE
15. 104
OF A SALAMANDER IN THE FIRE
PRIESTLEY'S APPARATUS FOR WORKING WITH
16. 145
GASES
APPARATUS USED BY LAVOISIER IN HIS
17. 156
EXPERIMENTS ON BURNING MERCURY IN AIR

THE STORY OF ALCHEMY
AND
THE BEGINNINGS OF
CHEMISTRY.

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 writings1:
"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
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.
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 themselves the task,
firstly, of proving by observations and experiments that their view of natural
occurrences was correct; and, secondly, of discovering and gaining
possession of the instrument whereby nature effects her transmutations and
perfects her operations. The mastery of this instrument would give them
power to change any metal into gold, the cure of all diseases, and the
happiness which must come from the practical knowledge of the supreme
secret of nature.
The central quest of alchemy was the quest of an undefined and undefinable
something wherein was supposed to be contained all the powers and

potencies of life, and whatever makes life worth living.
The names given to this mystical something were as many as the properties
which were assigned to it. It was called the one thing, the essence, the
philosopher's stone, the stone of wisdom, the heavenly balm, the divine
water, the virgin water, the carbuncle of the sun, the old dragon, the lion, the
basilisk, the phœnix; and many other names were given to it.
We may come near to expressing the alchemist's view of the essential
character of the object of their search by naming it the soul of all things.
"Alchemy," a modern writer says, "is the science of the soul of all things."
The essence was supposed to have a material form, an ethereal or middle
nature, and an immaterial or spiritual life.
No one might hope to make this essence from any one substance, because, as
one of the alchemists says, "It is the attribute of God alone to make one out
of one; you must produce one thing out of two by natural generation." The
alchemists did not pretend to create gold, but only to produce it from other
things.
The author of A Brief Guide to the Celestial Ruby says: "We do not, as is
sometimes said, profess to create gold and silver, but only to find an agent
which ... is capable of entering into an intimate and maturing union with the
Mercury of the base metals." And again: "Our Art ... only arrogates to itself
the power of developing, through the removal of all defects and
superfluities, the golden nature which the baser metals possess." Bonus, in
his tract on The New Pearl of Great Price (16th century), says: "The Art of
Alchemy ... does not create metals, or even develop them out of the metallic
first-substance; it only takes up the unfinished handicraft of Nature and
completes it.... Nature has only left a comparatively small thing for the artist
to do—the completion of that which she has already begun."
If the essence were ever attained, it would be by following the course which
nature follows in producing the perfect plant from the imperfect seed, by
discovering and separating the seed of metals, and bringing that seed under
the conditions which alone are suitable for its growth. Metals must have
seed, the alchemists said, for it would be absurd to suppose they have none.
"What prerogative have vegetables above metals," exclaims one of them,

"that God should give seed to the one and withhold it from the other? Are
not metals as much in His sight as trees?"
As metals, then, possess seed, it is evident how this seed is to be made
active; the seed of a plant is quickened by descending into the earth,
therefore the seed of metals must be destroyed before it becomes life-
producing. "The processes of our art must begin with dissolution of gold;
they must terminate in a restoration of the essential quality of gold." "Gold
does not easily give up its nature, and will fight for its life; but our agent is
strong enough to overcome and kill it, and then it also has power to restore it
to life, and to change the lifeless remains into a new and pure body."
The application of the doctrine of the existence of seed in metals led to the
performance of many experiments, and, hence, to the accumulation of a
considerable body of facts established by experimental inquiries. The belief
of the alchemists that all natural events are connected by a hidden thread,
that everything has an influence on other things, that "what is above is as
what is below," constrained them to place stress on the supposed connexion
between the planets and the metals, and to further their metallic
transformations by performing them at times when certain planets were in
conjunction. The seven principal planets and the seven principal metals were
called by the same names: Sol (gold), Luna (silver), Saturn (lead), Jupiter
(tin), Mars (iron), Venus (copper), and Mercury (mercury). The author of The
New Chemical Light taught that one metal could be propagated from another
only in the order of superiority of the planets. He placed the seven planets in
the following descending order: Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Sol, Venus, Mercury,
Luna. "The virtues of the planets descend," he said, "but do not ascend"; it is
easy to change Mars (iron) into Venus (copper), for instance, but Venus
cannot be transformed into Mars.
Although the alchemists regarded everything as influencing, and influenced
by, other things, they were persuaded that the greatest effects are produced
on a substance by substances of like nature with itself. Hence, most of them
taught that the seed of metals will be obtained by operations with metals, not
by the action on metals of things of animal or vegetable origin. Each class of
substances, they said, has a life, or spirit (an essential character, we might
say) of its own. "The life of sulphur," Paracelsus said, "is a combustible, ill-
smelling, fatness.... The life of gems and corals is mere colour.... The life of
water is its flowing.... The life of fire is air." Grant an attraction of like to

like, and the reason becomes apparent for such directions as these: "Nothing
heterogeneous must be introduced into our magistery"; "Everything should
be made to act on that which is like it, and then Nature will perform her
duty."
Although each class of substances was said by the alchemists to have its own
particular character, or life, nevertheless they taught that there is a deep-
seated likeness between all things, inasmuch as the power of the essence, or
the one thing, is so great that under its influence different things are
produced from the same origin, and different things are caused to pass into
and become the same thing. In The New Chemical Light it is said: "While the
seed of all things is one, it is made to generate a great variety of things."
It is not easy now—it could not have been easy at any time—to give clear
and exact meanings to the doctrines of the alchemists, or the directions they
gave for performing the operations necessary for the production of the object
of their search. And the difficulty is much increased when we are told that
"The Sage jealously conceals [his knowledge] from the sinner and the
scornful, lest the mysteries of heaven should be laid bare to the vulgar gaze."
We almost despair when an alchemical writer assures us that the Sages "Set
pen to paper for the express purpose of concealing their meaning. The sense
of a whole passage is often hopelessly obscured by the addition or omission
of one little word, for instance the addition of the word not in the wrong
place." Another writer says: "The Sages are in the habit of using words
which may convey either a true or a false impression; the former to their
own disciples and children, the latter to the ignorant, the foolish, and the
unworthy." Sometimes, after descriptions of processes couched in strange
and mystical language, the writer will add, "If you cannot perceive what you
ought to understand herein, you should not devote yourself to the study of
philosophy." Philalethes, in his Brief Guide to the Celestial Ruby, seems to
feel some pity for his readers; after describing what he calls "the generic
homogeneous water of gold," he says: "If you wish for a more particular
description of our water, I am impelled by motives of charity to tell you that
it is living, flexible, clear, nitid, white as snow, hot, humid, airy, vaporous,
and digestive."
Alchemy began by asserting that nature must be simple; it assumed that a
knowledge of the plan and method of natural occurrences is to be obtained
by thinking; and it used analogy as the guide in applying this knowledge of

nature's design to particular events, especially the analogy, assumed by
alchemy to exist, between material phenomena and human emotions.

CHAPTER III.
THE ALCHEMICAL CONCEPTION OF THE UNITY AND
SIMPLICITY OF NATURE.

In the preceding chapter I have referred to the frequent use made by the
alchemists of their supposition that nature follows the same plan, or at any
rate a very similar plan, in all her processes. If this supposition is accepted,
the primary business of an investigator of nature is to trace likenesses and
analogies between what seem on the surface to be dissimilar and
unconnected events. As this idea, and this practice, were the foundations
whereon the superstructure of alchemy was raised, I think it is important to
amplify them more fully than I have done already.
Mention is made in many alchemical writings of a mythical personage
named Hermes Trismegistus, who is said to have lived a little later than the
time of Moses. Representations of Hermes Trismegistus are found on ancient
Egyptian monuments. We are told that Alexander the Great found his tomb
near Hebron; and that the tomb contained a slab of emerald whereon thirteen
sentences were written. The eighth sentence is rendered in many alchemical
books as follows:
"Ascend with the greatest sagacity from the earth to heaven, and then again
descend to the earth, and unite together the powers of things superior and
things inferior. Thus you will obtain the glory of the whole world, and
obscurity will fly away from you."
This sentence evidently teaches the unity of things in heaven and things on
earth, and asserts the possibility of gaining, not merely a theoretical, but also
a practical, knowledge of the essential characters of all things. Moreover, the
sentence implies that this fruitful knowledge is to be obtained by examining
nature, using as guide the fundamental similarity supposed to exist between
things above and things beneath.
The alchemical writers constantly harp on this theme: follow nature;
provided you never lose the clue, which is simplicity and similarity.

The author of The Only Way (1677) beseeches his readers "to enlist under
the standard of that method which proceeds in strict obedience to the
teaching of nature ... in short, the method which nature herself pursues in the
bowels of the earth."
The alchemists tell us not to expect much help from books and written
directions. When one of them has said all he can say, he adds—"The
question is whether even this book will convey any information to one
before whom the writings of the Sages and the open book of Nature are
exhibited in vain." Another tells his readers the only thing for them is "to
beseech God to give you the real philosophical temper, and to open your
eyes to the facts of nature; thus alone will you reach the coveted goal."
"Follow nature" is sound advice. But, nature was to be followed with eyes
closed save to one vision, and the vision was to be seen before the following
began.
The alchemists' general conception of nature led them to assign to every
substance a condition or state natural to it, and wherein alone it could be said
to be as it was designed to be. Each substance, they taught, could be caused
to leave its natural state only by violent, or non-natural, means, and any
substance which had been driven from its natural condition by violence was
ready, and even eager, to return to the condition consonant with its nature.
Thus Norton, in his Ordinal of Alchemy, says: "Metals are generated in the
earth, for above ground they are subject to rust; hence above ground is the
place of corruption of metals, and of their gradual destruction. The cause
which we assign to this fact is that above ground they are not in their proper
element, and an unnatural position is destructive to natural objects, as we
see, for instance, that fishes die when they are taken out of the water; and as
it is natural for men, beasts, and birds to live in the air, so stones and metals
are naturally generated under the earth."
In his New Pearl of Great Price (16th century), Bonus says:—"The object of
Nature in all things is to introduce into each substance the form which
properly belongs to it; and this is also the design of our Art."
This view assumed the knowledge of the natural conditions of the substances
wherewith experiments were performed. It supposed that man could act as a
guide, to bring back to its natural condition a substance which had been

removed from that condition, either by violent processes of nature, or by
man's device. The alchemist regarded himself as an arbiter in questions
concerning the natural condition of each substance he dealt with. He thought
he could say, "this substance ought to be thus, or thus," "that substance is
constrained, thwarted, hindered from becoming what nature meant it to be."
In Ben Jonson's play called The Alchemist, Subtle (who is the alchemist of
the play) says, " ... metals would be gold if they had time."
The alchemist not only attributed ethical qualities to material things, he also
became the guardian and guide of the moral practices of these things. He
thought himself able to recall the erring metal to the path of metalline virtue,
to lead the extravagant mineral back to the moral home-life from which it
had been seduced, to show the doubting and vacillating salt what it was
ignorantly seeking, and to help it to find the unrealised object of its search.
The alchemist acted as a sort of conscience to the metals, minerals, salts, and
other substances he submitted to the processes of his laboratory. He treated
them as a wise physician might treat an ignorant and somewhat refractory
patient. "I know what you want better than you do," he seems often to be
saying to the metals he is calcining, separating, joining and subliming.
But the ignorant alchemist was not always thanked for his treatment.
Sometimes the patient rebelled. For instance, Michael Sendivogius, in his
tract, The New Chemical Light drawn from the Fountain of Nature and of
Manual Experience (17th century), recounts a dialogue between Mercury,
the Alchemist, and Nature.
"On a certain bright morning a number of Alchemists met together in a
meadow, and consulted as to the best way of preparing the Philosopher's
Stone.... Most of them agreed that Mercury was the first substance. Others
said, no, it was sulphur, or something else.... Just as the dispute began to run
high, there arose a violent wind, which dispersed the Alchemists into all the
different countries of the world; and as they had arrived at no conclusion,
each one went on seeking the Philosopher's Stone in his own old way, this
one expecting to find it in one substance, and that in another, so that the
search has continued without intermission even unto this day. One of them,
however, had at least got the idea into his head that Mercury was the
substance of the Stone, and determined to concentrate all his efforts on the
chemical preparation of Mercury.... He took common Mercury and began to

work with it. He placed it in a glass vessel over the fire, when it, of course,
evaporated. So in his ignorance he struck his wife, and said: 'No one but you
has entered my laboratory; you must have taken my Mercury out of the
vessel.' The woman, with tears, protested her innocence. The Alchemist put
some more Mercury into the vessel.... The Mercury rose to the top of the
vessel in vaporous steam. Then the Alchemist was full of joy, because he
remembered that the first substance of the Stone is described by the Sages as
volatile; and he thought that now at last he must be on the right track. He
now began to subject the Mercury to all sorts of chemical processes, to
sublime it, and to calcine it with all manner of things, with salts, sulphur,
metals, minerals, blood, hair, aqua fortis, herbs, urine, and vinegar....
Everything he could think of was tried; but without producing the desired
effect." The Alchemist then despaired; after a dream, wherein an old man
came and talked with him about the "Mercury of the Sages," the Alchemist
thought he would charm the Mercury, and so he used a form of incantation.
The Mercury suddenly began to speak, and asked the Alchemist why he had
troubled him so much, and so on. The Alchemist replied, and questioned the
Mercury. The Mercury makes fun of the philosopher. Then the Alchemist
again torments the Mercury by heating him with all manner of horrible
things. At last Mercury calls in the aid of Nature, who soundly rates the
philosopher, tells him he is grossly ignorant, and ends by saying: "The best
thing you can do is to give yourself up to the king's officers, who will
quickly put an end to you and your philosophy."
As long as men were fully persuaded that they knew the plan whereon the
world was framed, that it was possible for them to follow exactly "the road
which was followed by the Great Architect of the Universe in the creation of
the world," a real knowledge of natural events was impossible; for every
attempt to penetrate nature's secrets presupposed a knowledge of the
essential characteristics of that which was to be investigated. But genuine
knowledge begins when the investigator admits that he must learn of nature,
not nature of him. It might be truly said of one who held the alchemical
conception of nature that "his foible was omniscience"; and omniscience
negatives the attainment of knowledge.
The alchemical notion of a natural state as proper to each substance was
vigorously combated by the Honourable Robert Boyle (born 1626, died
1691), a man of singularly clear and penetrative intellect. In A Paradox of

the Natural and Supernatural States of Bodies, Especially of the Air, Boyle
says:—"I know that not only in living, but even in inanimate, bodies, of
which alone I here discourse, men have universally admitted the famous
distinction between the natural and preternatural, or violent state of bodies,
and do daily, without the least scruple, found upon it hypotheses and
ratiocinations, as if it were most certain that what they call nature had
purposely formed bodies in such a determinate state, and were always
watchful that they should not by any external violence be put out of it. But
notwithstanding so general a consent of men in this point, I confess, I cannot
yet be satisfied about it in the sense wherein it is wont to be taken. It is not,
that I believe, that there is no sense in which, or in the account upon which, a
body may he said to be in its natural state; but that I think the common
distinction of a natural and violent state of bodies has not been clearly
explained and considerately settled, and both is not well grounded, and is
oftentimes ill applied. For when I consider that whatever state a body be put
into, or kept in, it obtains or retains that state, assenting to the catholic laws
of nature, I cannot think it fit to deny that in this sense the body proposed is
in a natural state; but then, upon the same ground, it will he hard to deny but
that those bodies which are said to be in a violent state may also be in a
natural one, since the violence they are presumed to suffer from outward
agents is likewise exercised no otherwise than according to the established
laws of universal nature."
There must be something very fascinating and comforting in the alchemical
view of nature, as a harmony constructed on one simple plan, which can be
grasped as a whole, and also in its details, by the introspective processes of
the human intellect; for that conception prevails to-day among those who
have not investigated natural occurrences for themselves. The alchemical
view of nature still forms the foundation of systems of ethics, of philosophy,
of art. It appeals to the innate desire of man to make himself the measure of
all things. It is so easy, so authoritative, apparently so satisfactory. No
amount of thinking and reasoning will ever demonstrate its falsity. It can be
conquered only by a patient, unbiassed, searching examination of some
limited portion of natural events.

CHAPTER IV.
THE ALCHEMICAL ELEMENTS AND PRINCIPLES.

The alchemists were sure that the intention of nature regarding metals was
that they should become gold, for gold was considered to be the most perfect
metal, and nature, they said, evidently strains after perfection. The alchemist
found that metals were worn away, eaten through, broken, and finally caused
to disappear, by many acid and acrid liquids which he prepared from mineral
substances. But gold resisted the attacks of these liquids; it was not changed
by heat, nor was it affected by sulphur, a substance which changed limpid,
running mercury into an inert, black solid. Hence, gold was more perfect in
the alchemical scale than any other metal.
Since gold was considered to be the most perfect metal, it was self-evident to
the alchemical mind that nature must form gold slowly in the earth, must
transmute gradually the inferior metals into gold.
"The only thing that distinguishes one metal from another," writes an
alchemist who went under the name of Philalethes, "is its degree of maturity,
which is, of course, greatest in the most precious metals; the difference
between gold and lead is not one of substance, but of digestion; in the baser
metal the coction has not been such as to purge out its metallic impurities. If
by any means this superfluous impure matter could be organically removed
from the baser metals, they would become gold and silver. So miners tell us
that lead has in many cases developed into silver in the bowels of the earth,
and we contend that the same effect is produced in a much shorter time by
means of our Art."
Stories were told about the finding of gold in deserted mines which had been
worked out long before; these stories were supposed to prove that gold was
bred in the earth. The facts that pieces of silver were found in tin and lead
mines, and gold was found in silver mines, were adduced as proofs that, as
the author of The New Pearl of Great Price says, "Nature is continually at
work changing other metals into gold, because, though in a certain sense
they are complete in themselves, they have not yet reached the highest

perfection of which they are capable, and to which nature has destined
them." What nature did in the earth man could accomplish in the workshop.
For is not man the crown of the world, the masterpiece of nature, the flower
of the universe; was he not given dominion over all things when the world
was created?
In asserting that the baser metals could be transmuted into gold, and in
attempting to effect this transmutation, the alchemist was not acting on a
vague; haphazard surmise; he was pursuing a policy dictated by his
conception of the order of nature; he was following the method which he
conceived to be that used by nature herself. The transmutation of metals was
part and parcel of a system of natural philosophy. If this transmutation were
impossible, the alchemical scheme of things would be destroyed, the
believer in the transmutation would be left without a sense of order in the
material universe. And, moreover, the alchemist's conception of an orderly
material universe was so intimately connected with his ideas of morality and
religion, that to disprove the possibility of the great transmutation would be
to remove not only the basis of his system of material things, but the
foundations of his system of ethics also. To take away his belief in the
possibility of changing other metals into gold would be to convert the
alchemist into an atheist.
How, then, was the transmutation to be accomplished? Evidently by the
method whereby nature brings to perfection other living things; for the
alchemist's belief in the simplicity and unity of nature compelled him to
regard metals as living things.
Plants are improved by appropriate culture, by digging and enriching the
soil, by judicious selection of seed; animals are improved by careful
breeding. By similar processes metals will be encouraged and helped
towards perfection. The perfect state of gold will not be reached at a bound;
it will be gained gradually. Many partial purifications will be needed. As
Subtle says in The Alchemist—

'twere absurd
To think that nature in the earth bred gold
Perfect in the instant; something went before,
There must be remote matter....
Nature doth first beget the imperfect, then

Proceeds she to the perfect.
At this stage the alchemical argument becomes very ultra-physical. It may,
perhaps, be rendered somewhat as follows:—
Man is the most perfect of animals; in man there is a union of three parts,
these are body, soul, and spirit. Metals also may be said to have a body, a
soul, and a spirit; there is a specific bodily, or material, form belonging to
each metal; there is a metalline soul characteristic of this or that class of
metals; there is a spirit, or inner immaterial potency, which is the very
essence of all metals.
The soul and spirit of man are clogged by his body. If the spiritual nature is
to become the dominating partner, the body must be mortified: the
alchemists, of course, used this kind of imagery, and it was very real to them.
In like manner the spirit of metals will be laid bare and enabled to exercise
its transforming influences, only when the material form of the individual
metal has been destroyed. The first thing to do, then, is to strip off and cast
aside those properties of metals which appeal to the senses.
"It is necessary to deprive matter of its qualities in order to draw out its
soul," said Stephanus of Alexandria in the 7th century; and in the 17th
century Paracelsus said, "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."
But the possession of the soul of metals is not the final stage: mastery of the
soul may mean the power of transmuting a metal into another like itself; it
will not suffice for the great transmutation, for in that process a metal
becomes gold, the one and only perfect metal. Hence the soul also must be
removed, in order that the spirit, the essence, the kernel, may be obtained.
And as it is with metals, so, the alchemists argued, it is with all things. There
are a few Principles which may be thought of as conditioning the specific
bodily and material forms of things; beneath these, there are certain
Elements which are common to many things whose principles are not the
same; and, hidden by the wrappings of elements and principles, there is the
one Essence, the spirit, the mystic uniting bond, the final goal of the
philosopher.

