LITMIR.BIZ

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alchemists spoke of twelve gates through which he who would attain to the palace of true art must pass: these twelve gates were to be unlocked by twelve keys, descriptions of which, couched in strange and symbolical language, were given in alchemical treatises. Thus in "Ripley reviv'd"[2] we read that Canon Ripley, of Bridlington, who lived in the time of Edward IV., sang thus of the first gate, which was "Calcination:"—

      "The battle's fought, the conquest won,

       The Lyon dead reviv'd;

       The eagle's dead which did him slay,

       And both of sense depriv'd. The showers cease, the dews which fell For six weeks do not rise; The ugly toad that did so swell With swelling bursts and dies."

      And of the third gate, or "Conjunction," we find the Canon saying—

      "He was a king, yet dead as dead could be;

       His sister a queen,

       Who when her brother she did breathless see,

       The like was never seen,

       She cryes

       Until her eyes

       With over-weeping were waxed dim—

       So long till her tears

       Reach'd up to her ears:

       The queen sunk, but the king did swim."

      In some books these gates and keys are symbolically represented in drawings, e.g. in a pamphlet by Paracelsus, called "Tripus Aureus, hoc est Tres Tractates chymici selectissimi." (Frankfurt, 1618.)

      It is evident that a method of studying Nature which resulted in such dim and hazy explanations as these was eminently fitted to produce many who pretended to possess secrets by the use of which they could bring about startling results beyond the power of ordinary men; and, at the same time, the almost universal acceptance of such statements as those I have quoted implied the existence in men generally of a wondrous readiness to believe anything and everything. Granted that a man by "sweating whole days and nights by his furnaces" can acquire knowledge which gives him great power over his fellows, it necessarily follows that many will be found ready to undergo these days and nights of toil. And when we find that this supposed knowledge is hidden under a mask of strange and mystical signs and language, we may confidently assert that there will be many who learn to repeat these strange terms and use these mystical signs without attempting to penetrate to the truths which lie behind—without, indeed, believing that the mystical machinery which they use has any real meaning at all.

      We find, as a matter of fact, that the age of the alchemists produced many deceivers, who, by mumbling incantations and performing a few tricks, which any common conjuror would now despise, were able to make crowds of men believe that they possessed a supernatural power to control natural actions, and, under this belief, to make them part with their money and their substance.

      One respectable physician of the Hague, who entertained a peripatetic alchemist, complains that the man entered his "best-furnished room without wiping his shoes, although they were full of snow and dirt." However, the physician was rewarded, as the stranger gave him, "out of his philosophical commiseration, as much as a turnip seed in size" of the much-wished-for stone of wisdom.

      That the alchemist of popular belief was a man who used a jargon of strange and high-sounding words, that he might the better deceive those whom he pretended to help, is evident from the literature of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

      In the play of the "Alchymist" Ben Jonson draws the character of Subtle as that of a complete scoundrel, whose aim is to get money from the pockets of those who are stupid enough to trust him, and who never hesitates to use the basest means for this end. From the speeches of Subtle we may learn the kind of jargon employed by the men who pretended that they could cure diseases and change all baser metals into gold.

      "Subtle. Name the vexations and the martyrizations of metals in the work.

      Face. Sir, putrefaction, Solution, ablution, sublimation, Cohobation, calcination, ceration, and Fixation.

      Sub. And when comes vivification?

      Face. After mortification.

      Sub. What's cohobation?

      Face. 'Tis the pouring on Your aqua regis, and then drawing him off, To the trine circle of the seven spheres.

      Sub. And what's your mercury?

      Face. A very fugitive; he will be gone, sir.

      Sub. How know you him?

      Pace. By his viscosity, His oleosity, and his suscitability."

      Even in the fourteenth century, Chaucer (in the "Canon's Yeoman's Tale") depicts the alchemist as a mere cunning knave. A priest is prevailed on to give the alchemist money, and is told that he will be shown the change of base metal into gold. The alchemist busies himself with preparations, and sends the priest to fetch coals.

      "And whil he besy was, this feendly wrecche,

       This false chanoun (the foule feende him fecche)

       Out of his bosom took a bechen cole

       In which ful subtilly was maad an hole,

       And therein put was of silver lymayle

       An unce, and stopped was withoute fayle

       The hole with wex, to keep the lymayle in.

       And understondith, that this false gyn

       Was not maad there, but it was maad before."

      This "false gyn" having been put in the crucible and burned with the rest of the ingredients, duly let out its "silver lymayle" (filings), which appeared in the shape of a small button of silver, and so accomplished the "false chanoun's" end of deceiving his victim.

      The alchemists accumulated many facts: they gained not a little knowledge concerning the appearances of Nature, but they were dominated by a single idea. Living in the midst of an extremely complex order of things, surrounded by a strange and apparently capricious succession of phenomena, they were convinced that the human intelligence, directed and aided by the teachings of the Church, would guide them through the labyrinth. And so they entered on the study of Nature with preconceived notions and foregone conclusions: enthusiastic and determined to know although many of them were, they nevertheless failed because they refused to tread the only path which leads to true advances in natural science—the path of unprejudiced accurate experiment, and of careful reasoning on experimentally determined facts.

      And even when they had become convinced that their aims were visionary, they could not break free from the vicious system which bound them.

      " … I am broken and trained

       To my old habits: they are part of me.

       I know, and none so well, my darling ends

       Are proved impossible: no less, no less,

       Even now what humours me, fond fool, as when

       Their faint ghosts sit with me and flatter me,

       And send me back content to my dull round."[3]

      One of the most commonly occurring and most noticeable changes in the properties of matter is that which proceeds when a piece of wood, or a candle, or a quantity of oil burns. The solid wood, or candle, or the liquid oil slowly disappears, and this disappearance is attended with the visible formation of flame. Even the heavy fixed metals, tin or lead, may be caused to burn; light is produced, a part of the metal seems to disappear, and a white (or reddish) solid, very different from the original metal, remains. The process of burning presents all those peculiarities which are fitted to strike an observer of the changes of Nature; that is, which are fitted to strike a chemist—for chemistry has always been recognized as having for its object to explain the

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