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ALCHEMY - Its Science and Romance
ALCHEMY - Its Science and Romance
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PREFACE
This may perhaps claim to be an apology for Alchemy. It attempts to set forth, with more of system and of sympathy than is usual, its history, the doctrines it professed, and the results it achieved. It must not, however, be thought that the apologetic intention of the study implies any failure in recognising the weaknesses and follies which abounded in the development of the art, nor the chimerical nature of the means adopted for solving its Grand Secret. The defence is based on a critical estimate of the conditions under which the genuine adepts had to think and work.
I have consulted the works of representative alchemists, especially of the earlier periods. But I lay no claim to detailed research throughout the whole vast range of the literature of the subject. Even Berthelot had to specialise. I have availed myself freely of materials which are more or less easily accessible in modern treatise on the Hermeitic art. I gratefully acknowledge my indebtedness to the above-mentioned author, and, though in less degree, to such studies as those of Figuier, Muir, and Thorpe, as also to a carefully written article in Hastings' Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics. Fortunately the main features of the subject stand out clearly; a study of tedious and generally unintelligible detail is unnecessary. What I venture to question is not the evidence, but the justice of the condemnations so often founded upon it. I contend that when we make fair allowance for the conditions under which the genuine alchemists did their work, we shall acknowledge their right to rank as true scientists and discoverers. To judge them from the standpoint of the present is hopelessly irrational.
***
INTRODUCTION
The Art And Its Appeal
OUR subject is alchemy—that baffling art, with a record so ancient and yet so tarnished. The strong stream of modern science has swept over it, leaving it shattered and forlorn. It has fallen on evil days, and has almost passed out of remembrance. And yet, when sympathetically studied, it abounds in varied interests, for the poet, the historian, the philosopher, and for the scientist himself. It numbered among its adepts some of the most picturesque and the most famous personages in the annals of European civilisation. It welded philosophic speculation and operative toil; mysticism, magic and technical skill. It lost itself in the wildest aberrations, and yet issued in modern chemistry. It thus presents a unique medley of attractions which gain in their power of appeal in proportion as the rigidity of modern Materialism is softened and humanised.
What Alchemy Aimed At.
If we ask what the objects were which the art so strenuously sought to attain, the answers arc not as simple as many would imagine. One of them stands out prominently in the popular mind—the discovery of the Philosopher's Stone which was to transmute the baser metals into gold! But alchemists aimed at far more than this. In constant rivalry with the hope of making gold and silver was that of discovering a remedy for disease, a universal medicine. The two objects tended to run together, because of the frequent identification of the Stone and the Elixir. The latter, by a natural extension of the idea of a master-power, was to renew the vigour and graces of youth, nay, it was to effect an indefinite lengthening of the term of life. Further, adepts claimed that their wondrous remedy would give intellectual and moral excellence, happiness, influence with the spirit world, communion with the Creator. Thus were the aims of the art expanded until they embraced transmutations, not of metals only, but of human beings, and the control of powers which reached out into the universe at large.
— But the art, it will be said, never attained its objects, it was delusive; and is therefore unworthy of serious study. Such an inference is easily shown to be hasty and superficial. Delusion undeniably bulks largely in the history, and raises in an acute form the curious problem of its function in man's intellectual and spiritual evolution. But delusion is not the whole tale. In searching for the Stone and the Elixir, real substances had to be handled, real experiments had to be made. It could not, then, be otherwise than that there should accumulate a body of empirical facts concerning the nature of the substances and their mutual reactions. Moreover, even the charlatans had their part to play, in that they helped to keep alive the interest in alchemical pursuits.
Alchemy Compared With Magic And Astrology.
Bacon has a suggestive passage in which he groups together three kindred pseudo-arts." As for the facility of credit which is yielded to arts and opinions, it is of two kinds: either when too much belief is attributed to the arts themselves, or to certain authors in any art.....
This may perhaps claim to be an apology for Alchemy. It attempts to set forth, with more of system and of sympathy than is usual, its history, the doctrines it professed, and the results it achieved. It must not, however, be thought that the apologetic intention of the study implies any failure in recognising the weaknesses and follies which abounded in the development of the art, nor the chimerical nature of the means adopted for solving its Grand Secret. The defence is based on a critical estimate of the conditions under which the genuine adepts had to think and work.
I have consulted the works of representative alchemists, especially of the earlier periods. But I lay no claim to detailed research throughout the whole vast range of the literature of the subject. Even Berthelot had to specialise. I have availed myself freely of materials which are more or less easily accessible in modern treatise on the Hermeitic art. I gratefully acknowledge my indebtedness to the above-mentioned author, and, though in less degree, to such studies as those of Figuier, Muir, and Thorpe, as also to a carefully written article in Hastings' Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics. Fortunately the main features of the subject stand out clearly; a study of tedious and generally unintelligible detail is unnecessary. What I venture to question is not the evidence, but the justice of the condemnations so often founded upon it. I contend that when we make fair allowance for the conditions under which the genuine alchemists did their work, we shall acknowledge their right to rank as true scientists and discoverers. To judge them from the standpoint of the present is hopelessly irrational.
***
INTRODUCTION
The Art And Its Appeal
OUR subject is alchemy—that baffling art, with a record so ancient and yet so tarnished. The strong stream of modern science has swept over it, leaving it shattered and forlorn. It has fallen on evil days, and has almost passed out of remembrance. And yet, when sympathetically studied, it abounds in varied interests, for the poet, the historian, the philosopher, and for the scientist himself. It numbered among its adepts some of the most picturesque and the most famous personages in the annals of European civilisation. It welded philosophic speculation and operative toil; mysticism, magic and technical skill. It lost itself in the wildest aberrations, and yet issued in modern chemistry. It thus presents a unique medley of attractions which gain in their power of appeal in proportion as the rigidity of modern Materialism is softened and humanised.
What Alchemy Aimed At.
If we ask what the objects were which the art so strenuously sought to attain, the answers arc not as simple as many would imagine. One of them stands out prominently in the popular mind—the discovery of the Philosopher's Stone which was to transmute the baser metals into gold! But alchemists aimed at far more than this. In constant rivalry with the hope of making gold and silver was that of discovering a remedy for disease, a universal medicine. The two objects tended to run together, because of the frequent identification of the Stone and the Elixir. The latter, by a natural extension of the idea of a master-power, was to renew the vigour and graces of youth, nay, it was to effect an indefinite lengthening of the term of life. Further, adepts claimed that their wondrous remedy would give intellectual and moral excellence, happiness, influence with the spirit world, communion with the Creator. Thus were the aims of the art expanded until they embraced transmutations, not of metals only, but of human beings, and the control of powers which reached out into the universe at large.
— But the art, it will be said, never attained its objects, it was delusive; and is therefore unworthy of serious study. Such an inference is easily shown to be hasty and superficial. Delusion undeniably bulks largely in the history, and raises in an acute form the curious problem of its function in man's intellectual and spiritual evolution. But delusion is not the whole tale. In searching for the Stone and the Elixir, real substances had to be handled, real experiments had to be made. It could not, then, be otherwise than that there should accumulate a body of empirical facts concerning the nature of the substances and their mutual reactions. Moreover, even the charlatans had their part to play, in that they helped to keep alive the interest in alchemical pursuits.
Alchemy Compared With Magic And Astrology.
Bacon has a suggestive passage in which he groups together three kindred pseudo-arts." As for the facility of credit which is yielded to arts and opinions, it is of two kinds: either when too much belief is attributed to the arts themselves, or to certain authors in any art.....
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