I propose in this chapter to try to analyse the alchemical conceptions of
Elements and Principles, and in the next chapter to attempt some kind of
description of the Essence.
In his Tract Concerning the Great Stone of the Ancient Sages, Basil
Valentine speaks of the "three Principles," salt, sulphur, and mercury, the
source of which is the Elements.
"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 earth."
Of the element Earth, he says:—"In this element the other three, especially
fire, are latent.... It is gross and porous, specifically heavy, but naturally
light.... It receives all that the other three project into it, conscientiously
conceals what it should hide, and brings to light that which it should
manifest.... Outwardly it is visible and fixed, inwardly it is invisible and
volatile."
Of the element Water, Basil Valentine says:—"Outwardly it is volatile,
inwardly it is fixed, cold, and humid.... It is the solvent of the world, and
exists in three degrees of excellence: the pure, the purer, and the purest. Of
its purest substance the heavens were created; of that which is less pure the
atmospheric air was formed; that which is simply pure remains in its proper
sphere where ... it is guardian of all subtle substances here below."
Concerning the element Air, he writes:—"The most noble Element of Air ...
is volatile, but may be fixed, and when fixed renders all bodies penetrable....
It is nobler than Earth or Water.... It nourishes, impregnates, conserves the
other elements."
Finally, of the element Fire:—"Fire is the purest and noblest of all Elements,
full of adhesive unctuous corrosiveness, penetrant, digestive, inwardly fixed,
hot and dry, outwardly visible, and tempered by the earth.... This Element is
the most passive of all, and resembles a chariot; when it is drawn, it moves;
when it is not drawn, it stands still."
Basil Valentine then tells his readers that Adam was compounded of the four
pure Elements, but after his expulsion from Paradise he became subject to
the various impurities of the animal creation. "The pure Elements of his
creation were gradually mingled and infected with the corruptible elements

of the outer world, and thus his body became more and more gross, and
liable, through its grossness, to natural decay and death." The process of
degeneration was slow at first, but "as time went on, the seed out of which
men were generated became more and more infected with perishable
elements. The continued use of corruptible food rendered their bodies more
and more gross; and human life was soon reduced to a very brief span."
Basil Valentine then deals with the formation of the three Principles of
things, by the mutual action of the four Elements. Fire acting on Air
produced Sulphur; Air acting on Water produced Mercury; Water acting on
Earth produced Salt. Earth having nothing to act on produced nothing, but
became the nurse of the three Principles. "The three Principles," he says,
"are necessary because they are the immediate substance of metals. The
remoter substance of metals is the four elements, but no one can produce
anything out of them but God; and even God makes nothing of them but
these three Principles."
To endeavour to obtain the four pure Elements is a hopeless task. But the
Sage has the three Principles at hand. "The artist should determine which of
the three Principles he is seeking, and should assist it so that it may
overcome its contrary." "The art consists in an even mingling of the virtues
of the Elements; in the natural equilibrium of the hot, the dry, the cold, and
the moist."
The account of the Elements given by Philalethes differs from that of Basil
Valentine.
Philalethes enumerates three Elements only: Air, Water, and Earth. Things
are not formed by the mixture of these Elements, for "dissimilar things can
never really unite." By analysing the properties of the three Elements,
Philalethes reduced them finally to one, namely, Water. "Water," he says, "is
the first principle of all things." "Earth is the fundamental Element in which
all bodies grow and are preserved. Air is the medium into which they grow,
and by means of which the celestial virtues are communicated to them."
According to Philalethes, Mercury is the most important of the three
Principles. Although gold is formed by the aid of Mercury, it is only when
Mercury has been matured, developed, and perfected, that it is able to
transmute inferior metals into gold. The essential thing to do is, therefore, to

find an agent which will bring about the maturing and perfecting of Mercury.
This agent, Philalethes calls "Our divine Arcanum."
Although it appears to me impossible to translate the sayings of the
alchemists concerning Elements and Principles into expressions which shall
have definite and exact meanings for us to-day, still we may, perhaps, get an
inkling of the meaning of such sentences as those I have quoted from Basil
Valentine and Philalethes.
Take the terms Fire and Water. In former times all liquid substances were
supposed to be liquid because they possessed something in common; this
hypothetical something was called the Element, Water. Similarly, the view
prevailed until comparatively recent times, that burning substances burn
because of the presence in them of a hypothetical imponderable fluid, called
"Caloric"; the alchemists preferred to call this indefinable something an
Element, and to name it Fire.
We are accustomed to-day to use the words fire and water with different
meanings, according to the ideas we wish to express. When we say "do not
touch the fire," or "put your hand into the water," we are regarding fire and
water as material things; when we say "the house is on fire," or speak of "a
diamond of the first water," we are thinking of the condition or state of a
burning body, or of a substance as transparent as water. When we say "put
out the fire," or "his heart became as water," we are referring to the act of
burning, or are using an image which likens the thing spoken of to a
substance in the act of liquefying.
As we do to-day, so the alchemists did before us; they used the words fire
and water to express different ideas.
Such terms as hardness, softness, coldness, toughness, and the like, are
employed for the purpose of bringing together into one point of view
different things which are alike in, at least, one respect. Hard things may
differ in size, weight, shape, colour, texture, &c. A soft thing may weigh the
same as a hard thing; both may have the same colour or the same size, or be
at the same temperature, and so on. By classing together various things as
hard or soft, or smooth or rough, we eliminate (for the time) all the
properties wherein the things differ, and regard them only as having one

property in common. The words hardness, softness, &c., are useful class-
marks.
Similarly the alchemical Elements and Principles were useful class-marks.
We must not suppose that when the alchemists spoke of certain things as
formed from, or by the union of, the same Elements or the same Principles,
they meant that these things contained a common substance. Their Elements
and Principles were not thought of as substances, at least not in the modern
meaning of the expression, a substance; they were qualities only.
If we think of the alchemical elements earth, air, fire, and water, as general
expressions of what seemed to the alchemists the most important properties
of all substances, we may be able to attach some kind of meaning to the
sayings of Basil Valentine, which I have quoted. For instance, when that
alchemist tells us, "Fire is the most passive of all elements, and resembles a
chariot; when it is drawn, it moves; when it is not drawn, it stands still"—we
may suppose he meant to express the fact that a vast number of substances
can be burnt, and that combustion does not begin of itself, but requires an
external agency to start it.
Unfortunately, most of the terms which the alchemists used to designate their
Elements and Principles are terms which are now employed to designate
specific substances. The word fire is still employed rather as a quality of
many things under special conditions, than as a specific substance; but earth,
water, air, salt, sulphur, and mercury, are to-day the names applied to
certain groups of properties, each of which is different from all other groups
of properties, and is, therefore, called, in ordinary speech, a definite kind of
matter.
As knowledge became more accurate and more concentrated, the words
sulphur, salt, mercury, &c., began to be applied to distinct substances, and as
these terms were still employed in their alchemical sense as compendious
expressions for certain qualities common to great classes of substances,
much confusion arose. Kunckel, the discoverer of phosphorus, who lived
between 1630 and 1702, complained of the alchemists' habit of giving
different names to the same substance, and the same name to different
substances. "The sulphur of one," he says, "is not the sulphur of another, to
the great injury of science. To that one replies that everyone is perfectly free

to baptise his infant as he pleases. Granted. You may if you like call an ass
an ox, but you will never make anyone believe that your ox is an ass." Boyle
is very severe on the vague and loose use of words practised by so many
writers of his time. In The Sceptical Chymist (published 1678-9) he says: "If
judicious men, skilled in chymical affairs, shall once agree to write clearly
and plainly of them, and thereby keep men from being stunned, as it were, or
imposed upon by dark and empty words; it is to be hoped that these [other]
men finding, that they can no longer write impertinently and absurdly,
without being laughed at for doing so, will be reduced either to write
nothing, or books that may teach us something, and not rob men, as
formerly, of invaluable time; and so ceasing to trouble the world with riddles
or impertinences, we shall either by their books receive an advantage, or by
their silence escape an inconvenience."
Most of the alchemists taught that the elements produced what they called
seed, by their mutual reactions, and the principles matured this seed and
brought it to perfection. They supposed that each class, or kind, of things had
its own seed, and that to obtain the seed was to have the power of producing
the things which sprung from that seed.
Some of them, however, asserted that all things come from a common seed,
and that the nature of the products of this seed is conditioned by the
circumstances under which it is caused to develop.
Thus Michael Sendivogius writes as follows in The New Chemical Light,
drawn from the fountain of Nature and of Manual Experience (17th century):
—
"Wherever there is seed, Nature will work through it, whether it be good or
bad." "The four Elements, by their continued action, project a constant
supply of seed to the centre of the earth, where it is digested, and whence it
proceeds again in generative motions. Now the centre of the earth is a certain
void place where nothing is at rest, and upon the margin or circumference of
this centre the four Elements project their qualities.... The magnetic force of
our earth-centre attracts to itself as much as is needed of the cognate seminal
substance, while that which cannot be used for vital generation is thrust forth
in the shape of stones and other rubbish. This is the fountain-head of all
things terrestrial. Let us illustrate the matter by supposing a glass of water to
be set in the middle of a table, round the margin of which are placed little

heaps of salt, and of powders of different colours. If the water be poured out,
it will run all over the table in divergent rivulets, and will become salt where
it touches the salt, red where it touches the red powder, and so on. The water
does not change the 'places,' but the several 'places' differentiate the water.4
In the same way, the seed which is the product of the four Elements is
projected in all directions from the earth-centre, and produces different
things, according to the quality of the different places. Thus, while the seed
of all things is one, it is made to generate a great variety of things.... So long
as Nature's seed remains in the centre it can indifferently produce a tree or a
metal, a herb or a stone, and in like manner, according to the purity of the
place, it will produce what is less or more pure."

CHAPTER V.
THE ALCHEMICAL ESSENCE.

In the last chapter I tried to describe the alchemical view of the
interdependence of different substances. Taking for granted the tripartite
nature of man, the co-existence in him of body, soul, and spirit (no one of
which was defined), the alchemists concluded that all things are formed as
man is formed; that in everything there is a specific bodily form, some
portion of soul, and a dash of spirit. I considered the term soul to be the
alchemical name for the properties common to a class of substances, and the
term spirit to mean the property which was thought by the alchemists to be
common to all things.
The alchemists considered it possible to arrange all substances in four
general classes, the marks whereof were expressed by the terms hot, cold,
moist, and dry; they thought of these properties as typified by what they
called the four Elements—fire, air, water, and earth. Everything, they taught,
was produced from the four Elements, not immediately, but through the
mediation of the three Principles—mercury, sulphur, and salt. These
Principles were regarded as the tools put into the hands of him who desired
to effect the transmutation of one substance into another. The Principles
were not thought of as definite substances, nor as properties of this or that
specified substance; they were considered to be the characteristic properties
of large classes of substances.
The chemist of to-day places many compounds in the same class because all
are acids, because all react similarly under similar conditions. It used to be
said that every acid possesses more or less of the principle of acidity.
Lavoisier changed the language whereby certain facts concerning acids were
expressed. He thought that experiments proved all acids to be compounds of
the element oxygen; and for many years after Lavoisier, the alchemical
expression the principle of acidity was superseded by the word oxygen.
Although Lavoisier recognised that not every compound of oxygen is an
acid, he taught that every acid is a compound of oxygen. We know now that

many acids are not compounds of oxygen, but we have not yet sufficient
knowledge to frame a complete definition of the term acid. Nevertheless it is
convenient, indeed it is necessary, to place together many compounds which
react similarly under certain defined conditions, and to give a common name
to them all. The alchemists also classified substances, but their classification
was necessarily more vague than ours; and they necessarily expressed their
reasons for putting different substances in the same class in a language
which arose out of the general conceptions of natural phenomena which
prevailed in their time.
The primary classification of substances made by the alchemists was
expressed by saying; these substances are rich in the principle sulphur, those
contain much of the principle mercury, and this class is marked by the
preponderance of the principle salt. The secondary classification of the
alchemists was expressed by saying; this class is characterised by dryness,
that by moisture, another by coldness, and a fourth by hotness; the dry
substances contain much of the element Earth, the moist substances are rich
in the element Water, in the cold substances the element Air preponderates,
and the hot substances contain more of the element Fire than of the other
elements.
The alchemists went a step further in their classification of things. They
asserted that there is One Thing present in all things; that everything is a
vehicle for the more or less perfect exhibition of the properties of the One
Thing; that there is a Primal Element common to all substances. The final
aim of alchemy was to obtain the One Thing, the Primal Element, the Soul
of all Things, so purified, not only from all specific substances, but also from
all admixture of the four Elements and the three Principles, as to make
possible the accomplishment of any transmutation by the use of it.
If a person ignorant of its powers were to obtain the Essence, he might work
vast havoc and cause enormous confusion; it was necessary, therefore, to
know the conditions under which the potencies of the Essence became
active. Hence there was need of prolonged study of the mutual actions of the
most seemingly diverse substances, and of minute and patient examination
of the conditions under which nature performs her marvellous
transmutations. The quest of the One Thing was fraught with peril, and was
to be attempted only by those who had served a long and laborious
apprenticeship.

In The Chemical Treatise of Thomas Norton, the Englishman, called Believe-
me, or the Ordinal of Alchemy (15th century), the adept is warned not to
disclose his secrets to ordinary people.
"You should carefully test and examine the life, character, and mental
aptitudes of any person who would be initiated in this Art, and then you
should bind him, by a sacred oath, not to let our Magistery be commonly or
vulgarly known. Only when he begins to grow old and feeble, he may reveal
it to one person, but not to more, and that one man must be virtuous.... If any
wicked man should learn to practise the Art, the event would be fraught with
great danger to Christendom. For such a man would overstep all bounds of
moderation, and would remove from their hereditary thrones those legitimate
princes who rule over the peoples of Christendom."
The results of the experimental examination of the compositions and
properties of substances, made since the time of the alchemists, have led to
the modern conception of the chemical element, and the isolation of about
seventy or eighty different elements. No substance now called an element
has been produced in the laboratory by uniting two, or more, distinct
substances, nor has any been separated into two, or more, unlike portions.
The only decided change which a chemical element has been caused to
undergo is the combination of it with some other element or elements, or
with a compound or compounds.
But it is possible that all the chemical elements may be combinations of
different quantities of one primal element. Certain facts make this
supposition tenable; and some chemists expect that the supposition will be
proved to be correct. If the hypothetical primal element should be isolated,
we should have fulfilled the aim of alchemy, and gained the One Thing; but
the fulfilment would not be that whereof the alchemists dreamed.
Inasmuch as the alchemical Essence was thought of as the Universal Spirit to
whose presence is due whatever degree of perfection any specific substance
exhibits, it followed that the more perfect a substance the greater is the
quantity of the Essence in it. But even in the most perfect substance found in
nature—which substance, the alchemists said, is gold—the Essence is
hidden by wrappings of specific properties which prevent the ordinary man
from recognising it. Remove these wrappings from some special substance,
and you have the perfect form of that thing; you have some portion of the

Universal Spirit joined to the one general property of the class of things
whereof the particular substance is a member. Then remove the class-
property, often spoken of by the alchemists as the life, of the substance, and
you have the Essence itself.
The alchemists thought that to every thing, or at any rate to every class of
things, there corresponds a more perfect form than that which we see and
handle; they spoke of gold, and the gold of the Sages; mercury, and the
mercury of the Philosophers; sulphur, and the heavenly sulphur of him whose
eyes are opened.
To remove the outer wrappings of ordinary properties which present
themselves to the untrained senses, was regarded by the alchemists to be a
difficult task; to tear away the soul (the class-property) of a substance, and
yet retain the Essence which made that substance its dwelling place, was
possible only after vast labour, and by the use of the proper agent working
under the proper conditions. An exceedingly powerful, delicate, and refined
agent was needed; and the mastery of the agent was to be acquired by bitter
experience, and, probably, after many disappointments.
"Gold," an alchemist tells us, "does not easily give up its nature, and will
fight for its life; but our agent is strong enough to overcome and kill it, and
then it also has the power to restore it to life, and to change the lifeless
remains into a new and pure body."
Thomas Norton, the author of The Ordinal of Alchemy, writing in the 15th
century, says the worker in transmutations is often tempted to be in a hurry,
or to despair, and he is often deceived. His servants will be either stupid and
faithful, or quick-witted and false. He may be robbed of everything when his
work is almost finished. The only remedies are infinite patience, a sense of
virtue, and sound reason. "In the pursuit of our Art," he says, "you should
take care, from time to time, to unbend your mind from its sterner
employments with some convenient recreation."
The choice of workmen to aid in the mechanical parts of the quest was a
great trouble to the alchemists. On this subject Norton says—"If you would
be free from all fear over the gross work, follow my counsel, and never
engage married men; for they soon give in and pretend they are tired out....
Hire your workmen for certain stipulated wages, and not for longer periods

than twenty-four hours at a time. Give them higher wages than they would
receive elsewhere, and be prompt and ready in your payments."
Many accounts are given by alchemical writers of the agent, and many
names are bestowed on it. The author of A Brief Guide to the Celestial Ruby
speaks thus of the agent—"It is our doorkeeper, our balm, our honey, oil,
urine, maydew, mother, egg, secret furnace, oven, true fire, venomous
dragon, Theriac, ardent wine, Green Lion, Bird of Hermes, Goose of
Hermogenes, two-edged sword in the hand of the Cherub that guards the
Tree of Life.... It is our true secret vessel, and the Garden of the Sages in
which our sun rises and sets. It is our Royal Mineral, our triumphant
vegetable Saturnia, and the magic rod of Hermes, by means of which he
assumes any shape he likes."
Sometimes we are told that the agent is mercury, sometimes that it is gold,
but not common mercury or common gold. "Supplement your common
mercury with the inward fire which it needs, and you will soon get rid of all
superfluous dross." "The agent is gold, as highly matured as natural and
artificial digestion can make it, and a thousand times more perfect than the
common metal of that name. Gold, thus exalted, radically penetrates, tinges,
and fixes metals."
The alchemists generally likened the work to be performed by their agent to
the killing of a living thing. They constantly use the allegory of death,
followed by resurrection, in describing the steps whereby the Essence was to
be obtained, and the processes whereby the baser metals were to be partially
purified. They speak of the mortification of metals, the dissolution and
putrefaction of substances, as preliminaries to the appearance of the true life
of the things whose outward properties have been destroyed. For instance,
Paracelsus says: "Destruction perfects that which is good; for the good
cannot appear on account of that which conceals it." The same alchemist
speaks of rusting as the mortification of metals; he says: "The mortification
of metals is the removal of their bodily structure.... The mortification of
woods is their being turned into charcoal or ashes."
Paracelsus distinguishes natural from artificial mortification, "Whatever
nature consumes," he says, "man cannot restore. But whatever man destroys
man can restore, and break again when restored." Things which had been
mortified by man's device were considered by Paracelsus not to be really

dead. He gives this extraordinary illustration of his meaning: "You see this is
the case with lions, which are all born dead, and are first vitalised by the
horrible noise of their parents, just as a sleeping person is awakened by a
shout."
The mortification of metals is represented in alchemical books by various
images and allegories. Fig. I. is reduced from a cut in a 16th century work,
The Book of Lambspring, a noble ancient Philosopher, concerning the
Philosophical Stone.
Here the father devours the son;
The soul and spirit flow forth from the body.

FIG. I.
The image used to set forth the mortification of metals is a king swallowing
his son. Figs. II. and III. are reduced from Basil Valentine's Twelve Keys.
Both of these figures represent the process of mortification by images
connected with death and burial.

FIG. II.
In his explanation (?) of these figures, Basil Valentine says:—
"Neither human nor animal bodies can be multiplied or propagated without
decomposition; the grain and all vegetable seed, when cast into the ground,
must decay before it can spring up again; moreover, putrefaction imparts life
to many worms and other animalculæ.... If bread is placed in honey, and
suffered to decay, ants are generated ... maggots are also developed by the
decay of nuts, apples, and pears. The same thing may be observed in regard
to vegetable life. Nettles and other weeds spring up where no such seed has
ever been sown. This occurs only by putrefaction. The reason is that the soil
in such places is so disposed, and, as it were, impregnated, that it produces
these fruits; which is a result of the properties of sidereal influences;
consequently the seed is spiritually produced in the earth, and putrefies in
the earth, and by the operation of the elements generates corporeal matter
according to the species of nature. Thus the stars and the elements may
generate new spiritual, and ultimately, new vegetable seed, by means of
putrefaction.... Know that, in like manner, no metallic seed can develop, or

multiply, unless the said seed, by itself alone, and without the introduction of
any foreign substance, be reduced to a perfect putrefaction."

FIG. III.
The action of the mineral agent in perfecting substances is often likened by
the alchemists to the conjoining of the male and the female, followed by the
production of offspring. They insist on the need of a union of two things, in
order to produce something more perfect than either. The agent, they say,
must work upon something; alone it is nothing.
The methods whereby the agent is itself perfected, and the processes wherein
the agent effects the perfecting of the less perfect things, were divided into
stages by the alchemists. They generally spoke of these stages as Gates, and
enumerated ten or sometimes twelve of them. As examples of the alchemical
description of these gates, I give some extracts from A Brief Guide to the
Celestial Ruby.
The first gate is Calcination, which is "the drying up of the humours"; by
this process the substance "is concocted into a black powder which is yet

unctuous, and retains its radical humour." When gold passes through this
gate, "We observe in it two natures, the fixed and the volatile, which we
liken to two serpents." The fixed nature is likened to a serpent without
wings; the volatile, to a serpent with wings: calcination unites these two into
one. The second gate, Dissolution, is likened to death and burial; but the true
Essence will appear glorious and beautiful when this gate is passed. The
worker is told not to be discouraged by this apparent death. The mercury of
the sages is spoken of by this author as the queen, and gold as the king. The
king dies for love of the queen, but he is revived by his spouse, who is made
fruitful by him and brings forth "a most royal son."
Figs. IV. and V. are reduced from The Book of Lambspring; they express the
need of the conjunction of two to produce one.

Here you behold a great marvel—
Two Lions are joined into one.

The spirit and soul must be united in their body.
FIG. IV.
After dissolution came Conjunction, wherein the separated elements were
combined. Then followed Putrefaction, necessary for the germination of the
seed which had been produced by calcination, dissolution, and conjunction.
Putrefaction was followed by Congelation and Citation. The passage
through the next gate, called Sublimation, caused the body to become
spiritual, and the spiritual to be made corporal. Fermentation followed,
whereby the substance became soft and flowed like wax. Finally, by
Exaltation, the Stone was perfected.

Here are two birds, great and strong—the body and spirit; one devours
the other.

Let the body be placed in horse-dung, or a warm bath, the spirit having
been extracted from it. The body has become white by the process, the
spirit red by our art. All that exists tends towards perfection, and thus is
the Philosopher's Stone prepared.
FIG. V.
The author of The Open Entrance speaks of the various stages in the
perfecting of the agent as regimens. The beginning of the heating of gold
with mercury is likened to the king stripping off his golden garments and

descending into the fountain; this is the regimen of Mercury. As the heating
is continued, all becomes black; this is the regimen of Saturn. Then is
noticed a play of many colours; this is the regimen of Jupiter: if the heat is
not regulated properly, "the young ones of the crow will go back to the nest."
About the end of the fourth month you will see "the sign of the waxing
moon," and all becomes white; this is the regimen of the Moon. The white
colour gives place to purple and green; you are now in the regimen of Venus.
After that, appear all the colours of the rainbow, or of a peacock's tail; this is
the regimen of Mars. Finally the colour becomes orange and golden; this is
the regimen of the Sun.
The reader may wish to have some description of the Essence. The
alchemists could describe it only in contraries. It had a bodily form, but its
method of working was spiritual. In The Sodic Hydrolith, or Water Stone of
the Wise we are told:—
"The stone is conceived below the earth, born in the earth, quickened in
heaven, dies in time, and obtains eternal glory.... It is bluish-grey and
green.... It flows like water, yet it makes no wet; it is of great weight, and is
small."
Philalethes says, in A Brief Guide to the Celestial Ruby: "The Philosopher's
Stone is a certain heavenly, spiritual, penetrative, and fixed substance, which
brings all metals to the perfection of gold or silver (according to the quality
of the Medicine), and that by natural methods, which yet in their effects
transcend Nature.... Know then that it is called a stone, not because it is like
a stone, but only because, by virtue of its fixed nature, it resists the action of
fire as successfully as any stone. In species it is gold, more pure than the
purest; it is fixed and incombustible like a stone, but its appearance is that of
very fine powder, impalpable to the touch, sweet to the taste, fragrant to the
smell, in potency a most penetrative spirit, apparently dry and yet unctuous,
and easily capable of tinging a plate of metal.... If we say that its nature is
spiritual, it would be no more than the truth; if we described it as corporeal,
the expression would be equally correct."
The same author says: "There is a substance of a metalline species which
looks so cloudy that the universe will have nothing to do with it. Its visible
form is vile; it defiles metalline bodies, and no one can readily imagine that
the pearly drink of bright Phœbus should spring from thence. Its components

are a most pure and tender mercury, a dry incarcerate sulphur, which binds it
and restrains fluxation.... Know this subject, it is the sure basis of all our
secrets.... To deal plainly, it is the child of Saturn, of mean price and great
venom.... It is not malleable, though metalline. Its colour is sable, with
intermixed argent which mark the sable fields with veins of glittering
argent."
In trying to attach definite meanings to the alchemical accounts of
Principles, Elements, and the One Thing, and the directions which the
alchemists give for changing one substance into others, we are very apt to be
misled by the use of such an expression as the transmutation of the elements.
To a chemist that phrase means the change of an element into another
element, an element being a definite substance, which no one has been able
to produce by the combination of two or more substances unlike itself, or to
separate into two or more substances unlike itself. But whatever may have
been the alchemical meaning of the word element, it was certainly not that
given to the same word to-day. Nor did the word transmutation mean to the
alchemist what it means to the chemist.
The facts which are known at present concerning the elements make
unthinkable such a change as that of lead into silver; but new facts may be
discovered which will make possible the separation of lead into things unlike
itself, and the production of silver by the combination of some of these
constituents of lead. The alchemist supposed he knew such facts as enabled
him not only to form a mental picture of the change of lead into silver, or tin
into gold, but also to assert that such changes must necessarily happen, and
to accomplish them. Although we are quite sure that the alchemist's facts
were only imaginings, we ought not to blame him for his reasoning on what
he took to be facts.
Every metal is now said to be an element, in the modern meaning of that
word: the alchemist regarded the metals as composite substances; but he also
thought of them as more simple than many other things. Hence, if he was
able to transmute one metal into another, he would have strong evidence in
support of his general conception of the unity of all things. And, as
transmutation meant, to the alchemist, the bringing of a substance to the
condition of greatest perfection possible for that substance, his view of the
unity of nature might be said to be proved if he succeeded in changing one

of the metals, one of these comparatively simple substances, into the most
perfect of all metals, that is, into gold.
The transmutation of the baser metals into gold thus came to be the practical
test of the justness of the alchemical scheme of things.
Some alchemists assert they had themselves performed the great
transmutation; others tell of people who had accomplished the work. The
following story is an example of the accounts given of the making of gold. It
is taken from John Frederick Helvetius' Golden Calf, which the world
worships and adores (17th century):—
"On the 27th December 1666, in the forenoon, there came to my house a
certain man, who was a complete stranger to me, but of an honest grave
countenance, and an authoritative mien, clothed in a simple garb.... He was
of middle height, his face was long and slightly pock-marked, his hair was
black and straight, his chin close-shaven, his age about forty-three or forty-
four, and his native province, as far as I could make out, North Holland.
After we had exchanged salutations, he asked me whether he might have
some conversation with me. He wished to say something to me about the
Pyrotechnic Art, as he had read one of my tracts (directed against the
Sympathetic Powder of Dr Digby), in which I hinted a suspicion whether the
Grand Arcanum of the Sages was not after all a gigantic hoax. He, therefore,
took that opportunity of asking me whether I could not believe that such a
grand mystery might exist in the nature of things, by means of which a
physician could restore any patient whose vitals were not irreparably
destroyed. I answered, 'Such a medicine would be a most desirable
acquisition for any physician; nor can any man tell how many secrets there
may be hidden in Nature; yet, though I have read much about the truth of
this art, it has never been my good fortune to meet with a real master of the
alchemical science.' ... After some further conversation, the Artist Elias (for
it was he) thus addressed me: 'Since you have read so much in the works of
the alchemists about this stone, its substance, its colour and its wonderful
effects, may I be allowed the question, whether you have not prepared it
yourself?' On my answering his question in the negative, he took out of his
bag a cunningly-worked ivory box, in which were three large pieces of
substance resembling glass, or pale sulphur, and informed me that here was
enough of the tincture for the production of twenty tons of gold. When I had
held the precious treasure in my hand for a quarter of an hour (during which

time I listened to a recital of its wonderful curative properties), I was
compelled to restore it to its owner, which I could not help doing with a
certain degree of reluctance.... My request that he would give me a piece of
his stone (though it were no larger than a coriander seed), he somewhat
brusquely refused, adding, in a milder tone, that he could not give it me for
all the wealth I possessed, and that not on account of its great preciousness,
but for some other reason which it was not lawful for him to divulge.... Then
he inquired whether I could not show him into a room at the back of the
house, where we should be less liable to the observation of passers-by. On
my conducting him into the state parlour (which he entered without wiping
his dirty boots), he demanded of me a gold coin, and while I was looking for
it, he produced from his breast pocket a green silk handkerchief, in which
were folded up five medals, the gold of which was infinitely superior to that
of my gold piece." Here follows the inscriptions on the medals. "I was filled
with admiration, and asked my visitor whence he had obtained that
wonderful knowledge of the whole world. He replied that it was a gift freely
bestowed on him by a friend who had stayed a few days at his house." Here
follows the stranger's account of this friend's experiments. "When my
strange visitor had concluded his narrative, I besought him to give me a
proof of his assertion, by performing the transmutatory operation on some
metals in my presence. He answered evasively, that he could not do so then,
but that he would return in three weeks, and that, if he was then at liberty to
do so, he would show me something that would make me open my eyes. He
appeared punctually to the promised day, and invited me to take a walk with
him, in the course of which we discoursed profoundly on the secrets of
Nature in fire, though I noticed that my companion was very chary in
imparting information about the Grand Arcanum.... At last I asked him point
blank to show me the transmutation of metals. I besought him to come and
dine with me, and to spend the night at my house; I entreated; I expostulated;
but in vain. He remained firm. I reminded him of his promise. He retorted
that his promise had been conditional upon his being permitted to reveal the
secret to me. At last, however, I prevailed upon him to give me a piece of his
precious stone—a piece no larger than a grain of rape seed.... He bid me take
half an ounce of lead ... and melt it in the crucible; for the Medicine would
certainly not tinge more of the base metal than it was sufficient for.... He
promised to return at nine o'clock the next morning.... But at the stated hour
on the following day he did not make his appearance; in his stead, however,
there came, a few hours later, a stranger, who told me that his friend the

artist was unavoidably detained, but that he would call at three o'clock in the
afternoon. The afternoon came; I waited for him till half-past seven o'clock.
He did not appear. Thereupon my wife came and tempted me to try the
transmutation myself. I determined however to wait till the morrow. On the
morrow ... I asked my wife to put the tincture in wax, and I myself ...
prepared six drachms of lead; I then cast the tincture, enveloped as it was in
wax, on the lead; as soon as it was melted, there was a hissing sound and a
slight effervescence, and after a quarter of an hour I found that the whole
mass of lead had been turned into the finest gold.... We immediately took it
to the goldsmith, who at once declared it the finest gold he had ever seen,
and offered to pay fifty florins an ounce for it." He then describes various
tests which were made to prove the purity of the gold. "Thus I have unfolded
to you the whole story from beginning to end. The gold I still retain in my
possession, but I cannot tell you what has become of the Artist Elias."

CHAPTER VI.
ALCHEMY AS AN EXPERIMENTAL ART.

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

FIG. VI. See p. 90.

FIG. VII. See p. 90.

FIG. VIII. See p. 91.
What kind of experimental evidence could an alchemist furnish in support of
his theory of transmutation? In answering this question, I cannot do better
than give a condensed rendering of certain pages in Hoefer's Histoire de la
Chimie.
The reader is supposed to be present at experiments conducted in the
laboratory of a Grand Master of the Sacred Art in the 5th or 6th century.
Experiment.—Ordinary water is boiled in an open vessel; the water is
changed to a vapour which disappears, and a white powdery earth remains in
the vessel.
Conclusion.—Water is changed into air and earth.

Did we not know that ordinary water holds certain substances in solution,
and that boiling water acts on the vessel wherein it is boiled, we should have
no objection to urge against this conclusion.
It only remained to transmute fire that the transmutation of the four elements
might be completed.
Experiment.—A piece of red-hot iron is placed in a bell-jar, filled with water,
held over a basin containing water; the volume of the water decreases, and
the air in the bell-jar takes fire when a lighted taper is brought into it.
Conclusion.—Water is changed into fire.
That interpretation was perfectly reasonable at a time when the fact was
unknown that water is composed of two gaseous substances; that one of
these (oxygen) is absorbed by the iron, and the other (hydrogen) collects in
the bell-jar, and ignites when brought into contact with a flame.
Experiment.—Lead, or any other metal except gold or silver, is calcined in
the air; the metal loses its characteristic properties, and is changed into a
powdery substance, a kind of cinder or calx. When this cinder, which was
said to be the result of the death of the metal, is heated in a crucible with
some grains of wheat, one sees the metal revive, and resume its original
form and properties.
Conclusion.—The metal which had been destroyed is revivified by the
grains of wheat and the action of fire.
Is this not to perform the miracle of the resurrection?
No objection can he raised to this interpretation, as long as we are ignorant
of the phenomena of oxidation, and the reduction of oxides by means of
carbon, or organic substances rich in carbon, such as sugar, flour, seeds, etc.
Grains of wheat were the symbol of life, and, by extension, of the
resurrection and eternal life.

FIG. IX. See p. 91.
Experiment.—Ordinary lead is calcined in a cupel made of cinders or
powdered bones; the lead is changed to a cinder which disappears into the
cupel, and a button of silver remains.
Conclusion.—The lead has vanished; what more natural than the conclusion
that it has been transformed into silver? It was not known then that all
specimens of lead contain more or less silver.

FIG. X. See p. 92.
Experiment.-The vapour of arsenic bleaches copper. This fact gave rise to
many allegories and enigmas concerning the means of transforming copper
into silver.
Sulphur, which acts on metals and changes many of them into black
substances, was looked on as a very mysterious thing. It was with sulphur
that the coagulation (solidification) of mercury was effected.
Experiment.—Mercury is allowed to fall, in a fine rain, on to melted sulphur;
a black substance is produced; this black substance is heated in a closed

vessel, it is volatilised and transformed into a beautiful red solid.
One could scarcely suppose that the black and the red substances are
identical, if one did not know that they are composed of the same quantities
of the same elements, sulphur and mercury.
How greatly must this phenomenon have affected the imagination of the
chemists of ancient times, always so ready to be affected by everything that
seemed supernatural!
Black and red were the symbols of darkness and light, of the evil and the
good principle; and the union of these two principles represented the moral
order. At a later time the idea helped to establish the alchemical doctrine that
sulphur and mercury are the Principles of all things.
Experiment.—Various organic substances are analysed by heating in a
distillation-apparatus; the products are, in each case, a solid residue, liquids
which distil off, and certain spirits which are disengaged.
The results supported the ancient theory which asserted that earth, water,
air, and fire are the four Elements of the world. The solid residue
represented earth; the liquid products of the distillation, water; and the
spirituous substances, air. Fire was regarded sometimes as the means of
purification, sometimes as the soul, or invisible part, of all substances.
Experiment.-A strong acid is poured on to copper. The metal is attacked, and
at last disappears, giving place to a green liquid, as transparent as water. A
thin sheet of iron is plunged into the liquid; the copper re-appears, and the
iron vanishes.
What more simple than to conclude that the iron has been transformed into
copper?
Had lead, silver, or gold been used in place of copper, one would have said
that the iron was transformed into lead, silver, or gold.
In their search for "the pure and penetrating matter which applied to any
substance exalts and perfects it after its own kind," the alchemists
necessarily made many inventions, laid the foundation of many arts and
manufactures, and discovered many facts of importance in the science of
chemistry.

The practitioners of the Sacred Art of Egypt must have been acquainted with
many operations which we now class as belonging to applied chemistry;
witness, their jewellery, pottery, dyes and pigments, bleaching, glass-
making, working in metals and alloys, and their use of spices, essential oils,
and soda in embalming, and for other purposes.
During the centuries when alchemy flourished, gunpowder was invented, the
art of printing was established, the compass was brought into use, the art of
painting and staining glass was begun and carried to perfection, paper was
made from rags, practical metallurgy advanced by leaps and bounds, many
new alloys of metals came into use, glass mirrors were manufactured, and
considerable advances were made in practical medicine and sanitation.

FIG. XI. See p. 92.
Basil Valentine, who was one of the greatest alchemists of the 16th century,
discovered many of the properties of the metal antimony, and prepared and
examined many compounds of that metal; he made green vitriol from
pyrites, brandy from fermented grape-juice, fulminating gold, sulphide of
potash, and spirits of salt; he made and used baths of artificial mineral
waters, and he prepared various metals by what are now called wet methods,
for instance, copper, by immersing plates of iron in solutions of bluestone.
He examined the air of mines, and suggested practical methods for

determining whether the air in a mine was respirable. Hoefer draws attention
to a remarkable observation recorded by this alchemist. Speaking of the
"spirit of mercury," Basil Valentine says it is "the origin of all the metals;
that spirit is nothing else than an air flying here and there without wings; it is
a moving wind, which, after it has been chased from its home of Vulcan (that
is, fire), returns to the chaos; then it expands and passes into the region of
the air from whence it had come." As Hoefer remarks, this is perhaps one of
the earliest accounts of the gas discovered by Priestley and studied by
Lavoisier, the gas we now call oxygen, and recognise as of paramount
importance in chemical reactions.

FIG. XII. See p. 92.

Besides discovering and recording many facts which have become part and
parcel of the science of chemistry, the alchemists invented and used various
pieces of apparatus, and conducted many operations, which are still
employed in chemical laboratories. I shall reproduce illustrations of some of
these processes and pieces of apparatus, and quote a few of the directions,
given in a book, published in 1664, called The Art of Distillation, by John
French, Dr. in Physick.
The method recommended by French for hermetically sealing the neck of a
glass vessel is shown in Fig. VI. p. 80. The neck of the vessel is surrounded
by a tray containing burning coals; when the glass melts it is cut off by
shears, and then closed by tongs, which are made hot before use.
Fig. VII. p. 81, represents a method for covering an open vessel, air-tight,
with a receptacle into which a substance may be sublimed from the lower
vessel. The lettering explains the method of using the apparatus.
French gives very practical directions and much sound advice for conducting
distillations of various kinds. The following are specimens of his directions
and advice:—
"When you put water into a seething Balneum wherein there are glasses let it
be hot, or else thou wilt endanger the breaking of the glasses.
"When thou takest any earthen, or glass vessel from the fire, expose it not to
the cold aire too suddenly for fear it should break.
"In all your operations diligently observe the processes which you read, and
vary not a little from them, for sometimes a small mistake or neglect spoils
the whole operation, and frustrates your expectations.
"Try not at first experiments of great cost, or great difficulty; for it will be a
great discouragement to thee, and thou wilt be very apt to mistake.
"If any one would enter upon the practices of Chymistry, let him apply
himself to some expert artist for to be instructed in the manual operation of
things; for by this means he will learn more in two months, than he can by
his practice and study in seven years, as also avoid much pains and cost, and
redeem much time which else of necessity he will lose."

Fig. VIII. p. 82, represents a common cold still, and Fig. IX. p. 84, is a
sketch of an apparatus for distilling by the aid of boiling water. The bath
wherein the vessels are placed in Fig. IX. was called by the alchemists
balneum Mariae, from Mary the Jewess, who is mentioned in the older
alchemical writings, and is supposed to have invented an apparatus of this
character. Nothing definite is known of Mary the Jewess. A writer of the 7th
century says she was initiated in the sacred art in the temple of Memphis; a
legend prevailed among some of the alchemists that she was the sister of
Moses.
Fig. X. p. 85, represents methods of distilling with an apparatus for cooling
the volatile products; the lower vessel is an alembic, with a long neck, the
upper part of which passes through a vessel containing cold water.

Fig XIII. See p. 94.
Fig. XI. p. 88, shows a pelican, that is a vessel wherein a liquid might be
heated for a long time, and the volatile products be constantly returned to the
original vessel.
Fig. XII. p. 89, represents a retort with a receiver.
Some of the pieces of apparatus for distilling, which are described by
French, are shown in the following figures. Besides describing apparatus for
distilling, subliming, and other processes in the laboratory, French gives
directions for making tinctures, essences, essential oils, spirits of salt, and
pure saltpetre, oil of vitriol, butter of antimony, calces (or as we now say,

oxides) of metals, and many other substances. He describes processes for
making fresh water from salt, artificial mineral water, medicated hot baths
for invalids (one of the figures represents an apparatus very like those
advertised to-day as "Turkish baths at home"), and artificial precious stones;
he tells how to test minerals, and make alloys, and describes the preparation
of many substances made from gold and silver. He also gives many curious
receipts; for instance, "To make Firre-trees appear in Turpentine," "To make
a Plant grow in two or three hours," "To make the representation of the
whole world in a Glass," "To extract a white Milkie substance from the raies
of the Moon."

FIG. XIV. See p. 94.

The process of making oil of vitriol, by burning sulphur under a hood fitted
with a side tube for the outflow of the oil of vitriol, is represented in Fig.
XIII. p. 92.
Fig. XIV. p. 93, is interesting; it is an apparatus for rectifying spirits, by
distilling, and liquefying only the most volatile portions of the distillate. The
spirituous liquor was heated, and the vapours caused to traverse a long
zigzag tube, wherein the less volatile portions condensed to liquid, which
flowed back into the vessel; the vapour then passed into another vessel, and
then through a second zigzag tube, and was finally cooled by water, and the
condensed liquid collected. This apparatus was the forerunner of that used
to-day, for effecting the separation of liquids which boil at different
temperatures, by the process called fractional distillation.
We should never forget that the alchemists were patient and laborious
workers, their theories were vitally connected with their practice, and there
was a constant action and reaction between their general scheme of things
and many branches of what we now call chemical manufactures. We may
laugh at many of their theories, and regret that much useless material was
accumulated by them; we may agree with Boyle (end of 17th century) when
he likens the "hermetick philosophers," in their search for truth, to "the
navigators of Solomon's Tarshish fleet, who brought home from their long
and tedious voyages, not only gold, and silver, and ivory, but apes and
peacocks too; for so the writings of several of your hermetick philosophers
present us, together with divers substantial and noble experiments, theories,
which either like peacocks' feathers make a great show but are neither solid
nor useful; or else like apes, if they have some appearance of being rational,
are blemished with some absurdity or other, that, when they are attentively
considered make them appear ridiculous." But however we may condemn
their method, because it rested on their own conception of what the order of
nature must be, we cannot but praise their assiduity in conducting
experiments and gathering facts.
As Bacon says, in De Augmentis Scientiarum:
"Alchemy may be compared to the man who told his sons that he had left
them gold buried somewhere in his vineyard; where they by digging found
no gold, but by turning up the mould about the roots of the vines, procured a

plentiful vintage. So the search and endeavours to make gold have brought
many useful inventions and instructive experiments to light."

CHAPTER VII.
THE LANGUAGE OF ALCHEMY

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

"The eleventh key to the knowledge of the augmentation of our Stone I will
put before you in the form of a parable.
"There lived in the East a gilded knight, named Orpheus, who was
possessed of immense wealth, and had everything that heart can wish. He
had taken to wife his own sister, Euridice, who did not, however, bear him
any children. This he regarded as the punishment of his sin in having
wedded his own sister, and was instant in prayer to God both by day and by
night, that the curse might be taken from him. One night when he was
buried in a deep sleep, there came to him a certain winged messenger,
named Phœbus, who touched his feet, which were very hot, and said: 'Thou
noble knight, since thou hast wandered through many cities and kingdoms
and suffered many things at sea, in battle, and in the lists, the heavenly
Father has bidden me make known to thee the following means of obtaining
thy prayer: Take blood from thy right side, and from the left side of thy
spouse. For this blood is the heart's blood of your parents, and though it
may seem to be of two kinds, yet, in reality, it is only one. Mix the two
kinds of blood, and keep the mixture tightly enclosed in the globe of the
seven wise Masters. Then that which is generated will be nourished with its
own flesh and blood, and will complete its course of development when the
Moon has changed for the eighth time. If thou repeat this process again and
again, thou shalt see children's children, and the offspring of thy body shall
fill the world.' When Phœbus had thus spoken, he winged his flight
heavenward. In the morning the knight arose and did the bidding of the
celestial messenger, and God gave to him and to his wife many children,
who inherited their father's glory, wealth, and knightly honours from
generation to generation."
In the "Dedicatory Epistle" to his Triumphal Chariot of Antimony, Basil
Valentine addresses his brother alchemists as follows:—
"Mercury appeared to me in a dream, and brought me back from my
devious courses to the one way. 'Behold me clad not in the garb of the
vulgar, but in the philosopher's mantle.' So he said, and straightway began
to leap along the road in headlong bounds. Then, when he was tired, he sat
down, and, turning to me, who had followed him in the spirit, bade me
mark that he no longer possessed that youthful vigour with which he would

at the first have overcome every obstacle, if he had not been allowed a free
course. Encouraged by his friendly salutation, I addressed him in the
following terms: 'Mercury, eloquent scion of Atlas, and father of all
Alchemists, since thou hast guided me hitherto, shew me, I pray thee, the
way to those Blessed Isles, which thou hast promised to reveal to all thine
elect children. 'Dost thou remember,' he replied, that when I quitted thy
laboratory, I left behind me a garment so thoroughly saturated with my own
blood, that neither the wind could efface it, nor all-devouring time destroy
its indelible essence? Fetch it hither to me, that I may not catch a chill from
the state of perspiration in which I now am; but let me clothe myself
warmly in it, and be closely incited thereto, so that I may safely reach my
bride, who is sick with love. She has meekly borne many wrongs, being
driven through water and fire, and compelled to ascend and descend times
without number—yet has she been carried through it all by the hope of
entering with me the bridal chamber, wherein we expect to beget a son
adorned from his birth with the royal crown which he may not share with
others. Yet may he bring his friends to the palace, where sits enthroned the
King of Kings, who communicates his dignity readily and liberally to all
that approach him.'
"I brought him the garment, and it fitted him so closely, that it looked like
an iron skin securing him against all the assaults of Vulcan. 'Let us proceed,'
he then said, and straightway sped across the open field, while I boldly
strove to keep up with my guide.
"Thus we reached his bride, whose virtue and constancy were equal to his
own. There I beheld their marvellous conjugal union and nuptial
consummation, whence was born the son crowned with the royal diadem.
When I was about to salute him as King of Kings and Lord of Lords, my
Genius stood by me and warned me not to be deceived, since this was only
the King's forerunner, but not the King himself whom I sought.
"When I heard the admonition, I did not know whether to be sad or joyful.
'Depart,' then said Mercury, 'with this bridal gift, and when you come to
those disciples who have seen the Lord himself, show them this sign.' And
therewith he gave me a gold ring from his son's finger. 'They know the
golden branch which must be consecrated to Proserpina before you can
enter the palace of Pluto. When he sees this ring, perhaps one will open to

you with a word the door of that chamber, where sits enthroned in his
magnificence the Desire of all Nations, who is known only to the Sages.'
"When he had thus spoken, the vision vanished, but the bridal gift which I
still held in my hand shewed me that it had not been a mere dream. It was
of gold, but to me more precious than the most prized of all metals. Unto
you I will shew it when I am permitted to see your faces, and to converse
with you freely. Till that earnestly wished-for time, I bid you farewell."
One result of the alchemical modes of expression was, that he who tried to
follow the directions given in alchemical books got into dire confusion. He
did not know what substances to use in his operations; for when he was told
to employ "the homogeneous water of gold," for example, the expression
might mean anything, and in despair he distilled, and calcined, and
cohobated, and tried to decompose everything he could lay hands on. Those
who pretended to know abused and vilified those who differed from them.
In A Demonstration of Nature, by John A. Mehung (17th century), Nature
addresses the alchemical worker in the following words:—
"You break vials, and consume coals, only to soften your brains still more
with the vapours. You also digest alum, salt, orpiment, and altrament; you
melt metals, build small and large furnaces, and use many vessels;
nevertheless I am sick of your folly, and you suffocate me with your
sulphurous smoke.... You would do better to mind your own business, than
to dissolve and distil so many absurd substances, and then to pass them
through alembics, cucurbits, stills, and pelicans."
Henry Madathanas, writing in 1622, says:—
"Then I understood that their purgations, sublimations, cementations,
distillations, rectifications, circulations, putrefactions, conjunctions,
calcinations, incinerations, mortifications, revivifications, as also their
tripods, athanors, reverberatory alembics, excrements of horses, ashes,
sand, stills, pelican-viols, retorts, fixations, etc., are mere plausible
impostures and frauds."
The author of The Only Way (1677) says:

"Surely every true Artist must look on this elaborate tissue of baseless
operations as the merest folly, and can only wonder that the eyes of those
silly dupes are not at last opened, that they may see something besides such
absurd sophisms, and read something besides those stupid and deceitful
books.... I can speak from bitter experience, for I, too, toiled for many years
... and endeavoured to reach the coveted goal by sublimation, distillation,
calcination, circulation, and so forth, and to fashion the Stone out of
substances such as urine, salt, atrament, alum, etc. I have tried hard to
evolve it out of hairs, wine, eggs, bones, and all manner of herbs; out of
arsenic, mercury, and sulphur, and all the minerals and metals.... I have
spent nights and days in dissolving, coagulating, amalgamating, and
precipitating. Yet from all these things I derived neither profit nor joy."
Another writer speaks of many would-be alchemists as "floundering about
in a sea of specious book-learning."
If alchemists could speak of their own processes and materials as those
authors spoke whom I have quoted, we must expect that the alchemical
language would appear mere jargon to the uninitiated. In Ben Jonson's play
The Alchemist, Surley, who is the sceptic of the piece, says to Subtle, who is
the alchemist—

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

Hair o' the head, burnt clout, chalk, merds, and clay,
Powder of bones, scalings of iron, glass,
And moulds of other strange ingredients,
Would burst a man to name?
To which Subtle answers,

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

The alchemists were very fond of using the names of animals as symbols of
certain mineral substances, and of representing operations in the laboratory
by what may be called animal allegories. The yellow lion was the
alchemical symbol of yellow sulphides, the red lion was synonymous with
cinnabar, and the green lion meant salts of iron and of copper. Black
sulphides were called eagles, and sometimes crows. When black sulphide of
mercury is strongly heated, a red sublimate is obtained, which has the same
composition as the black compound; if the temperature is not kept very
high, but little of the red sulphide is produced; the alchemists directed to
urge the fire, "else the black crows will go back to the nest."
The salamander was called the king of animals, because it was supposed
that he lived and delighted in fire; keeping a strong fire alight under a
salamander was sometimes compared to the purification of gold by heating
it.
Fig. XV., reduced from The Book of Lambspring represents this process.

A salamander lives in the fire, which imparts to it a most glorious hue.

This is the reiteration, gradation, and amelioration of the Tincture, or
Philosopher's Stone; and the whole is called its Augmentation.
FIG. XV.
The alchemists employed many signs, or shorthand expressions, in place of
writing the names of substances. The following are a few of the signs which
were used frequently.

Saturn, also lead; Jupiter, also tin; and Mars, also iron;

Sol, also gold; Venus, also copper; , and Mercury;

Luna, also silver; Sulphur; Vitriol; fire; air;

and water; earth; aqua fortis; aqua regis;

aqua vitæ; day; night; Amalgam; Alembic.

CHAPTER VIII.
THE DEGENERACY OF ALCHEMY.

I have tried to show that alchemy aimed at giving experimental proof of a
certain theory of the whole system of nature, including humanity. The
practical culmination of the alchemical quest presented a threefold aspect;
the alchemists sought the stone of wisdom, for by gaining that they gained
the control of wealth; they sought the universal panacea, for that would give
them the power of enjoying wealth and life; they sought the soul of the
world, for thereby they could hold communion with spiritual existences,
and enjoy the fruition of spiritual life.
The object of their search was to satisfy their material needs, their
intellectual capacities, and their spiritual yearnings. The alchemists of the
nobler sort always made the first of these objects subsidiary to the other
two; they gave as their reason for desiring to make gold, the hope that gold
might become so common that it would cease to be sought after by
mankind. The author of An Open Substance says: "Would to God ... all men
might become adepts in our art, for then gold, the common idol of mankind,
would lose its value, and we should prize it only for its scientific teaching."
But the desire to make gold must always have been a very powerful
incentive in determining men to attempt the laborious discipline of
alchemy; and with them, as with all men, the love of money was the root of
much evil. When a man became a student of alchemy merely for the
purpose of making gold, and failed to make it—as he always did—it was
very easy for him to pretend he had succeeded in order that he might really
make gold by cheating other people. Such a man rapidly degenerated into a
charlatan; he used the language of alchemy to cover his frauds, and with the
hope of deluding his dupes by high-sounding phrases. And, it must be
admitted, alchemy lent itself admirably to imposture. It promised unlimited
wealth; it encouraged the wildest dreams of the seeker after pleasure; and
over these dreams it cast the glamour of great ideas, the idea of the unity of
nature, and the idea of communion with other spheres of life, of calling in

the help of 'inheritors of unfulfilled renown,' and so it seemed to touch to
fine issues the sordidness of unblushing avarice.
Moreover, the working with strange ingredients and odd-fashioned
instruments, and the employment of mouth-filling phrases, and scraps of
occult learning which seemed to imply unutterable things, gave just that
pleasing dash of would-be wickedness to the process of consulting the
alchemist which acts as a fascination to many people. The earnest person
felt that by using the skill and knowledge of the alchemists, for what he
deemed a good purpose, he was compelling the powers of evil to work for
him and his objects.
It was impossible that such a system as alchemy should appear to the plain
man of the middle ages, when the whole scheme of life and the universe
rested on a magical basis, to be more than a kind of magic which hovered
between the black magic of the Sorcerer and the white magic of the Church.
Nor is it to be wondered at that a system which lends itself to imposture so
easily as alchemy did, should be thought of by the plain man of modern
times as having been nothing but a machinery of fraud.
It is evident from the Canon's Yeoman's Tale in Chaucer, that many of those
who professed to turn the base metals into gold were held in bad repute as
early as the 14th century. The "false chanoun" persuaded the priest, who
was his dupe, to send his servant for quicksilver, which he promised to
make into "as good silver and as fyn, As ther is any in youre purse or myn";
he then gave the priest a "crosselet," and bid him put it on the fire, and blow
the coals. While the priest was busy with the fire,

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

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

Ye been right hoot, I se wel how ye swete;

Have heer a clooth, and wipe awey the we't.
And whylès that the preest wipèd his face,
This chanoun took his cole with hardè grace,
And leyde it above, upon the middèward
Of the crosselet, and blew wel afterward.
Til that the colès gonnè fastè brenne.
As the coal burned the silver fell into the "crosselet." Then the canon said
they would both go together and fetch chalk, and a pail of water, for he
would pour out the silver he had made in the form of an ingot. They locked
the door, and took the key with them. On returning, the canon formed the
chalk into a mould, and poured the contents of the crucible into it. Then he
bade the priest,

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

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

'What is Magnasia, good sire, I yow preye?'
'It is a water that is maad, I seye,
Of elementés fourè,' quod Plato.
'Telle me the rootè, good sire,' quod he tho,
Of that water, if it be yourè wille.'
'Nay, nay,' quod Plato, 'certein that I nylle;
The philosophres sworn were everychoon
That they sholden discovers it unto noon,

Ne in no book it write in no manere,
For unto Crist it is so lief and deere,
That he wol nat that it discovered bee,
But where it liketh to his deitee
Man for tenspire, and eek for to deffende
Whom that hym liketh; lo, this is the ende.'
The belief in the possibility of alchemy seems to have been general
sometime before Chaucer wrote; but that belief was accompanied by the
conviction that alchemy was an impious pursuit, because the transmutation
of baser metals into gold was regarded as trenching on the prerogative of
the Creator, to whom alone this power rightfully belonged. In his Inferno
(which was probably written about the year 1300), Dante places the
alchemists in the eighth circle of hell, not apparently because they were
fraudulent impostors, but because, as one of them says, "I aped creative
nature by my subtle art."
In later times, some of those who pretended to have the secret and to
perform great wonders by the use of it, became rich and celebrated, and
were much sought after. The most distinguished of these pseudo-alchemists
was he who passed under the name of Cagliostro. His life bears witness to
the eagerness of human beings to be deceived.
Joseph Balsamo was born in 1743 at Palermo, where his parents were
tradespeople in a good way of business.5 In the memoir of himself, which
he wrote in prison, Balsamo seeks to surround his birth and parentage with
mystery; he says, "I am ignorant, not only of my birthplace, but even of the
parents who bore me.... My earliest infancy was passed in the town of
Medina, in Arabia, where I was brought up under the name of Acharat."
When he was thirteen years of age, Balsamo's parents determined he should
be trained for the priesthood, but he ran away from his school. He was then
confined in a Benedictine monastery. He showed a remarkable taste for
natural history, and acquired considerable knowledge of the use of drugs;
but he soon tired of the discipline and escaped. For some years he wandered
about in different parts of Italy, living by his wits and by cheating. A
goldsmith consulted him about a hidden treasure; he pretended to invoke
the aid of spirits, frightened the goldsmith, got sixty ounces of gold from

him to carry on his incantations, left him in the lurch, and fled to Messina.
In that town he discovered an aged aunt who was sick; the aunt died, and
left her money to the Church. Balsamo assumed her family name, added a
title of nobility, and was known henceforward as the Count Alessandro
Cagliostro.
In Messina he met a mysterious person whom he calls Altotas, and from
whom, he says in his Memoir, he learnt much. The following account of the
meeting of Balsamo and the stranger is taken from Waite's book: "As he
was promenading one day near the jetty at the extremity of the port he
encountered an individual singularly habited and possessed of a most
remarkable countenance. This person, aged apparently about fifty years,
seemed to be an Armenian, though, according to other accounts, he was a
Spaniard or Greek. He wore a species of caftan, a silk bonnet, and the
extremities of his breeches were concealed in a pair of wide boots. In his
left hand he held a parasol, and in his right the end of a cord, to which was
attached a graceful Albanian greyhound.... Cagliostro saluted this grotesque
being, who bowed slightly, but with satisfied dignity. 'You do not reside in
Messina, signor?' he said in Sicilian, but with a marked foreign accent.
Cagliostro replied that he was tarrying for a few days, and they began to
converse on the beauty of the town and on its advantageous situation, a kind
of Oriental imagery individualising the eloquence of the stranger, whose
remarks were, moreover, adroitly adorned with a few appropriate
compliments."
Although the stranger said he received no one at his house he allowed
Cagliostro to visit him. After various mysterious doings the two went off to
Egypt, and afterwards to Malta, where they performed many wonderful
deeds before the Grand Master, who was much impressed. At Malta Altotas
died, or, at anyrate, vanished. Cagliostro then travelled for some time, and
was well received by noblemen, ambassadors, and others in high position.
At Rome he fell in love with a young and beautiful lady, Lorenza Feliciani,
and married her.
Cagliostro used his young wife as a decoy to attract rich and foolish men.
He and his wife thrived for a time, and accumulated money and jewels; but
a confederate betrayed them, and they fled to Venice, and then wandered for
several years in Italy, France, and England. They seem to have made a

living by the sale of lotions for the skin, and by practising skilful
deceptions.
About the year 1770 Cagliostro began to pose as an alchemist. After another
period of wandering he paid a second visit to London and founded a secret
society, based on (supposed) Egyptian rites, mingled with those of
freemasonry. The suggestion of this society is said to have come from a
curious book he picked up on a second-hand stall in London. The society
attracted people by the strangeness of its initiatory rites, and the promises of
happiness and wellbeing made by its founder to those who joined it. Lodges
were established in many countries, many disciples were obtained, great
riches were amassed, and Cagliostro flourished exceedingly.
In his Histoire du Merveilleux dans les Temps modernes, Figuier, speaking
of Cagliostro about this period of his career, says:
"He proclaimed himself the bearer of the mysteries of Isis and Anubis from
the far East.... He obtained numerous and distinguished followers, who on
one occasion assembled in great force to hear Joseph Balsamo expound to
them the doctrines of Egyptian freemasonry. At this solemn convention he
is said to have spoken with overpowering eloquence;... his audience
departed in amazement and completely converted to the regenerated and
purified masonry. None doubted that he was an initiate of the arcana of
nature, as preserved in the temple of Apis at the era when Cambyses
belaboured that capricious divinity. From this moment the initiations into
the new masonry were numerous, albeit they were limited to the aristocracy
of society. There are reasons to believe that the grandees who were deemed
worthy of admission paid exceedingly extravagantly for the honour."
Cagliostro posed as a physician, and claimed the power of curing diseases
simply by the laying on of hands. He went so far as to assert he had restored
to life the dead child of a nobleman in Paris; the discovery that the miracle
was effected by substituting a living child for the dead one caused him to
flee, laden with spoil, to Warsaw, and then to Strassburg.
Cagliostro entered Strassburg in state, amid an admiring crowd, who
regarded him as more than human. Rumour said he had amassed vast riches
by the transmutation of base metals into gold. Some people in the crowd
said he was the wandering Jew, others that he had been present at the

marriage feast of Cana, some asserted he was born before the deluge, and
one supposed he might be the devil. The goldsmith whom he had cheated of
sixty ounces of gold many years before was in the crowd, and, recognising
him, tried to stop the carriage, shouting: "Joseph Balsamo! It is Joseph!
Rogue, where are my sixty ounces of gold?" "Cagliostro scarcely deigned to
glance at the furious goldsmith; but in the middle of the profound silence
which the incident occasioned among the crowd, a voice, apparently in the
clouds, uttered with great distinctness the following words: 'Remove this
lunatic, who is possessed by infernal spirits.' Some of the spectators fell on
their knees, others seized the unfortunate goldsmith, and the brilliant
cortege passed on" (Waite).
From Strassburg Cagliostro went to Paris, where he lived in great
splendour, curing diseases, making gold and diamonds, mystifying and
duping people of all ranks by the splendid ritual and gorgeous feasting of
his secret society, and amassing riches. He got entangled in the affair of the
Diamond Necklace, and left Paris. Trying to advance his society in Italy he
was arrested by the agents of the Inquisition, and imprisoned, then tried,
and condemned to death. The sentence was commuted to perpetual
imprisonment. After two years in the prison of San Angelo he died at the
age of fifty.

CHAPTER IX.
PARACELSUS AND SOME OTHER ALCHEMISTS.

The accounts which have come to us of the men who followed the pursuit
of the One Thing are vague, scrappy, and confusing.
Alchemical books abound in quotations from the writings of Geber. Five
hundred treatises were attributed to this man during the middle ages, yet we
have no certain knowledge of his name, or of the time or place of his birth.
Hoefer says he probably lived in the middle of the 8th century, was a native
of Mesopotamia, and was named Djabar Al-Konfi. Waite calls him Abou
Moussah Djafar al-Sofi. Some of the mediæval adepts spoke of him as the
King of India, others called him a Prince of Persia. Most of the Arabian
writers on alchemy and medicine, after the 9th century, refer to Geber as
their master.
All the MSS. of writings attributed to Geber which have been examined are
in Latin, but the library of Leyden is said to possess some works by him
written in Arabic. These MSS. contain directions for preparing many
metals, salts, acids, oils, etc., and for performing such operations as
distillation, cupellation, dissolution, calcination, and the like.
Of the other Arabian alchemists, the most celebrated in the middle ages
were Rhasis, Alfarabi, and Avicenna, who are supposed to have lived in the
9th and 10th centuries.
The following story of Alfarabi's powers is taken from Waite's Lives of the
Alchemystical Philosophers:—
"Alfarabi was returning from a pilgrimage to Mecca, when, passing through
Syria, he stopped at the Court of the Sultan, and entered his presence, while
he was surrounded by numerous sage persons, who were discoursing with
the monarch on the sciences. Alfarabi ... presented himself in his travelling
attire, and when the Sultan desired he should be seated, with astonishing
philosophical freedom he planted himself at the end of the royal sofa. The

Prince, aghast at his boldness, called one of his officers, and in a tongue
generally unknown commanded him to eject the intruder. The philosopher,
however, promptly made answer in the same tongue: 'Oh, Lord, he who acts
hastily is liable to hasty repentance.' The Prince was equally astounded to
find himself understood by the stranger as by the manner in which the reply
was given. Anxious to know more of his guest he began to question him,
and soon discovered that he was acquainted with seventy languages.
Problems for discussion were then propounded to the philosophers, who
had witnessed the discourteous intrusion with considerable indignation and
disgust, but Alfarabi disputed with so much eloquence and vivacity that he
reduced all the doctors to silence, and they began writing down his
discourse. The Sultan then ordered his musicians to perform for the
diversion of the company. When they struck up, the philosopher
accompanied them on a lute with such infinite grace and tenderness that he
elicited the unmeasured admiration of the whole distinguished assembly. At
the request of the Sultan he produced a piece of his own composing, sang it,
and accompanied it with great force and spirit to the delight of all his
hearers. The air was so sprightly that even the gravest philosopher could not
resist dancing, but by another tune he as easily melted them to tears, and
then by a soft unobtrusive melody he lulled the whole company to sleep."
The most remarkable of the alchemists was he who is generally known as
Paracelsus. He was born about 1493, and died about 1540. It is probable
that the place of his birth was Einsiedeln, near Zurich. He claimed
relationship with the noble family of Bombast von Hohenheim; but some of
his biographers doubt whether he really was connected with that family. His
name, or at any rate the name by which he was known, was Aureolus
Philippus Theophrastus Bombast von Hohenheim. His father in alchemy,
Trimethius, Abbot of Spannheim and then of Wurzburg, who was a
theologian, a poet, an astronomer, and a necromancer, named him
Paracelsus; this name is taken by some to be a kind of Græco-Latin
paraphrase of von Hohenheim (of high lineage), and to mean "belonging to
a lofty place"; others say it signifies "greater than Celsus," who was a
celebrated Latin writer on medicine of the 1st century. Paracelsus studied at
the University of Basle; but, getting into trouble with the authorities, he left
the university, and for some years wandered over Europe, supporting
himself, according to one account, by "psalm-singing, astrological

productions, chiromantic soothsaying, and, it has been said, by necromantic
practices." He may have got as far as Constantinople; as a rumour floated
about that he received the Stone of Wisdom from an adept in that city. He
returned to Basle, and in 1527 delivered lectures with the sanction of the
Rector of the university. He made enemies of the physicians by abusing
their custom of seeking knowledge only from ancient writers and not from
nature; he annoyed the apothecaries by calling their tinctures, decoctions,
and extracts, mere soup-messes; and he roused the ire of all learned people
by delivering his lectures in German. He was attacked publicly and also
anonymously. Of the pamphlets published against him he said, "These vile
ribaldries would raise the ire of a turtle-dove." And Paracelsus was no
turtle-dove. The following extract from (a translation of) the preface to The
Book concerning the Tinctures of the Philosophers written against those
Sophists born since the Deluge, shews that his style of writing was abusive,
and his opinion of himself, to say the least, not very humble:—
"From the middle of this age the Monarchy of all the Arts has been at length
derived and conferred on me, Theophrastus Paracelsus, Prince of
Philosophy and Medicine. For this purpose I have been chosen by God to
extinguish and blot out all the phantasies of elaborate and false works, of
delusive and presumptuous words, be they the words of Aristotle, Galen,
Avicenna, Mesva, or the dogmas of any among their followers. My theory,
proceeding as it does from the light of Nature, can never, through its
consistency, pass away or be changed; but in the fifty-eighth year after its
millennium and a half it will then begin to flourish. The practice at the same
time following upon the theory will be proved by wonderful and incredible
signs, so as to be open to mechanics and common people, and they will
thoroughly understand how firm and immovable is that Paracelsic Art
against the triflings of the Sophists; though meanwhile that sophistical
science has to have its ineptitude propped up and fortified by papal and
imperial privileges.... So then, you wormy and lousy Sophist, since you
deem the monarch of Arcana a mere ignorant, fatuous, and prodigal quack,
now, in this mid age, I determine in my present treatise to disclose the
honourable course of procedure in these matters, the virtues and preparation
of the celebrated Tincture of the Philosophers for the use and honour of all
who love the truth, and in order that all who despise the true arts may be
reduced to poverty."

The turbulent and restless spirit of Paracelsus brought him into open
conflict with the authorities of Basle. He fled from that town in 1528, and
after many wanderings, he found rest at Salzburg, under the protection of
the archbishop. He died at Salzburg in 1541, in his forty-eighth year.
The character and abilities of Paracelsus have been vastly praised by some,
and inordinately abused by others. One author says of him: "He lived like a
pig, looked like a drover, found his greatest enjoyment in the company of
the most dissolute and lowest rabble, and throughout his glorious life he
was generally drunk." Another author says: "Probably no physician has
grasped his life's task with a purer enthusiasm, or devoted himself more
faithfully to it, or more fully maintained the moral worthiness of his calling
than did the reformer of Einsiedeln." He certainly seems to have been loved
and respected by his pupils and followers, for he is referred to by them as
"the noble and beloved monarch," "the German Hemes," and "our dear
Preceptor and King of Arts."
There seems no doubt that Paracelsus discovered many facts which became
of great importance in chemistry: he prepared the inflammable gas we now
call hydrogen, by the reaction between iron filings and oil of vitriol; he
distinguished metals from substances which had been classed with metals
but lacked the essential metalline character of ductility; he made medicinal
preparations of mercury, lead and iron, and introduced many new and
powerful drugs, notably laudanum. Paracelsus insisted that medicine is a
branch of chemistry, and that the restoration of the body of a patient to a
condition of chemical equilibrium is the restoration to health.
Paracelsus trusted in his method; he was endeavouring to substitute direct
appeal to nature for appeal to the authority of writers about nature. "After
me," he cries, "you Avicenna, Galen, Rhasis, Montagnana and the others.
You after me, not I after you. You of Paris, you of Montpellier, you of
Swabia, of Meissen and Vienna; you who come from the countries along
the Danube and the Rhine; and you, too, from the Islands of the Ocean.
Follow me. It is not for me to follow you, for mine is the monarchy." But
the work was too arduous, the struggle too unequal. "With few appliances,
with no accurate knowledge, with no help from the work of others, without
polished and sharpened weapons, and without the skill that comes from
long handling of instruments of precision, what could Paracelsus effect in

his struggle to wrest her secrets from nature? Of necessity, he grew weary
of the task, and tried to construct a universe which should be simpler than
that most complex order which refused to yield to his analysis." And so he
came back to the universe which man constructs for himself, and exclaimed
—
"Each man has ... all the wisdom and power of the world in himself; he
possesses one kind of knowledge as much as another, and he who does not
find that which is in him cannot truly say that he does not possess it, but
only that he was not capable of successfully seeking for it."
We leave a great genius, with his own words in our ears: "Have no care of
my misery, reader; let me bear my burden myself. I have two failings: my
poverty and my piety. My poverty was thrown in my face by a Burgomaster
who had perhaps only seen doctors attired in silken robes, never basking in
tattered rags in the sunshine. So it was decreed I was not a doctor. For my
piety I am arraigned by the parsons, for ... I do not at all love those who
teach what they do not themselves practise."

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

The Sacred Art, which had its origin and home in Egypt, was very definitely
associated with the religious rites, and the theological teaching, recognised
by the state. The Egyptian priests were initiated into the mysteries of the
divine art: and as the initiated claimed to imitate the work of the deity, the
priest was regarded by the ordinary people as something more than a
representative, as a mirror, of the divinity. The sacred art of Egypt was
transmuted into alchemy by contact with European thought and handicrafts,
and the tenets and mysticism of the Catholic Church; and the conception of
nature, which was the result of this blending, prevailed from about the 9th
until towards the end of the 18th century.
Like its predecessor, alchemy postulated an orderly universe; but alchemy
was richer in fantastic details, more picturesquely embroidered, more
prodigal of strange fancies, than the sacred art of Egypt.
The alchemist constructed his ordered scheme of nature on the basis of the
supposed universality of life. For him, everything lived, and the life of
things was threefold. The alchemist thought he recognised the manifestation
of life in the form, or body, of a thing, in its soul, and in its spirit. Things
might differ much in appearance, in size, taste, smell, and other outward
properties, and yet be intimately related, because, according to the
alchemist, they were produced from the same principles, they were
animated by the same soul. Things might resemble one another closely in
their outward properties and yet differ widely in essential features, because,
according to the alchemist, they were formed from different elements, in
their spiritual properties they were unlike. The alchemists taught that the
true transformation, in alchemical language the transmutation, of one thing

into another could be effected only by spiritual means acting on the spirit of
the thing, because the transmutation consisted essentially in raising the
substance to the highest perfection whereof it was capable; the result of this
spiritual action might become apparent in the material form of the
substance. In attempting to apply such vague conceptions as these, alchemy
was obliged to use the language which had been developed for the
expression of human emotions and desires, not only for the explanation of
the facts it observed, but also for the bare recital of these facts.
The outlook of alchemy on the world outside human beings was essentially
anthropomorphic. In the image of man, the alchemist created his universe.
In the times when alchemy was dominant, the divine scheme of creation,
and the place given to man in that scheme, were supposed to be thoroughly
understood. Everything had its place, designed for it from the beginning,
and in that place it remained unless it were forced from it by violent means.
A great part of the business of experimental alchemy was to discover the
natural position, or condition, of each substance; and the discovery was to
be made by interpreting the facts brought to light by observation and
experiment by the aid of hypotheses deduced from the general scheme of
things which had been formed independently of observation or experiment.
Alchemy was a part of magic; for magic interprets and corrects the
knowledge gained by the senses by the touchstone of generalisations which
have been supplied, partly by the emotions, and partly by extra-human
authority, and accepted as necessarily true.
The conception of natural order which regulates the life of the savage is
closely related to that which guided the alchemists. The essential features of
both are the notion that everything is alive, and the persuasion that things
can be radically acted on only by using life as a factor. There is also an
intimate connexion between alchemy and witchcraft. Witches were people
who were supposed to make an unlawful use of the powers of life;
alchemists were often thought to pass beyond what is permitted to the
creature, and to encroach on the prerogative of the Creator.
The long duration of alchemy shows that it appealed to some deep-seated
want of human beings. Was not that want the necessity for the realisation of
order in the universe? Men were unwilling to wait until patient examination

of the facts of their own nature, and the facts of nature outside themselves,
might lead them to the realisation of the interdependence of all things. They
found it easier to evolve a scheme of things from a superficial glance at
themselves and their surroundings; naturally they adopted the easier plan.
Alchemy was a part of the plan of nature produced by this method. The
extraordinary dominancy of such a scheme is testified to by the continued
belief in alchemy, although the one experiment, which seems to us to be the
crucial experiment of the system, was never accomplished. But it is also to
be remembered that the alchemists were acquainted with, and practised,
many processes which we should now describe as operations of
manufacturing and technical chemistry; and the practical usefulness of these
processes bore testimony, of the kind which convinces the plain man, to the
justness of their theories.
I have always regarded two facts as most interesting and instructive: that
the doctrine of the essential unity of all things, and the simplicity of natural
order, was accepted for centuries by many, I think one may say, by most
men, as undoubtedly a true presentation of the divine scheme of things; and,
secondly, that in more recent times people were quite as certain of the
necessary truth of the doctrine, the exact opposite of the alchemical, that the
Creator had divided his creation into portions each of which was
independent of all the others. Both of these schemes were formed by the
same method, by introspection preceding observation; both were
overthrown by the same method, by observation and experiment proceeding
hand in hand with reasoning. In each case, the humility of science
vanquished the conceit of ignorance.
The change from alchemy to chemistry is an admirable example of the
change from a theory formed by looking inwards, and then projected on to
external facts, to a theory formed by studying facts, and then thinking about
them. This change proceeded slowly; it is not possible to name a time when
it may be said, here alchemy finishes and chemistry begins. To adapt a
saying of one of the alchemists, quoted in a former chapter; alchemy would
not easily give up its nature, and fought for its life; but an agent was found
strong enough to overcome and kill it, and then that agent also had the
power to change the lifeless remains into a new and pure body. The agent
was the accurate and imaginative investigation of facts.

The first great step taken in the path which led from alchemy to chemistry
was the substitution of one Principle, the Principle of Phlogiston, for the
three Principles of salt, sulphur, and mercury. This step was taken by
concentrating attention and investigation, by replacing the superficial
examination of many diverse phenomena by the more searching study of
one class of occurrences. That the field of study should be widened, it was
necessary that it should first be narrowed.
Lead, tin, iron, or copper is calcined. The prominent and striking feature of
these events is the disappearance of the metal, and the formation of
something very unlike it. But the original metal is restored by a second
process, which is like the first because it also is a calcination, but seems to
differ from the first operation in that the burnt metal is calcined with
another substance, with grains of wheat or powdered charcoal. Led thereto
by their theory that destruction must precede re-vivification, death must
come before resurrection, the alchemists confined their attention to one
feature common to all calcinations of metals, and gave a superficial
description of these occurrences by classing them together as processes of
mortification. Sulphur, wood, wax, oil, and many other things are easily
burned: the alchemists said, these things also undergo mortification, they
too are killed; but, as "man can restore that which man has destroyed," it
must be possible to restore to life the thing which has been mortified. The
burnt sulphur, wood, wax, or oil, is not really dead, the alchemists argued;
to use the allegory of Paracelsus, they are like young lions which are born
dead, and are brought to life by the roaring of their parents: if we make a
sufficiently loud noise, if we use the proper means, we shall bring life into
what seems to be dead material. As it is the roaring of the parents of the
young lions which alone can cause the still-born cubs to live, so it is only
by the spiritual agency of life, proceeded the alchemical argument, that life
can be brought into the mortified sulphur, wood, wax, and oil.
The alchemical explanation was superficial, theoretical, in the wrong
meaning of that word, and unworkable. It was superficial because it
overlooked the fact that the primary calcination, the mortification, of the
metals, and the other substances, was effected in the air, that is to say, in
contact with something different from the thing which was calcined; the
explanation was of the kind which people call theoretical, when they wish
to condemn an explanation and put it out of court, because it was merely a

re-statement of the facts in the language of a theory which had not been
deduced from the facts themselves, or from facts like those to be explained,
but from what were supposed to be facts without proper investigation, and,
if facts, were of a totally different kind from those to which the explanation
applied; and lastly, the explanation was unworkable, because it suggested
no method whereby its accuracy could be tested, no definite line of
investigation which might be pursued.
That great naturalist, the Honourable Robert Boyle (born in 1626, died in
1691), very perseveringly besought those who examined processes of
calcination to pay heed to the action of everything which might take part in
the processes. He was especially desirous they should consider what part
the air might play in calcinations; he spoke of the air as a "menstruum or
additament," and said that, in such operations as calcination, "We may well
take the freedom to examine ... whether there intervene not a coalition of
the parts of the body wrought upon with those of the menstruum, whereby
the produced concrete may be judged to result from the union of both."
It was by examining the part played by the air in processes of calcination
and burning that men at last became able to give approximately complete
descriptions of these processes.
Boyle recognised that the air is not a simple or elementary substance; he
spoke of it as "a confused aggregate of effluviums from such differing
bodies, that, though they all agree in constituting by their minuteness and
various motions one great mass of fluid matter, yet perhaps there is scarce a
more heterogeneous body in the world." Clement of Alexandria who lived
in the end of the 2nd, and the early part of the 3rd, century A.D., seems to
have regarded the air as playing a very important part in combustions; he
said—"Airs are divided into two categories; an air for the divine flame,
which is the soul; and a material air which is the nourisher of sensible fire,
and the basis of combustible matter." Sentences like that I have just quoted
are found here and there in the writings of the earlier and later alchemists;
now and again we also find statements which may be interpreted, in the
light of the fuller knowledge we now have, as indicating at least suspicions
that the atmosphere is a mixture of different kinds of air, and that only some
of these take part in calcining and burning operations. Those suspicions
were confirmed by experiments on the calcination of metals and other

substances, conducted in the 17th century by Jean Rey a French physician,
and by John Mayow of Oxford. But these observations and the conclusions
founded on them, did not bear much fruit until the time of Lavoisier, that is,
towards the close of the 18th century. They were overshadowed and put
aside by the work of Stahl (1660-1724). Some of the alchemists of the 14th,
15th and 16th centuries taught that combustion and calcination are
processes wherein the igneous principle is destroyed, using the word
"destroyed" in its alchemical meaning. This description of processes of
burning was much more in keeping with the ideas of the time than that
given by Boyle, Rey and Mayow. It was adopted by Stahl, and made the
basis of a general theory of those changes wherein one substance disappears
and another, or others, very unlike it, are produced.
That he might bring into one point of view, and compare the various
changes effected by the agency of fire, Stahl invented a new Principle,
which he named Phlogiston, and constructed an hypothesis which is
generally known as the phlogistic theory. He explained, and applied, this
hypothesis in various books, especially in one published at Halle in 1717.
Stahl observed that many substances which differed much from one another
in various respects were alike in one respect; they were all combustible. All
the combustible substances, he argued, must contain a common principle;
he named this supposed principle, phlogiston (from the Greek word
phlogistos = burnt, or set on fire). Stahl said that the phlogiston of a
combustible thing escapes as the substance burns, and, becoming apparent
to the senses, is named fire or flame. The phlogiston in a combustible
substance was supposed to be so intimately associated with something else
that our senses cannot perceive it; nevertheless, the theory said, it is there;
we can see only the escaping phlogiston, we can perceive only the
phlogiston which is set free from its combination with other things. The
theory thought of phlogiston as imprisoned in the thing which can be burnt,
and as itself forming part of the prison; that the prisoner should be set free,
the walls of the prison had to be removed; the freeing of the prisoner
destroyed the prison. As escaping, or free, phlogiston was called fire, or
flame, so the phlogiston in a combustible substance was sometimes called
combined fire, or flame in the state of combination. A peculiarity of the
strange thing called phlogiston was that it preferred to be concealed in

something, hidden, imprisoned, combined; free phlogiston was supposed to
be always ready to become combined phlogiston.
The phlogistic theory said that what remains when a substance has been
burnt is the original substance deprived of phlogiston; and, therefore, to
restore the phlogiston to the product of burning is to re-form the
combustible substance. But how is such a restoration of phlogiston to be
accomplished? Evidently by heating the burnt thing with something which
is very ready to burn. Because, according to the theory, everything which
can be burnt contains phlogiston, the more ready a substance is to burn the
richer it is in phlogiston; burning is the outrush of phlogiston, phlogiston
prefers to be combined with something; therefore, if you mix what remains
after burning, with something which is very combustible, and heat the
mixture, you are bringing the burnt matter under conditions which are very
favourable for the reception of phlogiston by it, for you are bringing it into
intimate contact with something from which freedom-hating phlogiston is
being forced to escape.
Charcoal, sulphur, phosphorus, oils and fats are easily burnt; these
substances were, therefore, chosen for the purpose of changing things
which had been burnt into things which could again be burnt; these, and a
few other substances like these, were classed together, and called
phlogisticating agents.
Very many of the substances which were dealt with by the experimenters of
the last quarter of the 17th, and the first half of the 18th, century, were
either substances which could be burned, or those which had been produced
by burning; hence the phlogistic theory brought into one point of view,
compared, and emphasised the similarities between, a great many things
which had not been thought of as connected before that theory was
promulgated. Moreover, the theory asserted that all combustible, or
incinerable, things are composed of phlogiston, and another principle, or, as
was often said, another element, which is different in different kinds of
combustible substances. The metals, for instance, were said to be composed
of phlogiston and an earthy principle or element, which was somewhat
different in different metals. The phlogisteans taught that the earthy
principle of a metal remains in the form of ash, cinders, or calx, when the

metal is calcined, or, as they expressed it, when the metal is deprived of its
phlogiston.
The phlogistic theory savoured of alchemy; it postulated an undefined,
undefinable, intangible Principle; it said that all combustible substances are
formed by the union of this Principle with another, which is sometimes of
an earthy character, sometimes of a fatty nature, sometimes highly volatile
in habit. Nevertheless, the theory of Stahl was a step away from purely
alchemical conceptions towards the accurate description of a very important
class of changes. The principle of phlogiston could be recognised by the
senses as it was in the act of escaping from a substance; and the other
principle of combustible things was scarcely a Principle in the alchemical
sense, for, in the case of metals at any rate, it remained when the things
which had contained it were burnt, and could be seen, handled, and
weighed. To say that metals are composed of phlogiston and an earthy
substance, was to express facts in such a language that the expression might
be made the basis of experimental inquiry; it was very different from the
assertion that metals are produced by the spiritual actions of the three
Principles, salt, mercury and sulphur, the first of which is not salt, the
second is not mercury, and the third is not sulphur. The followers of Stahl
often spoke of metals as composed of phlogiston and an element of an
earthy character; this expression also was an advance, from the hazy notion
of Element in purely alchemical writings, towards accuracy and fulness of
description. An element was now something which could he seen and
experimented with; it was no longer a semi-spiritual existence which could
not be grasped by the senses.
The phlogistic theory regarded the calcination of a metal as the separation
of it into two things, unlike the metal, and unlike each other; one of these
things was phlogiston, the other was an earth-like residue. The theory
thought of the re-formation of a metal from its calx, that is, the earthy
substance which remains after combustion, as the combination of two
things to produce one, apparently homogeneous, substance. Metals
appeared to the phlogisteans, as they appeared to the alchemists, to be
composite substances. Processes of burning were regarded by alchemists
and phlogisteans alike, as processes of simplification.

The fact had been noticed and recorded, during the middle ages, that the
earth-like matter which remains when a metal is calcined is heavier than the
metal itself. From this fact, modern investigators of natural phenomena
would draw the conclusion, that calcination of a metal is an addition of
something to the metal, not a separation of the metal into different things. It
seems impossible to us that a substance should be separated into portions,
and one of these parts should weigh as much as, or more than, the whole.
The exact investigation of material changes called chemistry rests on the
statement that mass, and mass is practically measured by weight, is the one
property of what we call matter, the determination whereof enables us to
decide whether a change is a combination, or coalescence, of different
things, or a separation of one thing into parts. That any part of a material
system can be removed without the weight of the portion which remains
being less than the original weight of the whole system, is unthinkable, in
the present state of our knowledge of material changes.
But in the 17th century, and throughout most of the 18th, only a few of
those who examined changes in the properties of substances paid heed to
changes of weight; they had not realised the importance of the property of
mass, as measured by weight. The convinced upholder of the phlogistic
theory had two answers to the argument, that, because the earth-like product
of the calcination of a metal weighs more than the metal itself, therefore the
metal cannot have lost something in the process; for, if one portion of what
is taken away weighs more than the metal from which it has been separated,
it is evident that the weight of the two portions into which the metal is said
to have been divided must be considerably greater than the weight of the
undivided metal. The upholders of the theory sometimes met the argument
by saying, "Of course the calx weighs more than the metal, because
phlogiston tends to lighten a body which contains it; and therefore the body
weighs more after it has lost phlogiston than it did when the phlogiston
formed part of it;" sometimes, and more often, their answer was—"loss or
gain of weight is an accident, the essential thing is change of qualities."
If the argument against the separation of a metal into two constituents, by
calcination, were answered to-day as it was answered by the upholders of
the phlogistic theory, in the middle of the 18th century, the answers would
justly be considered inconsequent and ridiculous. But it does not follow that

the statements were either far-fetched or absurd at the time they were made.
They were expressed in the phraseology of the time; a phraseology, it is
true, sadly lacking in consistency, clearness, and appropriateness, but the
only language then available for the description of such changes as those
which happen when metals are calcined. One might suppose that it must
always have sounded ridiculous to say that the weight of a thing can be
decreased by adding something to it, that part of a thing weighs more than
the whole of it. But the absurdity disappears if it can be admitted that mass,
which is measured by weight, may be a property like colour, or taste, or
smell; for the colour, taste, or smell of a thing may certainly be made less
by adding something else, and the colour, taste, or smell of a thing may also
be increased by adding something else. If we did not know that what we
call quantity of substance is measured by the property named mass, we
might very well accept the proposition that the entrance of phlogiston into a
substance decreases the quantity, hence the mass, and, therefore, the weight,
of the substance.
Although Stahl and his followers were emerging from the trammels of
alchemy, they were still bound by many of the conceptions of that scheme
of nature. We have learned, in previous chapters, that the central idea of
alchemy was expressed in the saying: "Matter must be deprived of its
properties in order to draw out its soul." The properties of substances are
everything to the modern chemist—indeed, such words as iron, copper,
water, and gold are to him merely convenient expressions for certain
definable groups of properties—but the phlogisteans regarded the properties
of things, including mass, as of secondary importance; they were still trying
to get beneath the properties of a thing, to its hypothetical essence, or
substance.
Looking back, we cannot think of phlogiston as a substance, or as a thing,
in the modern meanings of these terms as they are used in natural science.
Nowadays we think, we are obliged to think, of the sum of the quantities of
all the things in the universe as unchanging, and unchangeable by any
agency whereof we have definite knowledge. The meaning we give to the
word thing rests upon the acceptance of this hypothesis. But the terms
substance, thing, properties were used very vaguely a couple of centuries
ago; and it would be truly absurd to carry back to that time the meanings
which we give to these terms to-day, and then to brand as ridiculous the

attempts of the men who studied, then, the same problems which we study
now, to express the results of their study in generalisations which employed
the terms in question, in what seems to us a loose, vague, and inexact
manner.
By asserting, and to some extent experimentally proving, the existence of
one principle in many apparently very different substances (or, as would be
said to-day, one property common to many substances), the phlogistic
theory acted as a very useful means for collecting, and placing in a
favourable position for closer inspection, many substances which would
probably have remained scattered and detached from one another had this
theory not been constructed. A single assumption was made, that all
combustible substances are alike in one respect, namely, in containing
combined fire, or phlogiston; by the help of this assumption, the theory of
phlogiston emphasised the fundamental similarity between all processes of
combustion. The theory of phlogiston was extraordinarily simple, compared
with the alchemical vagaries which preceded it. Hoefer says, in his Histoire
de la Chimie, "If it is true that simplicity is the distinctive character of
verity, never was a theory so true as that of Stahl."
The phlogistic theory did more than serve as a means for bringing together
many apparently disconnected facts. By concentrating the attention of the
students of material changes on one class of events, and giving descriptions
of these events without using either of the four alchemical Elements, or the
three Principles, Stahl, and those who followed him, did an immense
service to the advancement of clear thinking about natural occurrences. The
principle of phlogiston was more tangible, and more readily used, than the
Salt, Sulphur, and Mercury of the alchemists; and to accustom people to
speak of the material substance which remained when a metal, or other
combustible substance, was calcined or burnt, as one of the elements of the
thing which had been changed, prepared the way for the chemical
conception of an element as a definite substance with certain definite
properties.
In addition to these advantages, the phlogistic theory was based on
experiments, and led to experiments, the results of which proved that the
capacity to undergo combustion might be conveyed to an incombustible
substance, by causing it to react with some other substance, itself

combustible, under definite conditions. The theory thus prepared the way
for the representation of a chemical change as an interaction between
definite kinds of substances, marked by precise alterations both of
properties and composition.
The great fault of the theory of phlogiston, considered as a general
conception which brings many facts into one point of view, and leads the
way to new and exact knowledge, was its looseness, its flexibility. It was
very easy to make use of the theory in a broad and general way; by
stretching it here, and modifying it there, it seemed to cover all the facts
concerning combustion and calcination which were discovered during two
generations after the publication of Stahl's books. But many of the
subsidiary hypotheses which were required to make the theory cover the
new facts were contradictory, or at any rate seemed to be contradictory, of
the primary assumptions of the theory. The addition of this ancillary
machinery burdened the mechanism of the theory, threw it out of order, and
finally made it unworkable. The phlogistic theory was destroyed by its own
cumbersomeness.
A scientific theory never lasts long if its fundamental assumptions are stated
so loosely that they may be easily modified, expanded, contracted, and
adjusted to meet the requirements of newly discovered facts. It is true that
the theories which have been of the greatest service in science, as
summaries of the relations between established facts, and suggestions of
lines of investigation, have been stated in terms whose full meaning has
gradually unfolded itself. But the foundations of these theories have been at
once so rigidly defined and clearly stated as to be incapable of essential
modification, and so full of meaning and widely applicable as to cover large
classes of facts which were unknown when the theories were constructed.
Of the founders of the lasting and expansible theories of natural science, it
may be said, that "thoughts beyond their thoughts to those high bards were
given."

CHAPTER XI.
THE EXAMINATION OF THE PHENOMENA OF
COMBUSTION.

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

only way of discovering what the action of fire is, on this substance or on
that, is to make accurate experiments. "I consider," he says, "that, generally
speaking, to render a reason of an effect or phenomenon, is to deduce it
from something else in nature more known than itself; and that
consequently there may be divers kinds of degrees of explication of the
same thing."
Boyle published his experiments and opinions concerning the action of fire
on different substances in the seventies of the 17th century; Stahl's books,
which laid the foundation of the phlogistic theory, and confirmed the
alchemical opinion that the action of fire is essentially a simplifying action,
were published about forty years later. But fifty years before Boyle, a
French physician, named Jean Rey, had noticed that the calcination of a
metal is the production of a more complex, from a less complex substance;
and had assigned the increase in weight which accompanies that operation
to the attachment of particles of the air to the metal. A few years before the
publication of Boyle's work, from which I have quoted, John Mayow,
student of Oxford, recounted experiments which led to the conclusion that
the air contains two substances, one of which supports combustion and the
breathing of animals, while the other extinguishes fire. Mayow called the
active component of the atmosphere fiery air; but he was unable to say
definitely what becomes of this fiery air when a substance is burnt, although
he thought that, in some cases, it probably attaches itself to the burning
substances, by which, therefore, it may be said to be fixed. Mayow proved
that the air wherein a substance is burnt, or an animal breathes, diminishes
in volume during the burning, or the breathing. He tried, without much
success, to restore to air that part of it which disappears when combustion,
or respiration, proceeds in it.
What happens when a substance is burnt in the air? The alchemists
answered this question by asserting that the substance is separated or
analysed into things simpler than itself. Boyle said: the process is not
necessarily a simplification; it may be, and certainly sometimes is, the
formation of something more complicated than the original substance, and
when this happens, the process often consists in the fixation of "the matter
of fire" by the burning substance. Rey said: calcination, of a metal at
anyrate, probably consists in the fixation of particles of air by the substance
which is calcined. Mayow answered the question by asserting, on the

ground of the results of his experiments, that the substance which is being
calcined lays hold of a particular constituent of the air, not the air as a
whole.
Now, it is evident that if Mayow's answer was a true description of the
process of calcination, or combustion, it should be possible to separate the
calcined substance into two different things, one of which would be the
thing which was calcined, and the other would be that constituent of the air
which had united with the burning, or calcining, substance. It seems clear to
us that the one method of proving the accuracy of Mayow's supposition
must be, to weigh a definite, combustible, substance—say, a metal; to
calcine this in a measured quantity of air; to weigh the product, and to
measure the quantity of air which remains; to separate the product of
calcination into the original metal, and a kind of air or gas; to prove that the
metal thus obtained is the same, and has the same weight, as the metal
which was calcined; and to prove that the air or gas obtained from the
calcined metal is the same, both in quality and quantity, as the air which
disappeared in the process of calcination.
This proof was not forthcoming until about a century after the publication
of Mayow's work. The experiments which furnished the proof were
rendered possible by a notable discovery made on the 1st of August 1774,
by the celebrated Joseph Priestley.
Priestley prepared many "airs" of different kinds: by the actions of acids on
metals, by allowing vegetables to decay, by heating beef, mutton, and other
animal substances, and by other methods. He says: "Having procured a lens
of twelve inches diameter and twenty inches focal distance, I proceeded
with great alacrity to examine, by the help of it, what kind of air a great
variety of substances, natural and factitious, would yield.... With this
apparatus, after a variety of other experiments.... on the 1st of August, 1774,
I endeavoured to extract air from mercurius calcinatus per se; and I
presently found that, by means of this lens, air was expelled from it very
readily. Having got about three or four times as much as the bulk of my
materials, I admitted water to it, and found that it was not imbibed by it. But
what surprised me more than I can well express was, that a candle burned in
this air with a remarkably vigorous flame.... I was utterly at a loss how to
account for it."

FIG. XVI.
The apparatus used by Priestley, in his experiments on different kinds of air,
is represented in Fig. XVI., which is reduced from an illustration in
Priestley's book on Airs.
Priestley had made a discovery which was destined to change Alchemy into
Chemistry. But he did not know what his discovery meant. It was reserved
for the greatest of all chemists, Antoine Lavoisier, to use the fact stumbled
on by Priestley.
After some months Priestley began to think it possible that the new "air" he
had obtained from calcined mercury might be fit for respiration. To his
surprise he found that a mouse lived in this air much longer than in
common air; the new air was evidently better, or purer, than ordinary air.
Priestley measured what he called the "goodness" of the new air, by a

process of his own devising, and concluded that it was "between four and
five times as good as common air."
Priestley was a thorough-going phlogistean. He seems to have been able to
describe the results of his experiments only in the language of the phlogistic
theory; just as the results of most of the experiments made to-day on the
changes of compounds of the element carbon cannot be described by
chemists except by making use of the conceptions and the language of the
atomic and molecular theory.6
The upholder of the phlogistic theory could not think of burning as possible
unless there was a suitable receptacle for the phlogiston of the burning
substance: when burning occurred in the air, the part played by the air,
according to the phlogistic chemist, was to receive the expelled phlogiston;
in this sense the air acted as the pabulum, or nourishment, of the burning
substance. Inasmuch as substances burned more vigorously and brilliantly
in the new air than in common air, Priestley argued that the new air was
more ready, more eager, than ordinary air, to receive phlogiston; and,
therefore, that the new air contained less phlogiston than ordinary air, or,
perhaps, no phlogiston. Arguing thus, Priestley, of course, named the new
aeriform substance dephlogisticated air, and thought of it as ordinary air
deprived of some, or it might be all, of its phlogiston.
The breathing of animals and the burning of substances were supposed to
load the atmosphere with phlogiston. Priestley spoke of the atmosphere as
being constantly "vitiated," "rendered noxious," "depraved," or "corrupted"
by processes of respiration and combustion; he called those processes
whereby the atmosphere is restored to its original condition (or "depurated,"
as he said), "dephlogisticating processes." As he had obtained his
dephlogisticated air by heating the calx of mercury, that is the powder
produced by calcining mercury in the air, Priestley was forced to suppose
that the calcination of mercury in the air must be a more complex
occurrence than merely the expulsion of phlogiston from the mercury: for,
if the process consisted only in the expulsion of phlogiston, how could
heating what remained produce exceedingly pure ordinary air? It seemed
necessary to suppose that not only was phlogiston expelled from mercury
during calcination, but that the mercury also imbibed some portion, and that
the purest portion, of the surrounding air. Priestley did not, however, go so

far as this; he was content to suppose that in some way, which he did not
explain, the process of calcination resulted in the loss of phlogiston by the
mercury, and the gain, by the dephlogisticated mercury, of the property of
yielding exceedingly pure or dephlogisticated air when it was heated very
strongly.
Priestley thought of properties in much the same way as the alchemists
thought of them, as wrappings, or coverings of an essential something, from
which they can be removed and around which they can again be placed. The
protean principle of phlogiston was always at hand, and, by skilful
management, was ready to adapt itself to any facts. Before the phenomena
of combustion could be described accurately, it was necessary to do two
things; to ignore the theory of phlogiston, and to weigh and measure all the
substances which take part in some selected processes of burning.
Looking back at the attempts made in the past to describe natural events, we
are often inclined to exclaim, "Why did investigators bind themselves with
the cords of absurd theories; why did they always wear blinkers; why did
they look at nature through the distorting mists rising from their own
imaginations?" We are too ready to forget the tremendous difficulties which
beset the path of him who is seeking accurate knowledge.
"To climb steep hills requires slow pace at first."
Forgetting that the statements wherein the men of science of our own time
describe the relations between natural events are, and must be, expressed in
terms of some general conception, some theory, of these relations;
forgetting that the simplest natural occurrence is so complicated that our
powers of description are incapable of expressing it completely and
accurately; forgetting the uselessness of disconnected facts; we are inclined
to overestimate the importance of our own views of nature's ways, and to
underestimate the usefulness of the views of our predecessors. Moreover, as
naturalists have not been obliged, in recent times, to make a complete
renunciation of any comprehensive theory wherein they had lived and
moved for many years, we forget the difficulties of breaking loose from a
way of looking at natural events which has become almost as real as the
events themselves, of abandoning a language which has expressed the most
vividly realised conceptions of generations of investigators, of forming a

completely new mental picture of natural occurrences, and developing a
completely new language for the expression of those conceptions and these
occurrences.
The younger students of natural science of to-day are beginning to forget
what their fathers told them of the fierce battle which had to be fought,
before the upholders of the Darwinian theory of the origin of species were
able to convince those for whom the older view, that species are, and
always have been, absolutely distinct, had become a matter of supreme
scientific, and even ethical, importance.
A theory which has prevailed for generations in natural science, and has
been accepted and used by everyone, can be replaced by a more accurate
description of the relations between natural facts, only by the determination,
labour, and genius of a man of supreme power. Such a service to science,
and humanity, was rendered by Darwin; a like service was done, more than
three-quarters of a century before Darwin, by Lavoisier.
Antoine Laurent Lavoisier was born in Paris in 1743. His father, who was a
merchant in a good position, gave his son the best education which was
then possible, in physical, astronomical, botanical, and chemical science. At
the age of twenty-one, Lavoisier gained the prize offered by the
Government for devising an effective and economical method of lighting
the public streets. From that time until, on the 8th of May 1794, the
Government of the Revolution declared, "The Republic has no need of men
of science," and the guillotine ended his life, Lavoisier continued his
researches in chemistry, geology, physics, and other branches of natural
science, and his investigations into the most suitable methods of using the
knowledge gained by naturalists for advancing the welfare of the
community.
In Chapter VI., I said that when an alchemist boiled water in an open vessel,
and obtained a white earthy solid, in place of the water which disappeared,
he was producing some sort of experimental proof of the justness of his
assertion that water can be changed into earth. Lavoisier began his work on
the transformations of matter by demonstrating that this alleged
transmutation does not happen; and he did this by weighing the water, the
vessel, and the earthy solid.

Lavoisier had constructed for him a pelican of white glass (see Fig. XI., p.
88), with a stopper of glass. He cleaned, dried, and weighed this vessel;
then he put into it rain-water which he had distilled eight times; he heated
the vessel, removing the stopper from time to time to allow the expanding
air to escape, then put in the stopper, allowed the vessel to cool, and
weighed very carefully. The difference between the second and the first
weighing was the weight of water in the vessel. He then fastened the
stopper securely with cement, and kept the apparatus at a temperature about
30° or 40° below that of boiling water, for a hundred and one days. At the
end of that time a fine white solid had collected on the bottom of the vessel.
Lavoisier removed the cement from the stopper, and weighed the apparatus;
the weight was the same as it had been before the heating began. He
removed the stopper; air rushed in, with a hissing noise. Lavoisier
concluded that air had not penetrated through the apparatus during the
process of heating. He then poured out the water, and the solid which had
formed in the vessel, set them aside, dried, and weighed the pelican; it had
lost 17-4/10 grains. Lavoisier concluded that the solid which had formed in
the water was produced by the solvent action of the water on the glass
vessel. He argued that if this conclusion was correct, the weight of the solid
must be equal to the loss of weight suffered by the vessel; he therefore
separated the solid from the water in which it was suspended, dried, and
weighed it. The solid weighed 4-9/10 grains. Lavoisier's conclusion seemed
to be incorrect; the weight of the solid, which was supposed to be produced
by the action of the water on the vessel, was 12 1/2 grains less than the
weight of the material removed from the vessel. But some of the material
which was removed from the vessel might have remained dissolved in the
water: Lavoisier distilled the water, which he had separated from the solid,
in a glass vessel, until only a very little remained in the distilling apparatus;
he poured this small quantity into a glass basin, and boiled until the whole
of the water had disappeared as steam. There remained a white, earthy
solid, the weight of which was 15 1/2 grains. Lavoisier had obtained 4 9/10
+ 15 1/2 = 20 2/5 grains of solid; the pelican had lost 17 2/5 grains. The
difference between these weights, namely, 3 grains, was accounted for by
Lavoisier as due to the solvent action of the water on the glass apparatus
wherein it had been distilled, and on the glass basin wherein it had been
evaporated to dryness.

Lavoisier's experiments proved that when distilled water is heated in a glass
vessel, it dissolves some of the material of the vessel, and the white, earthy
solid which is obtained by boiling down the water is merely the material
which has been removed from the glass vessel. His experiments also proved
that the water does not undergo any change during the process; that at the
end of the operation it is what it was at the beginning—water, and nothing
but water.
By this investigation Lavoisier destroyed part of the experimental basis of
alchemy, and established the one and only method by which chemical
changes can be investigated; the method wherein constant use is made of
the balance.
Lavoisier now turned his attention to the calcination of metals, and
particularly the calcination of tin. Boyle supposed that the increase in
weight which accompanies the calcination of a metal is due to the fixation
of "matter of fire" by the calcining metal; Rey regarded the increase in
weight as the result of the combination of the air with the metal; Mayow
thought that the atmosphere contains two different kinds of "airs," and one
of these unites with the heated metal. Lavoisier proposed to test these
suppositions by calcining a weighed quantity of tin in a closed glass vessel,
which had been weighed before, and should be weighed after, the
calcination. If Boyle's view was correct, the weight of the vessel and the tin
would be greater at the end than it was at the beginning of the operation; for
"matter of fire" would pass through the vessel and unite with the metal. If
there was no change in the total weight of the apparatus and its contents,
and if air rushed in when the vessel was opened after the calcination, and
the total weight was then greater than at the beginning of the process, it
would be necessary to adopt either the supposition of Rey or that of
Mayow.
Lavoisier made a series of experiments. The results were these: there was
no change in the total weight of the apparatus and its contents; when the
vessel was opened after the calcination was finished, air rushed in, and the
whole apparatus now weighed more than it did before the vessel was
opened; the weight of the air which rushed in was exactly equal to the
increase in the weight of the tin produced by the calcination, in other words,
the weight of the inrushing air was exactly equal to the difference between

the weights of the tin and the calx formed by calcining the tin. Lavoisier
concluded that to calcine tin is to cause it to combine with a portion of the
air wherein it is calcined. The weighings he made showed that about one-
fifth of the whole weight of air in the closed flask wherein he calcined tin
had disappeared during the operation.
Other experiments led Lavoisier to suspect that the portion of the air which
had united with the tin was different from the portion which had not
combined with that metal. He, therefore, set himself to discover whether
there are different kinds of "airs" in the atmosphere, and, if there is more
than one kind of "air," what is the nature of that "air" which combines with
a metal in the process of calcination. He proposed to cause a metallic calx
(that is, the substance formed by calcining a metal in the air) to give up the
"air" which had been absorbed in its formation, and to compare this "air"
with atmospheric air.
About this time Priestley visited Paris, saw Lavoisier, and told him of the
new "air" he had obtained by heating calcined mercury. Lavoisier saw the
great importance of Priestley's discovery; he repeated Priestley's
experiment, and concluded that the air, or gas, which he refers to in his
Laboratory Journal as "l'air dephlogistique de M. Priestley" was nothing
else than the purest portion of the air we breathe. He prepared this "air" and
burned various substances in it. Finding that very many of the products of
these combustions had the properties of acids, he gave to the new "air" the
name oxygen, which means the acid-producer.
At a later time, Lavoisier devised and conducted an experiment which laid
bare the change of composition that happens when mercury is calcined in
the air. He calcined a weighed quantity of mercury for many days in a
measured volume of air, in an apparatus arranged so that he was able to
determine how much of the air disappeared during the process; he collected
and weighed the red solid which formed on the surface of the heated
mercury; finally he heated this red solid to a high temperature, collected and
measured the gas which was given off, and weighed the mercury which was
produced. The sum of the weights of the mercury and the gas which were
produced by heating the calcined mercury was equal to the weight of the
calcined mercury; and the weight of the gas produced by heating the
calcined mercury was equal to the weight of the portion of the air which

had disappeared during the formation of the calcined mercury. This
experiment proved that the calcination of mercury in the air consists in the
combination of a constituent of the air with the mercury. Fig. XVII.
(reduced from an illustration in Lavoisier's Memoir) represents the
apparatus used by Lavoisier. Mayow's supposition was confirmed.

FIG. XVII.
Lavoisier made many more experiments on combustion, and proved that in
every case the component of the atmosphere which he had named oxygen
combined with the substance, or with some part of the substance, which
was burned. By these experiments the theory of Phlogiston was destroyed;
and with its destruction, the whole alchemical apparatus of Principles and
Elements, Essences and Qualities, Souls and Spirits, disappeared.

CHAPTER XII.
THE RECOGNITION OF CHEMICAL CHANGES AS THE
INTERACTIONS OF DEFINITE SUBSTANCES.

The experimental study of combustion made by Lavoisier proved the
correctness of that part of Stahl's phlogistic theory which asserted that all
processes of combustion are very similar, but also proved that this likeness
consists in the combination of a distinct gaseous substance with the material
undergoing combustion, and not in the escape therefrom of the Principle of
fire, as asserted by the theory of Stahl. After about the year 1790, it was
necessary to think of combustions in the air as combinations of a particular
gas, or air, with the burning substances, or some portions of them.
This description of processes of burning necessarily led to a comparison of
the gaseous constituent of the atmosphere which played so important a part
in these processes, with the substances which were burned; it led to the
examination of the compositions of many substances, and made it necessary
to devise a language whereby these compositions could be stated clearly
and consistently.
We have seen, in former chapters, the extreme haziness of the alchemical
views of composition, and the connexions between composition and
properties. Although Boyle7 had stated very lucidly what he meant by the
composition of a definite substance, about a century before Lavoisier's work
on combustion, nevertheless the views of chemists concerning composition
remained very vague and incapable of definite expression, until the
experimental investigations of Lavoisier enabled him to form a clear mental
picture of chemical changes as interactions between definite quantities of
distinct substances.
Let us consider some of the work of Lavoisier in this direction. I select his
experimental examination of the interactions of metals and acids.

Many experimenters had noticed that gases (or airs, as they were called up
till near the end of the 18th century) are generally produced when metals
are dissolving in acids. Most of those who noticed this said that the gases
came from the dissolving metals; Lavoisier said they were produced by the
decomposition of the acids. In order to study the interaction of nitric acid
and mercury, Lavoisier caused a weighed quantity of the metal to react with
a weighed quantity of the acid, and collected the gas which was produced;
when all the metal had dissolved, he evaporated the liquid until a white
solid was obtained; he heated this solid until it was changed to the red
substance called, at that time, red precipitate, and collected the gas
produced. Finally, Lavoisier strongly heated the red precipitate; it changed
to a gas, which he collected, and mercury, which he weighed.
The weight of the mercury obtained by Lavoisier at the end of this series of
changes was the same, less a few grains, as the weight of the mercury
which he had caused to react with the nitric acid. The gas obtained during
the solution of the metal in the acid, and during the decomposition of the
white solid by heat, was the same as a gas which had been prepared by
Priestley and called by him nitrous air; and the gas obtained by heating the
red precipitate was found to be oxygen. Lavoisier then mixed measured
volumes of oxygen and "nitrous air," standing over water; a red gas was
formed, and dissolved in the water, and Lavoisier proved that the water now
contained nitric acid.
The conclusions regarding the composition of nitric acid drawn by
Lavoisier from these experiments was, that "nitric acid is nothing else than
nitrous air, combined with almost its own volume of the purest part of
atmospheric air, and a considerable quantity of water."
Lavoisier supposed that the stages in the complete reaction between
mercury and nitric acid were these: the withdrawal of oxygen from the acid
by the mercury, and the union of the compound of mercury and oxygen thus
formed with the constituents of the acid which remained when part of its
oxygen was taken away. The removal of oxygen from nitric acid by the
mercury produced nitrous air; when the product of the union of the oxide of
mercury and the nitric acid deprived of part of its oxygen was heated, more
nitrous air was given off, and oxide of mercury remained, and was
decomposed, at a higher temperature, into mercury and oxygen.

Lavoisier thought of these reactions as the tearing asunder, by mercury, of
nitric acid into definite quantities of its three components, themselves
distinct substances, nitrous air, water, and oxygen; and the combination of
the mercury with a certain measurable quantity of one of these components,
namely, oxygen, followed by the union of this compound of mercury and
oxygen with what remained of the components of nitric acid.
Lavoisier had formed a clear, consistent, and suggestive mental picture of
chemical changes. He thought of a chemical reaction as always the same
under the same conditions, as an action between a fixed and measurable
quantity of one substance, having definite and definable properties, with
fixed and measurable quantities of other substances, the properties of each
of which were definite and definable.
Lavoisier also recognised that certain definite substances could be divided
into things simpler than themselves, but that other substances refused to
undergo simplification by division into two or more unlike portions. He
spoke of the object of chemistry as follows:—8 "In submitting to
experiments the different substances found in nature, chemistry seeks to
decompose these substances, and to get them into such conditions that their
various components may be examined separately. Chemistry advances to its
end by dividing, sub-dividing, and again sub-dividing, and we do not know
what will be the limits of such operations. We cannot be certain that what
we regard as simple to-day is indeed simple; all we can say is, that such a
substance is the actual term whereat chemical analysis has arrived, and that
with our present knowledge we cannot sub-divide it."
In these words Lavoisier defines the chemical conception of elements; since
his time an element is "the actual term whereat chemical analysis has
arrived," it is that which "with our present knowledge we cannot sub-
divide"; and, as a working hypothesis, the notion of element has no wider
meaning than this. I have already quoted Boyle's statement that by elements
he meant "certain primitive and simple bodies ... not made of any other
bodies, or of one another." Boyle was still slightly restrained by the
alchemical atmosphere around him; he was still inclined to say, "this must
be the way nature works, she must begin with certain substances which are
absolutely simple." Lavoisier had thrown off all the trammels which
hindered the alchemists from making rigorous experimental investigations.

If one may judge from his writings, he had not struggled to free himself
from these trammels, he had not slowly emerged from the quagmires of
alchemy, and painfully gained firmer ground; the extraordinary clearness
and directness of his mental vision had led him straight to the very heart of
the problems of chemistry, and enabled him not only calmly to ignore all
the machinery of Elements, Principles, Essences, and the like, which the
alchemists had constructed so laboriously, but also to construct, in place of
that mechanism which hindered inquiry, genuine scientific hypotheses
which directed inquiry, and were themselves altered by the results of the
experiments they had suggested.
Lavoisier made these great advances by applying himself to the minute and
exhaustive examination of a few cases of chemical change, and
endeavouring to account for everything which took part in the processes he
studied, by weighing or measuring each distinct substance which was
present when the change began, and each which was present when the
change was finished. He did not make haphazard experiments; he had a
method, a system; he used hypotheses, and he used them rightly. "Systems
in physics," Lavoisier writes, "are but the proper instruments for helping the
feebleness of our senses. Properly speaking, they are methods of
approximation which put us on the track of solving problems; they are the
hypotheses which, successively modified, corrected, and changed, by
experience, ought to conduct us, some day, by the method of exclusions and
eliminations, to the knowledge of the true laws of nature."
In a memoir wherein he is considering the production of carbonic acid and
alcohol by the fermentation of fruit-juice, Lavoisier says, "It is evident that
we must know the nature and composition of the substances which can be
fermented and the products of fermentation; for nothing is created, either in
the operations of art or in those of nature; and it may be laid down that the
quantity of material present at the beginning of every operation is the same
as the quantity present at the end, that the quality and quantity of the
principles9 are the same, and that nothing happens save certain changes,
certain modifications. On this principle is based the whole art of
experimenting in chemistry; in all chemical experiments we must suppose
that there is a true equality between the principles10 of the substances which
are examined and those which are obtained from them by analysis."

If Lavoisier's memoirs are examined closely, it is seen that at the very
beginning of his chemical inquiries he assumed the accuracy, and the
universal application, of the generalisation "nothing is created, either in the
operations of art or in those of nature." Naturalists had been feeling their
way for centuries towards such a generalisation as this; it had been in the air
for many generations; sometimes it was almost realised by this or that
investigator, then it escaped for long periods. Lavoisier seems to have
realised, by what we call intuition, that however great and astonishing may
be the changes in the properties of the substances which mutually react,
there is no change in the total quantity of material.
Not only did Lavoisier realise and act on this principle, he also measured
quantities of substances by the one practical method, namely, by weighing;
and by doing this he showed chemists the only road along which they could
advance towards a genuine knowledge of material changes.
The generalisation expressed by Lavoisier in the words I have quoted is
now known as the law of the conservation of mass; it is generally stated in
some such form as this:—the sum of the masses of all the homogeneous
substances which take part in a chemical (or physical) change does not
itself change. The science of chemistry rests on this law; every quantitative
analysis assumes the accuracy, and is a proof of the validity, of it.11
By accepting the accuracy of this generalisation, and using it in every
experiment, Lavoisier was able to form a clear mental picture of a chemical
change as the separation and combination of homogeneous substances; for,
by using the balance, he was able to follow each substance through the
maze of changes, to determine when it united with other substances, and
when it separated into substances simpler than itself.

CHAPTER XIII.
THE CHEMICAL ELEMENTS CONTRASTED WITH THE
ALCHEMICAL PRINCIPLES.

It was known to many observers in the later years of the 17th century that
the product of the calcination of a metal weighs more than the metal; but it
was still possible, at that time, to assert that this fact is of no importance to
one who is seeking to give an accurate description of the process of
calcination. Weight, which measures mass or quantity of substance, was
thought of, in these days, as a property like colour, taste, or smell, a
property which was sometimes decreased, and sometimes increased, by
adding one substance to another. Students of natural occurrences were,
however, feeling their way towards the recognition of some property of
substances which did not change in the haphazard way wherein most
properties seemed to alter. Lavoisier reached this property at one bound. By
his experimental investigations, he taught that, however greatly the
properties of one substance may be masked, or altered, by adding another
substance to it, yet the property we call mass, and measure by weight, is not
affected by these changes; for Lavoisier showed, that the mass of the
product of the union of two substances is always exactly the sum of the
masses of these two substances, and the sum of the masses of the
substances whereinto one substance is divided is always exactly equal to
that mass of the substance which is divided.
For the undefined, ever-changing, protean essence, or soul, of a thing which
the alchemists thought of as hidden by wrappings of properties, the exact
investigations of Lavoisier, and those of others who worked on the same
lines as he, substituted this definite, fixed, unmodifiable property of mass.
Lavoisier, and those who followed in his footsteps, also did away with the
alchemical notion of the existence of an essential substratum, independent
of changes in those properties of a substance which can be observed by the
senses. For the experimental researches of these men obliged naturalists to
recognise, that a change in the properties of a definite, homogeneous

substance, such as pure water, pure chalk, or pure sulphur, is accompanied
(or, as we generally say, is caused) by the formation of a new substance or
substances; and this formation, this apparent creation, of new material, is
effected, either by the addition of something to the original substance, or by
the separation of it into portions which are unlike it, and unlike one another.
If the change is a combination, or coalescence, of two things into one, then
the mass, and hence the weight, of the product is equal to the sum of those
masses, and hence those weights, of the things which have united to form it;
if the change is a separation of one distinct substance into several
substances, then the sum of the masses, and hence the weights, of the
products is equal to that mass, and hence that weight, of the substance
which has been separated.
Consider the word water, and the substance represented by this word. In
Chapter IV., I gave illustrations of the different meanings which have been
given to this word; it is sometimes used to represent a material substance,
sometimes a quality more or less characteristic of that substance, and
sometimes a process to which that substance, and many others like it, may
be subjected. But when the word water is used with a definite and exact
meaning, it is a succinct expression for a certain group, or collocation, of
measurable properties which are always found together, and is, therefore,
thought of as a distinct substance. This substance can be separated into two
other substances very unlike it, and can be formed by causing these to unite.
One hundred parts, by weight, of pure water are always formed by the
union of 11.11 parts of hydrogen, and 88.89 parts of oxygen, and can be
separated into these quantities of those substances. When water is formed
by the union of hydrogen and oxygen, in the ratio of 11.11 parts by weight
of the former to 88.89 of the latter, the properties of the two substances
which coalesce to form it disappear, except their masses. It is customary to
say that water contains hydrogen and oxygen; but this expression is
scarcely an accurate description of the facts. What we call substances are
known to us only by their properties, that is, the ways wherein they act on
our senses. Hydrogen has certain definite properties, oxygen has other
definite properties, and the properties of water are perfectly distinct from
those of either of the substances which it is said to contain. It is, therefore,
somewhat misleading to say that water contains substances the properties
whereof, except their masses, disappeared at the moment when they united

and water was produced. Nevertheless we are forced to think of water as, in
a sense, containing hydrogen and oxygen. For, one of the properties of
hydrogen is its power to coalesce, or combine, with oxygen to form water,
and one of the properties of oxygen is its ability to unite with hydrogen to
form water; and these properties of those substances cannot be recognised,
or even suspected, unless certain definite quantities of the two substances
are brought together under certain definite conditions. The properties which
characterise hydrogen, and those which characterise oxygen, when these
things are separated from all other substances, can be determined and
measured in terms of the similar properties of some other substance taken
as a standard. These two distinct substances disappear when they are
brought into contact, under the proper conditions, and something (water) is
obtained whose properties are very unlike those of hydrogen or oxygen; this
new thing can be caused to disappear, and hydrogen and oxygen are again
produced. This cycle of changes can be repeated as often as we please; the
quantities of hydrogen and oxygen which are obtained when we choose to
stop the process are exactly the same as the quantities of those substances
which disappeared in the first operation whereby water was produced.
Hence, water is an intimate union of hydrogen and oxygen; and, in this
sense, water may be said to contain hydrogen and oxygen.
The alchemist would have said, the properties of hydrogen and oxygen are
destroyed when these things unite to form water, but the essence, or
substratum, of each remains. The chemist says, you cannot discover all the
properties of hydrogen and oxygen by examining these substances apart
from one another, for one of the most important properties of either is
manifested only when the two mutually react: the formation of water is not
the destruction of the properties of hydrogen and oxygen and the revelation
of their essential substrata, it is rather the manifestation of a property of
each which cannot be discovered except by causing the union of both.
There was, then, a certain degree of accuracy in the alchemical description
of the processes we now call chemical changes, as being the removal of the
outer properties of the things which react, and the manifestation of their
essential substance. But there is a vast difference between this description
and the chemical presentment of these processes as reactions between
definite and measurable quantities of elements, or compounds, or both,
resulting in the re-distribution, of the elements, or the separation of the

compounds into their elements, and the formation of new compounds by the
re-combination of these elements.
Let us contrast the two descriptions somewhat more fully.
The alchemist wished to effect the transmutation of one substance into
another; he despaired of the possibility of separating the Elements whereof
the substance might be formed, but he thought he could manipulate what he
called the virtues of the Elements by a judicious use of some or all of the
three Principles, which he named Sulphur, Salt, and Mercury. He could not
state in definite language what he meant by these Principles; they were
states, conditions, or qualities, of classes of substances, which could not be
defined. The directions the alchemist was able to give to those who sought
to effect the change of one thing into another were these. Firstly, to remove
those properties which characterised the thing to be changed, and leave only
the properties which it shared with other things like it; secondly, to destroy
the properties which the thing to be changed possessed in common with
certain other things; thirdly, to commingle the Essence of the thing with the
Essence of something else, in due proportion and under proper conditions;
and, finally, to hope for the best, keep a clear head, and maintain a sense of
virtue.
If he who was about to attempt the transmutation inquired how he was to
destroy the specific properties, and the class properties, of the thing he
proposed to change, and by what methods he was to obtain its Essence, and
cause that Essence to produce the new thing, he would be told to travel
along "the road which was followed by the Great Architect of the Universe
in the creation of the world." And if he demanded more detailed directions,
he would be informed that the substance wherewith his experiments began
must first be mortified, then dissolved, then conjoined, then putrefied, then
congealed, then cibated, then sublimed, and fermented, and, finally, exalted.
He would, moreover, be warned that in all these operations he must use, not
things which he could touch, handle, and weigh, but the virtues, the lives,
the souls, of such things.
When the student of chemistry desires to effect the transformation of one
definite substance into another, he is told to determine, by quantitative
experiments, what are the elements, and what the quantities of these

elements, which compose the compound which he proposes to change, and
the compound into which he proposes to change it; and he is given working
definitions of the words element and compound. If the compound he desires
to produce is found to be composed of elements different from those which
form the compound wherewith his operations begin, he is directed to bring
about a reaction, or a series of reactions, between the compound which is to
be changed, and some other collocation of elements the composition of
which is known to be such that it can supply the new elements which are
needed for the production of the new compound.
Since Lavoisier realised, for himself, and those who were to come after
him, the meaning of the terms element and compound, we may say that
chemists have been able to form a mental picture of the change from one
definite substance to another, which is clear, suggestive, and consistent,
because it is an approximately accurate description of the facts discovered
by careful and penetrative investigations. This presentment of the change
has been substituted for the alchemical conception, which was an attempt to
express what introspection and reasoning on the results of superficial
investigations, guided by specious analogies, suggested ought to be the
facts.
Lavoisier was the man who made possible the more accurate, and more far-
reaching, description of the changes which result in the production of
substances very unlike those which are changed; and he did this by
experimentally analysing the conceptions of the element and the compound,
giving definite and workable meanings to these conceptions, and
establishing, on an experimental foundation, the generalisation that the sum
of the quantities of the substances which take part in any change is itself
unchanged.
A chemical element was thought of by Lavoisier as "the actual term whereat
analysis has arrived," a definite substance "which we cannot subdivide with
our present knowledge," but not necessarily a substance which will never be
divided. A compound was thought of by him as a definite substance which
is always produced by the union of the same quantities of the same
elements, and can be separated into the same quantities of the same
elements.

These conceptions were amplified and made more full of meaning by the
work of many who came after Lavoisier, notably by John Dalton, who was
born in 1766 and died in 1844.
In Chapter I., I gave a sketch of the atomic theory of the Greek thinkers.
The founder of that theory, who flourished about 500 B.C., said that every
substance is a collocation of a vast number of minute particles, which are
unchangeable, indestructible, and impenetrable, and are therefore properly
called atoms; that the differences which are observed between the qualities
of things are due to differences in the numbers, sizes, shapes, positions, and
movements of atoms, and that the process which occurs when one
substance is apparently destroyed and another is produced in its place, is
nothing more than a rearrangement of atoms.
The supposition that changes in the properties of substances are connected
with changes in the numbers, movements, and arrangements of different
kinds of minute particles, was used in a general way by many naturalists of
the 17th and 18th centuries; but Dalton was the first to show that the data
obtained by the analyses of compounds make it possible to determine the
relative weights of the atoms of the elements.
Dalton used the word atom to denote the smallest particle of an element, or
a compound, which exhibits the properties characteristic of that element or
compound. He supposed that the atoms of an element are never divided in
any of the reactions of that element, but the atoms of a compound are often
separated into the atoms of the elements whereof the compound is
composed. Apparently without knowing that the supposition had been made
more than two thousand years before his time, Dalton was led by his study
of the composition and properties of the atmosphere to assume that the
atoms of different substances, whether elements or compounds, are of
different sizes and have different weights. He assumed that when two
elements unite to form only one compound, the atom of that compound has
the simplest possible composition, is formed by the union of a single atom
of each element. Dalton knew only one compound of hydrogen and
nitrogen, namely, ammonia. Analyses of this compound show that it is
composed of one part by weight of hydrogen and 4.66 parts by weight of
nitrogen. Dalton said one atom of hydrogen combines with one atom of
nitrogen to form an atom of ammonia; hence an atom of nitrogen is 4.66

times heavier than an atom of hydrogen; in other words, if the atomic
weight of hydrogen is taken as unity, the atomic weight of nitrogen is
expressed by the number 4.66. Dalton referred the atomic weights of the
elements to the atomic weight of hydrogen as unity, because hydrogen is
lighter than any other substance; hence the numbers which tell how much
heavier the atoms of the elements are than an atom of hydrogen are always
greater than one, are always positive numbers.
When two elements unite in different proportions, by weight, to form more
than one compound, Dalton supposed that (in most cases at any rate) one of
the compounds is formed by the union of a single atom of each element; the
next compound is formed by the union of one atom of the element which is
present in smaller quantity with two, three, or more, atoms of the other
element, and the next compound is formed by the union of one atom of the
first element with a larger number (always, necessarily, a whole number) of
atoms of the other element than is contained in the second compound; and
so on. From this assumption, and the Daltonian conception of the atom, it
follows that the quantities by weight of one element which are found to
unite with one and the same weight of another element must always be
expressible as whole multiples of one number. For if two elements, A and
B, form a compound, that compound is formed, by supposition, of one atom
of A and one atom of B; if more of B is added, at least one atom of B must
be added; however much of B is added the quantity must be a whole
number of atoms; and as every atom of B is the same in all respects as
every other atom of B, the weights of B added to a constant weight of A
must be whole multiples of the atomic weight of B.
The facts which were available in Dalton's time confirmed this deduction
from the atomic theory within the limits of experimental errors; and the
facts which have been established since Dalton's time are completely in
keeping with the deduction. Take, for instance, three compounds of the
elements nitrogen and oxygen. That one of the three which contains least
oxygen is composed of 63.64 per cent. of nitrogen, and 36.36 per cent. of
oxygen; if the atomic weight of nitrogen is taken to be 4.66, which is the
weight of nitrogen that combines with one part by weight of hydrogen, then
the weight of oxygen combined with 4.66 of nitrogen is 2.66 (63.64:36.36 =
4.66:2.66). The weights of oxygen which combine with 4.66 parts by
weight of nitrogen to form the second and third compounds, respectively,

must be whole multiples of 2.66; these weights are 5.32 and 10.64. Now
5.32 = 2.66 x 2, and 10.64 = 2.66 x 4. Hence, the quantities by weight of
oxygen which combine with one and the same weight of nitrogen are such
that two of these quantities are whole multiples of the third quantity.
Dalton's application of the Greek atomic theory to the facts established by
the analyses of compounds enabled him to attach to each element a number
which he called the atomic weight of the element, and to summarise all the
facts concerning the compositions of compounds in the statement, that the
elements combine in the ratios of their atomic weights, or in the ratios of
whole multiples of their atomic weights. All the investigations which have
been made into the compositions of compounds, since Dalton's time, have
confirmed the generalisation which followed from Dalton's application of
the atomic theory.
Even if the theory of atoms were abandoned, the generalisation would
remain, as an accurate and exact statement of facts which hold good in
every chemical change, that a number can be attached to each element, and
the weights of the elements which combine are in the ratios of these
numbers, or whole multiples of these numbers.
Since chemists realised the meaning of Dalton's book, published in 1808,
and entitled, A New System of Chemical Philosophy, elements have been
regarded as distinct and definite substances, which have not been divided
into parts different from themselves, and unite with each other in definite
quantities by weight which can be accurately expressed as whole multiples
of certain fixed quantities; and compounds have been regarded as distinct
and definite substances which are formed by the union of, and can be
separated into, quantities of various elements which are expressible by
certain fixed numbers or whole multiples thereof. These descriptions of
elements and compounds are expressions of actual facts. They enable
chemists to state the compositions of all the compounds which are, or can
be, formed by the union of any elements. For example, let A, B, C, and D
represent four elements, and also certain definite weights of these elements,
then the compositions of all the compounds which can be formed by the
union of these elements are expressed by the scheme An Bm Cp Dq, where m
n p and q are whole numbers.

These descriptions of elements and compounds also enable chemists to
form a clear picture to themselves of any chemical change. They think of a
chemical change as being; (1) a union of those weights of two, or more,
elements which are expressed by the numbers attached to these elements, or
by whole multiples of these numbers; or (2) a union of such weights of two,
or more, compounds as can be expressed by certain numbers or by whole
multiples of these numbers; or (3) a reaction between elements and
compounds, or between compounds and compounds, resulting in the
redistribution of the elements concerned, in such a way that the complete
change of composition can be expressed by using the numbers, or whole
multiples of the numbers, attached to the elements.
How different is this conception of a change wherein substances are
formed, entirely unlike those things which react to form them, from the
alchemical presentment of such a process! The alchemist spoke of stripping
off the outer properties of the thing to be changed, and, by operating
spiritually on the soul which was thus laid bare, inducing the essential
virtue of the substance to exhibit its powers of transmutation. But he was
unable to give definite meanings to the expressions which he used, he was
unable to think clearly about the transformations which he tried to
accomplish. The chemist discards the machinery of virtues, souls, and
powers. It is true that he substitutes a machinery of minute particles; but
this machinery is merely a means of thinking clearly and consistently about
the changes which he studies. The alchemist thought, vaguely, of substance
as something underlying, and independent of, properties; the chemist uses
the expression, this or that substance, as a convenient way of presenting and
reasoning about certain groups of properties. It seems to me that if we think
of matter as something more than properties recognised by the senses, we
are going back on the road which leads to the confusion of the alchemical
times.
The alchemists expressed their conceptions in what seems to us a crude,
inconsistent, and very undescriptive language. Chemists use a language
which is certainly symbolical, but also intelligible, and on the whole fairly
descriptive of the facts.
A name is given to each elementary substance, that is, each substance which
has not been decomposed; the name generally expresses some characteristic

property of the substance, or tells something about its origin or the place of
its discovery. The names of compounds are formed by putting together the
names of the elements which combine to produce them; and the relative
quantities of these elements are indicated either by the use of Latin or Greek
prefixes, or by variations in the terminal syllables of the names of the
elements.

CHAPTER XIV.
THE MODERN FORM OF THE ALCHEMICAL QUEST OF
THE ONE THING.

The study of the properties of the elements shows that these substances fall
into groups, the members of each of which are like one another, and form
compounds which are similar. The examination of the properties and
compositions of compounds has shown that similarity of properties is
always accompanied by similarity of composition. Hence, the fact that
certain elements are very closely allied in their properties suggests that
these elements may also be allied in their composition. Now, to speak of the
composition of an element is to think of the element as formed by the union
of at least two different substances; it implies the supposition that some
elements at any rate are really compounds.
The fact that there is a very definite connexion between the values of the
atomic weights, and the properties, of the elements, lends some support to
the hypothesis that the substances we call, and are obliged at present to call,
elements, may have been formed from one, or a few, distinct substances, by
some process of progressive change. If the elements are considered in the
order of increasing atomic weights, from hydrogen, whose atomic weight is
taken as unity because it is the lightest substance known, to uranium, an
atom of which is 240 times heavier than an atom of hydrogen, it is found
that the elements fall into periods, and the properties of those in one period
vary from element to element, in a way which is, broadly and on the whole,
like the variation of the properties of those in other periods. This fact
suggests the supposition—it might be more accurate to say the speculation
—that the elements mark the stable points in a process of change, which has
not proceeded continuously from a very simple substance to a very complex
one, but has repeated itself, with certain variations, again and again. If such
a process has occurred, we might reasonably expect to find substances
exhibiting only minute differences in their properties, differences so slight
as to make it impossible to assign the substances, definitely and certainly,

either to the class of elements or to that of compounds. We find exactly such
substances among what are called the rare earths. There are earth-like
substances which exhibit no differences of chemical properties, and yet
show minute differences in the characters of the light which they emit when
they are raised to a very high temperature.
The results of analysis by the spectroscope of the light emitted by certain
elements at different temperatures may be reasonably interpreted by
supposing that these elements are separated into simpler substances by the
action on them of very large quantities of thermal energy. The spectrum of
the light emitted by glowing iron heated by a Bunsen flame (say, at 1200°
C. = about 2200° F.) shows a few lines and flutings; when iron is heated in
an electric arc (say, to 3500° C. = about 6300° F.) the spectrum shows some
two thousand lines; at the higher temperature produced by the electric
spark-discharge, the spectrum shows only a few lines. As a guide to further
investigation, we may provisionally infer from these facts that iron is
changed at very high temperatures into substances simpler than itself.
Sir Norman Lockyer's study of the spectra of the light from stars has shown
that the light from those stars which are presumably the hottest, judging by
the general character of their spectra, reveals the presence of a very small
number of chemical elements; and that the number of spectral lines, and,
therefore, the number of elements, increases as we pass from the hottest to
cooler stars. At each stage of the change from the hottest to cooler stars
certain substances disappear and certain other substances take their places.
It may be supposed, as a suggestive hypothesis, that the lowering of stellar
temperature is accompanied by the formation, from simpler forms of matter,
of such elements as iron, calcium, manganese, and other metals.
In the year 1896, the French chemist Becquerel discovered the fact that salts
of the metal uranium, the atomic weight of which is 240, and is greater than
that of any other element, emit rays which cause electrified bodies to lose
their electric charges, and act on photographic plates that are wrapped in
sheets of black paper, or in thin sheets of other substances which stop rays
of light. The radio-activity of salts of uranium was proved not to be
increased or diminished when these salts had been shielded for five years
from the action of light by keeping them in leaden boxes. Shortly after
Becquerel's discovery, experiments proved that salts of the rare metal

thorium are radio-active. This discovery was followed by Madame Curie's
demonstration of the fact that certain specimens of pitchblende, a mineral
which contains compounds of uranium and of many other metals, are
extremely radio-active, and by the separation from pitchblende, by
Monsieur and Madame Curie, of new substances much more radio-active
than compounds of uranium or of thorium. The new substances were proved
to be compounds chemically very similar to salts of barium. Their
compositions were determined on the supposition that they were salts of an
unknown metal closely allied to barium. Because of the great radio-activity
of the compounds, the hypothetical metal of them was named Radium. At a
later time, radium was isolated by Madame Curie. It is described by her as a
white, hard, metal-like solid, which reacts with water at the ordinary
temperature, as barium does.
Since the discovery of radium compounds, many radio-active substances
have been isolated. Only exceedingly minute quantities of any of them have
been obtained. The quantities of substances used in experiments on radio-
activity are so small that they escape the ordinary methods of measurement,
and are scarcely amenable to the ordinary processes of the chemical
laboratory. Fortunately, radio-activity can be detected and measured by
electrical methods of extraordinary fineness, methods the delicacy of which
very much more exceeds that of spectroscopic methods than the
sensitiveness of these surpasses that of ordinary chemical analysis.
At the time of the discovery of radio-activity, about seventy-five substances
were called elements; in other words, about seventy-five different
substances were known to chemists, none of which had been separated into
unlike parts, none of which had been made by the coalescence of unlike
substances. Compounds of only two of these substances, uranium and
thorium, are radio-active. Radio-activity is a very remarkable phenomenon.
So far as we know at present, radio-activity is not a property of the
substances which form almost the whole of the rocks, the waters, and the
atmosphere of the earth; it is not a property of the materials which
constitute living organisms. It is a property of some thirty substances—of
course, the number may be increased—a few of which are found widely
distributed in rocks and waters, but none of which is found anywhere except
in extraordinarily minute quantity. Radium is the most abundant of these

substances; but only a very few grains of radium chloride can be obtained
from a couple of tons of pitchblende.
In Chapter X. of The Story of the Chemical Elements I have given a short
account of the outstanding phenomena of radio-activity; for the present
purpose it will suffice to state a few facts of fundamental importance.
Radio-active substances are stores of energy, some of which is constantly
escaping from them; they are constantly changing without external
compulsion, and are constantly radiating energy: all explosives are
storehouses of energy which, or part of which, can be obtained from them;
but the liberation of their energy must be started by some kind of external
shock. When an explosive substance has exploded, its existence as an
explosive is finished; the products of the explosion are substances from
which energy cannot be obtained: when a radio-active substance has
exploded, it explodes again, and again, and again; a time comes, sooner or
later, when it has changed into substances that are useless as sources of
energy. The disintegration of an explosive, started by an external force, is
generally completed in a fraction of a second; change of condition changes
the rate of explosion: the "half-life period" of each radio-active substance is
a constant characteristic of it; if a gram of radium were kept for about 1800
years, half of it would have changed into radio-inactive substances.
Conditions may be arranged so that an explosive remains unchanged—wet
gun-cotton is not exploded by a shock which would start the explosion of
dry gun-cotton—in other words, the explosion of an explosive can be
regulated: the explosive changes of a radio-active substance, which are
accompanied by the radiation of energy, cannot be regulated; they proceed
spontaneously in a regular and definable manner which is not influenced by
any external conditions—such as great change of temperature, presence or
absence of other substances—so far as these conditions have been made the
subject of experiment: the amount of activity of a radio-active substance has
not been increased or diminished by any process to which the substance has
been subjected. Explosives are manufactured articles; explosiveness is a
property of certain arrangements of certain quantities of certain elements:
so far as experiments have gone, it has not been found possible to add the
property of radio-activity to an inactive substance, or to remove the
property of radio-activity from an active substance; the cessation of the
radio-activity of an active substance is accompanied by the disappearance

of the substance, and the production of inactive bodies altogether unlike the
original active body.
Radio-active substances are constantly giving off energy in the form of
heat, sending forth rays which have definite and remarkable properties, and
producing gaseous emanations which are very unstable, and change, some
very rapidly, some less rapidly, into other substances, and emit rays which
are generally the same as the rays emitted by the parent substance. In
briefly considering these three phenomena, I shall choose radium
compounds as representative of the class of radio-active substances.
Radium compounds spontaneously give off energy in the form of heat. A
quantity of radium chloride which contains 1 gram of radium continuously
gives out, per hour, a quantity of heat sufficient to raise the temperature of 1
gram of water through 100° C., or 100 grams of water through 1° C. The
heat given out by 1 gram of radium during twenty-four hours would raise
the temperature of 2400 grams of water through 1° C.; in one year the
temperature of 876,000 grams of water would be raised through 1° C.; and
in 1800 years, which is approximately the half-life period of radium, the
temperature of 1,576,800 kilograms of water would be raised through 1° C.
These results may be expressed by saying that if 1 gram (about 15 grains)
of radium were kept until half of it had changed into inactive substances,
and if the heat spontaneously produced during the changes which occurred
were caused to act on water, that quantity of heat would raise the
temperature of about 15½ tons of water from its freezing- to its boiling-
point.
Radium compounds send forth three kinds of rays, distinguished as alpha,
beta, and gamma rays. Experiments have made it extremely probable that
the α-rays are streams of very minute particles, somewhat heavier than
atoms of hydrogen, moving at the rate of about 18,000 miles per second;
and that the β-rays are streams of much more minute particles, the mass of
each of which is about one one-thousandth of the mass of an atom of
hydrogen, moving about ten times more rapidly than the α-particles, that is,
moving at the rate of about 180,000 miles per second. The γ-rays are
probably pulsations of the ether, the medium supposed to fill space. The
emission of α-rays by radium is accompanied by the production of the inert
elementary gas, helium; therefore, the α-rays are, or quickly change into,

rapidly moving particles of helium. The particles which constitute the β-
rays carry electric charges; these electrified particles, each approximately a
thousand times lighter than an atom of hydrogen, moving nearly as rapidly
as the pulsations of the ether which we call light, are named electrons. The
rays from radium compounds discharge electrified bodies, ionise gases, that
is, cause them to conduct electricity, act on photographic plates, and
produce profound changes in living organisms.
The radium emanation is a gas about 111 times heavier than hydrogen; to
this gas Sir William Ramsay has given the name niton. The gas has been
condensed to a colourless liquid, and frozen to an opaque solid which glows
like a minute arc-light. Radium emanation gives off α-particles, that is, very
rapidly moving atoms of helium, and deposits exceedingly minute
quantities of a solid, radio-active substance known as radium A. The change
of the emanation into helium and radium A proceeds fairly rapidly: the half-
life period of the emanation is a little less than four days. This change is
attended by the liberation of much energy.
The only satisfactory mental picture which the facts allow us to form, at
present, of the emission of β-rays from radium compounds is that which
represents these rays as streams of electrons, that is, particles, each about a
thousand times lighter than an atom of hydrogen, each carrying an electric
charge, and moving at the rate of about 180,000 miles per second, that is,
nearly as rapidly as light. When an electric discharge is passed from a plate
of metal, arranged as the kathode, to a metallic wire arranged as the anode,
both sealed through the walls of a glass tube or bulb from which almost the
whole of the air has been extracted, rays proceed from the kathode, in a
direction at right angles thereto, and, striking the glass in the neighbourhood
of the anode, produce a green phosphorescence. Facts have been gradually
accumulated which force us to think of these kathode rays as streams of
very rapidly moving electrons, that is, as streams of extraordinarily minute
electrically charged particles identical with the particles which form the β-
rays emitted by compounds of radium.
The phenomena of radio-activity, and also the phenomena of the kathode
rays, have obliged us to refine our machinery of minute particles by
including therein particles at least a thousand times lighter than atoms of
hydrogen. The term electron was suggested, a good many years ago, by Dr

Johnstone Stoney, for the unit charge of electricity which is carried by an
atom of hydrogen when hydrogen atoms move in a liquid or gas under the
directing influence of the electric current. Some chemists speak of the
electrons, which are the β-rays from radium, and the kathode rays produced
in almost vacuous tubes, as non-material particles of electricity. Non-
material means devoid of mass. The method by which approximate
determinations have been made of the charges on electrons consists in
measuring the ratio between the charges and the masses of these particles. If
the results of the determinations are accepted, electrons are not devoid of
mass. Electrons must be thought of as material particles differing from other
minute material particles in the extraordinary smallness of their masses, in
the identity of their properties, including their mass, in their always carrying
electric charges, and in the vast velocity of their motion. We must think of
an electron either as a unit charge of electricity one property of which is its
minute mass, or as a material particle having an extremely small mass and
carrying a unit charge of electricity: the two mental pictures are almost, if
not quite, identical.
Electrons are produced by sending an electric discharge through a glass
bulb containing a minute quantity of air or other gas, using metallic plates
or wires as kathode and anode. Experiments have shown that the electrons
are identical in all their properties, whatever metal is used to form the
kathode and anode, and of whatever gas there is a minute quantity in the
bulb. The conclusion must be drawn that identical electrons are constituents
of, or are produced from, very different kinds of chemical elements. As the
facts about kathode rays, and the facts of radio-activity are (at present)
inexplicable except on the supposition that these phenomena are exhibited
by particles of extraordinary minuteness, and as the smallest particles with
which chemists are concerned in their everyday work are the atoms of the
elements, we seem obliged to think of many kinds of atoms as structures,
not as homogeneous bodies. We seem obliged to think of atoms as very
minute material particles, which either normally are, or under definite
conditions may be, associated with electrically charged particles very much
lighter than themselves, all of which are identical, whatever be the atoms
with which they are associated or from which they are produced.
In their study of different kinds of matter, chemists have found it very
helpful to place in one class those substances which they have not been able

to separate into unlike parts. They have distinguished this class of
substances from other substances, and have named them elements. The
expression chemical elements is merely a summary of certain observed
facts. For many centuries chemists have worked with a conceptual
machinery based on the notion that matter has a grained structure. For more
than a hundred years they have been accustomed to think of atoms as the
ultimate particles with which they have had to deal. Working with this
order-producing instrument, they have regarded the properties of elements
as properties of the atoms, or of groups of a few of the atoms, of these
substances. That they might think clearly and suggestively about the
properties of elements, and connect these with other chemical facts, they
have translated the language of sense-perceptions into the language of
thought, and, for properties of those substances which have not been
decomposed, have used the more fertile expression atomic properties. When
a chemist thinks of an atom, he thinks of the minutest particle of one of the
substances which have the class-mark have-not-been-decomposed, and the
class-name element. The chemist does not call these substances elements
because he has been forced to regard the minute particles of them as
undivided, much less because he thinks of these particles as indivisible; his
mental picture of their structure as an atomic structure formed itself from
the fact that they had not been decomposed. The formation of the class
element followed necessarily from observed facts, and has been justified by
the usefulness of it as an instrument for forwarding accurate knowledge.
The conception of the elementary atom as a particle which had not been
decomposed followed from many observed facts besides those concerning
elements, and has been justified by the usefulness of it as an instrument for
forwarding accurate knowledge. Investigations proved radio-activity to be a
property of the very minute particles of certain substances, and each radio-
active substance to have characteristic properties, among which were
certain of those that belong to elements, and to some extent are
characteristic of elements. Evidently, the simplest way for a chemist to
think about radio-activity was to think of it as an atomic property; hence, as
atomic properties had always been regarded, in the last analysis, as
properties of elements, it was natural to place the radio-active substances in
the class elements, provided that one forgot for the time that these
substances have not the class-mark have-not-been-decomposed.

As the facts of radio-activity led to the conclusion that some of the minute
particles of radio-active substances are constantly disintegrating, and as
these substances had been labelled elements, it seemed probable, or at least
possible, that the other bodies which chemists have long called elements are
not true elements, but are merely more stable collocations of particles than
the substances which are classed as compounds. As compounds can be
changed into certain other compounds, although not into any other
compounds, a way seemed to be opening which might lead to the
transformation of some elements into some other elements.
The probability that one element might be changed into another was
increased by the demonstration of the connexions between uranium and
radium. The metal uranium has been classed with the elements since it was
isolated in 1840. In 1896, Becquerel found that compounds of uranium, and
also the metal itself, are radio-active. In the light of what is now known
about radio-activity, it is necessary to suppose that some of the minute
particles of uranium emit particles lighter than themselves, and change into
some substance, or substances, different from uranium; in other words, it is
necessary to suppose that some particles of uranium are spontaneously
disintegrating. This supposition is confirmed by the fact, experimentally
proved, that uranium emits α-rays, that is, atoms of helium, and produces a
substance known as uranium X. Uranium X is itself radio-active; it emits β-
rays, that is, it gives off electrons. Inasmuch as all minerals which contain
compounds of uranium contain compounds of radium also, it is probable
that radium is one of the disintegration-products of uranium. The rate of
decay of radium may be roughly expressed by saying that, if a quantity of
radium were kept for ten thousand years, only about one per cent. of the
original quantity would then remain unchanged. Even if it were assumed
that at a remote time the earth's crust contained considerable quantities of
radium compounds, it is certain that they would have completely
disappeared long ago, had not compounds of radium been reproduced from
other materials. Again, the most likely hypothesis is that compounds of
radium are being produced from compounds of uranium.
Uranium is a substance which, after being rightly classed with the elements
for more than half a century, because it had not been separated into unlike
parts, must now be classed with the radium-like substances which
disintegrate spontaneously, although it differs from other radio-active

substances in that its rate of change is almost infinitively slower than that of
any of them, except thorium.12 Thorium, a very rare metal, is the second of
the seventy-five or eighty elements known when radio-activity was
discovered, which has been found to undergo spontaneous disintegration
with the emission of rays. The rate of change of thorium is considerably
slower than that of uranium.13 None of the other substances placed in the
class of elements is radio-active.
On p. 192 I said, that when the radio-active substances had been labelled
elements, the facts of radio-activity led some chemists to the conclusion that
the other bodies which had for long been called by this class-name, or at
any rate some of these bodies, are perhaps not true elements, but are merely
more stable collocations of particles than the substances called compounds.
It seems to me that this reasoning rests on an unscientific use of the term
element; it rests on giving to that class-name the meaning, substances
asserted to be undecomposable. A line of demarcation is drawn between
elements, meaning thereby forms of matter said to be undecomposable but
probably capable of separation into unlike parts, and true elements,
meaning thereby groups of identical undecomposable particles. If one
names the radio-active substances elements, one is placing in this class
substances which are specially characterised by a property the direct
opposite of that the possession of which by other substances was the reason
for the formation of the class. To do this may be ingenious; it is certainly
not scientific.
Since the time of Lavoisier, since the last decade of the eighteenth century,
careful chemists have meant by an element a substance which has not been
separated into unlike parts, and they have not meant more than that. The
term element has been used by accurate thinkers as a useful class-mark
which connotes a property—the property of not having been decomposed—
common to all substances placed in the class, and differentiating them from
all other substances. Whenever chemists have thought of elements as the
ultimate kinds of matter with which the physical world is constructed—and
they have occasionally so thought and written—they have fallen into
quagmires of confusion.
Of course, the elements may, some day, be separated into unlike parts. The
facts of radio-activity certainly suggest some kind of inorganic evolution.

Whether the elements are decomposed is to be determined by experimental
inquiry, remembering always that no number of failures to simplify them
will justify the assertion that they cannot be simplified. Chemistry neither
asserts or denies the decomposability of the elements. At present, we have
to recognise the existence of extremely small quantities, widely distributed
in rocks and waters, of some thirty substances, the minute particles of
which are constantly emitting streams of more minute, identical particles
that carry with them very large quantities of energy, all of which thirty
substances are characterised, and are differentiated from all other classes of
substances wherewith chemistry is concerned, by their spontaneous
mutability, and each is characterised by its special rate of change and by the
nature of the products of its mutations. We have now to think of the minute
particles of two of the seventy-five or eighty substances which until the
other day had not been decomposed, and were therefore justly called
elements, as very slowly emitting streams of minuter particles and
producing characteristic products of their disintegration. And we have to
think of some eighty substances as particular kinds of matter, at present
properly called elements, because they are characterised, and differentiated
from all other substances, by the fact that none of them has been separated
into unlike parts.
The study of radio-activity has introduced into chemistry and physics a new
order of minute particles. Dalton made the atom a beacon-light which
revealed to chemists paths that led them to wider and more accurate
knowledge. Avogadro illuminated chemical, and also physical, ways by his
conception of the molecule as a stable, although separable, group of atoms
with particular properties different from those of the atoms which
constituted it. The work of many investigators has made the old paths
clearer, and has shown to chemists and physicists ways they had not seen
before, by forcing them to think of, and to make use of, a third kind of
material particles that are endowed with the extraordinary property of radio-
activity. Dalton often said: "Thou knowest thou canst not cut an atom"; but
the fact that he applied the term atom to the small particles of compounds
proves that he had escaped the danger of logically defining the atom, the
danger of thinking of it as a particle which never can be cut. The molecule
of Avogadro has always been a decomposable particle. The peculiarity of
the new kind of particles, the particles of radio-active bodies, is, not that

they can be separated into unlike parts by the action of external forces, but
that they are constantly separating of their own accord into unlike parts, and
that their spontaneous disintegration is accompanied by the production of
energy, the quantity of which is enormous in comparison with the
minuteness of the material specks which are the carriers of it.
The continued study of the properties of the minute particles of radio-active
substances—a new name is needed for those most mutable of material
grains—must lead to discoveries of great moment for chemistry and
physics. That study has already thrown much light on the phenomena of
electric conductivity; it has given us the electron, a particle at least a
thousand times lighter than an atom of hydrogen; it has shown us that
identical electrons are given off by, or are separated from, different kinds of
elementary atoms, under definable conditions; it has revealed unlooked-for
sources of energy; it has opened, and begun the elucidation of, a new
department of physical science; it has suggested a new way of attacking the
old problem of the alchemists, the problem of the transmutation of the
elements.
The minute particles of two of the substances for many years classed as
elements give off electrons; uranium and thorium are radio-active. Electrons
are produced by sending an electric discharge through very small traces of
different gases, using electrodes of different metals. Electrons are also
produced by exposing various metals to the action of ultra-violet light, and
by raising the temperature of various metals to incandescence. Electrons are
always identical, whatever be their source. Three questions suggest
themselves. Can the atoms of all the elements be caused to give off
electrons? Are electrons normal constituents of all elementary atoms? Are
elementary atoms collocations of electrons? These questions are included in
the demand—Is it possible "to imagine a model which has in it the
potentiality of explaining" radio-activity and other allied phenomena, as
well as all other chemical and physical properties of elements and
compounds? These questions are answerable by experimental investigation,
and only by experimental investigation. If experimental inquiry leads to
affirmative answers to the questions, we shall have to think of atoms as
structures of particles much lighter than themselves; we shall have to think
of the atoms of all kinds of substances, however much the substances differ
chemically and physically, as collocations of identical particles; we shall

have to think of the properties of atoms as conditioned, in our final analysis,
by the number and the arrangement of their constitutive electrons. Now, if a
large probability were established in favour of the view that different atoms
are collocations of different numbers of identical particles, or of equal
numbers of differently arranged identical particles, we should have a guide
which might lead to methods whereby one collocation of particles could be
formed from another collocation of the same particles, a guide which might
lead to methods whereby one element could be transformed into another
element.
To attempt "to imagine a model which has in it the potentiality of
explaining" radio-activity, the production of kathode rays, and the other
chemical and physical properties of elements and compounds, might indeed
seem to be a hopeless undertaking. A beginning has been made in the
mental construction of such a model by Professor Sir J.J. Thomson. To
attempt a description of his reasoning and his results is beyond the scope of
this book.14
The facts that the emanation from radium compounds spontaneously gives
off very large quantities of energy, and that the emanation can easily be
brought into contact with substances on which it is desired to do work,
suggested to Sir William Ramsay that the transformation of compounds of
one element into compounds of another element might possibly be effected
by enclosing a solution of a compound along with radium emanation in a
sealed tube, and leaving the arrangement to itself. Under these conditions,
the molecules of the compound would be constantly bombarded by a vast
number of electrons shot forth at enormous velocities from the emanation.
The notion was that the molecules of the compound would break down
under the bombardment, and that the atoms so produced might be knocked
into simpler groups of particles—in other words, changed into other atoms
—by the terrific, silent shocks of the electrons fired at them incessantly by
the disintegrating emanation. Sir William Ramsay regards his experimental
results as establishing a large probability in favour of the assertion that
compounds of copper were transformed into compounds of lithium and
sodium, and compounds of thorium, of cerium, and of certain other rare
metals, into compounds of carbon. The experimental evidence in favour of
this statement has not been accepted by chemists as conclusive. A way has,
however, been opened which may lead to discoveries of great moment.

Let us suppose that the transformation of one element into another element
or into other elements has been accomplished. Let us suppose that the
conception of elementary atoms as very stable arrangements of many
identical particles, from about a thousand to about a quarter of a million
times lighter than the atoms, has been justified by crucial experiments. Let
us suppose that the conception of the minute grains of radio-active
substances as particular but constantly changing arrangements of the same
identical particles, stable groups of which are the atoms of the elements, has
been firmly established. One result of the establishment of the electronic
conception of atomic structure would be an increase of our wonder at the
complexity of nature's ways, and an increase of our wonder that it should be
possible to substitute a simple, almost rigid, mechanical machinery for the
ever-changing flow of experience, and, by the use of that mental
mechanism, not only to explain very many phenomena of vast complexity,
but also to predict occurrences of similar entanglement and to verify these
predictions.
The results which have been obtained in the examination of radio-activity,
of kathode rays, of spectra at different temperatures, and of phenomena
allied to these, bring again into prominence the ancient problem of the
structure of what we call matter. Is matter fundamentally homogeneous or
heterogeneous? Chemistry studies the relations between the changes of
composition and the changes of properties which happen simultaneously in
material systems. The burning fire of wood, coal, or gas; the preparation of
food to excite and to satisfy the appetite; the change of minerals into the
iron, steel, copper, brass, lead, tin, lighting burning and lubricating oils,
dye-stuffs and drugs of commerce; the change of the skins, wool, and hair
of animals, and of the seeds and fibres of plants, into clothing for human
beings; the manufacture from rags, grass, or wood of a material fitted to
receive and to preserve the symbols of human hopes, fears, aspirations, love
and hate, pity and aversion; the strange and most delicate processes which,
happening without cessation, in plants and animals and men, maintain that
balanced equilibrium which we call life; and, when the silver cord is being
loosed and the bowl broken at the cistern, the awful changes which herald
the approach of death; not only the growing grass in midsummer meadows,
not only the coming of autumn "in dyed garments, travelling in the glory of
his apparel," but also the opening buds, the pleasant scents, the tender

colours which stir our hearts in "the spring time, the only pretty ring time,
when birds do sing, ding-a*—dong-ding": these, and a thousand other
changes have all their aspects which it is the business of the chemist to
investigate. Confronted with so vast a multitude of never-ceasing changes,
and bidden to find order there, if he can—bidden, rather compelled by that
imperious command which forces the human mind to seek unity in variety,
and, if need be, to create a cosmos from a chaos; no wonder that the early
chemists jumped at the notion that there must be, that there is, some One
Thing, some Universal Essence, which binds into an orderly whole the
perplexing phenomena of nature, some Water of Paradise which is for the
healing of all disorder, some "Well at the World's End," a draught whereof
shall bring peace and calm security.
The alchemists set forth on the quest. Their quest was barren. They made
the great mistake of fashioning The One Thing, The Essence, The Water of
Paradise, from their own imaginings of what nature ought to be. In their
own likeness they created their goal, and the road to it. If we are to
understand nature, they cried, her ways must be simple; therefore, her ways
are simple. Chemists are people of a humbler heart. Their reward has been
greater than the alchemists dreamed. By selecting a few instances of
material changes, and studying these with painful care, they have gradually
elaborated a general conception of all those transformations wherein
substances are produced unlike those by the interaction of which they are
formed. That general conception is now both widening and becoming more
definite. To-day, chemists see a way opening before them which they
reasonably hope will lead them to a finer, a more far-reaching, a more
suggestive, at once a more complex and a simpler conception of material
changes than any of those which have guided them in the past.

INDEX
Air, ancient views regarding, 129.
—— views of Mayow and Rey regarding, 129.
Alchemical account of changes contrasted with chemical account, 169.
—— agent, the, 64.
—— allegories, examples of, 41, 97.
—— classification, 59.
—— doctrine of body, soul, and spirit of things, 48.
—— doctrine of transmutation, 47, 74, 123, 170.
—— language, 36, 96, 101, 102.
—— quest of the One Thing, modern form of, 179.
—— signs, 105.
—— theory, general sketch of, 26.
Alchemists, character of, according to Paracelsus, 25.
—— made many discoveries, 87.
—— sketches of lives of some, 115.
—— their use of fanciful analogies, 31.
Alchemy, beginnings of, 23.
—— change of, to chemistry, 126.
—— contrasted with chemistry, 202.
—— general remarks on, 123.

—— lent itself to imposture, 106.
—— object of, 9, 26, 32, 105.
—— probable origin of word, 25.
—— quotations to illustrate aims and methods of, 11-14.
Alembic, 92.
Apparatus and operations of alchemists, 90.
Art, the sacred, 122.
Atom, meaning given to word by Dalton, 173.
Atomic theory of Greeks, 16.
—— additions made to, by Dalton, 21.
—— as described by Lucretius, 19.
Atomic weight, 174.
Atoms and electrons, 190, 198.

Bacon's remarks on alchemy, 95.
Balsamo, Joseph, 110.
Basil Valentine, his description of the three principles, 51.
—— his description of the four elements, 49.
—— some of his discoveries, 88.
Becquerel, his discovery of radiation of uranium, 181.
Body, soul, and spirit of things, alchemical doctrine of, 48.
Boyle, on calcination, 128.
—— on combustion, 141.

—— on elements, 161.
—— on the "hermetick philosophers," 95.
—— on the language of the alchemists, 55.
—— on the natural state of bodies, 43.

Cagliostro, 110.
Calcination, 129, 132, 135, 140, 142, 151, 155.
Chaucer's Canon's Yeoman's Tale, 107.
Chemical conception of material changes, 177.
Chemistry, aim of, 9, 26, 160.
—— change from alchemy to, 126.
—— methods of, 10.
—— probable origin of word, 24.
Classification, alchemical methods of, 59.
Colours, Lucretius' explanation of differences between, 18.
Combustion, 141.
Compounds, chemical conception of, 171.
Conservation of mass, 164.
Curie, her discovery of radium, 182.

Dalton's additions to the Greek atomic theory, 21, 172.
Democritus, his saying about atoms, 15.
Dephlogisticated air, 147.

Destruction, thought by alchemists to precede restoration, 65, 127.

Electrons, 187-189, 197, 198.
Elements, alchemical, contrasted with chemical, 165;
radio-active substances contrasted with, 190-192.
—— the alchemical, 49, 54, 60.
—— the chemical, 61, 62, 161.
—— use of word, by phlogisteans, 133.
Essence, the alchemical, 32, 35, 49, 58, 72.

Fire, different meanings of the word, 53.

Gates, the alchemical, 69.
Gold, considered by alchemists to be the most perfect metal, 40, 45.
Greek thinkers, their atomic theory, 15.

Hermes Trismegistus, 37.

Kathode rays, 188.

Language of alchemy, 96.
—— purposely made misleading, 36.
Lavoisier on calcination, 153, 155.
—— his use of word element, 194.
—— his use of word principle, 163, note.

—— on object of chemistry, 160.
—— on oxygen, 155.
—— on systems in science, 163.
—— on the principle of acidity, 59, 155.
—— on the reactions of metals with acids, 158.
—— on the transmutation of water to earth, 152.
Lockyer, on spectra of elements, 181.
Lucretius, his theory of nature, 16.

Magic, characteristics of, 23, 24.
Material changes, Greek theory of, 15.
Metals, alchemical connexion between, and plants, 34.
—— compared by alchemists with vegetables, 33.
—— mortification of, 65.
—— seed of, 34.
—— their desire to become gold, 40.
—— transmutation of, 33, 39, 46.

Natural state of bodies, 39, 43.

Oxygen, 144, 145.

Paracelsus, his description of alchemists, 25.
—— his distinction between natural and artificial mortification, 65.

—— sketch of life of, 117.
Pelican, 92.
Perfection, alchemical teaching regarding, 27, 40.
Phlogistic theory, 133, 139.
Phlogiston, 126, 130, 137.
Priestley, his discovery of oxygen, 144.
Principles, the alchemical, 49, 51, 54, 60, 133.
—— Lavoisier's use of the word, 163, note.

Radio-active substances, are they elements? 191, 194, 195;
properties of, 185-187.
Radio-activity, characteristics of, 183, 184;
of radium, 186;
of thorium, 193;
of uranium, 193.
Radium, emanation of, 187;
heat from, 186;
rays from, 186.
Ramsay, on transmutation of elements, 199.
Regimens, the alchemical, 72.

Sacred art, the, 122.
Scientific theories, general characters of, 21, 150.
Seed, alchemical doctrine of, 56.
Seeds of metals, 34.
Simplicity, asserted by alchemists to be the mark of nature, 28, 38.

—— is not necessarily the mark of verity, 138.
Solids, liquids, and gases, atomic explanation of, 19.
Stahl, his phlogistic theory, 130.
Stone, the philosopher's, 32, 35, 49, 58, 72.

Thorium, radio-activity of, 183, 193.
Transmutation, alchemical doctrine of, 47, 74, 123.
—— character of him who would attempt, 63.
—— of metals, 33, 39, 46, 74.
—— of metals into gold, alchemical account of, 75.
—— of water to earth, 151.
Transmutations, apparent examples of, 82.

Uranium, radio-activity of, 183, 192;
relation of, to radium, 192, 193.

Vegetables compared with metals by alchemists, 33.

Water contains hydrogen and oxygen, examination of this phrase, 167.
Water, different meanings of the word, 53, 167.

FOOTNOTES

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.

2 The quotations from Lucretius are taken from Munro's
translation (4th Edition, 1886).

3 See the chapter Molecular Architecture in the Story of the
Chemical Elements.

4 The author I am quoting had said—"Nature is divided into four
'places' in which she brings forth all things that appear and that
are in the shade; and according to the good or bad quality of the
'place,' she brings forth good or bad things.... It is most important
for us to know her 'places' ... in order that we may join things
together according to Nature."

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

6 I have given numerous illustrations of the truth of this statement
in the book, in this series, entitled The Story of the Wanderings of
Atoms.

7 Boyle said, in 1689, "I mean by elements ... certain primitive
and simple, or perfectly unmixed bodies; which not being made
of any other bodies, or of one another, are the ingredients of
which all those called perfectly mixt bodies are immediately
compounded, and into which they are ultimately resolved."

8 I have given a free rendering of Lavoisier's words.

9, 10 Lavoisier uses the word principle, here and elsewhere, to
mean a definite homogeneous substance; he uses it as
synonymous with the more modern terms element and compound.

11 I have considered the law of the conservation of mass in some
detail in Chapter IV. of The Story of the Chemical Elements.

12 The life-period of uranium is probably about eight thousand
million years.

13 The life-period of thorium is possibly about forty thousand
million years.

14 The subject is discussed in Sir J.J. Thomson's Electricity and
Matter.

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