according to fixed laws, but according to man's deservings. The latter was not much carried out, and the first corresponds more closely to the general opinions of these writers. It is a kind of physical mysticism also to confuse elements with each other, and powers with substances, a state corresponding exactly with the mysticism of a more mental character, which confounds the Deity with his creatures, and desires to absorb embodied man in his unembodied creator.*

The four elements were preserved amongst the Arabians, and their corresponding qualities, hot, cold, dry, and moist, and the most wonderful power was given to a mixture of them all; it was in this way that "Hai Ebn Yokdan was produced without father and mother; it chanced that a certain mass of earth was so fermented in some period of years, that the four qualities, viz., hot, cold, dry, moist, were so equally mixed, that none of them prevailed over the other."† This was Avicenna's opinion of what was possible.

Fermentation was a favourite method of explaining difficult phenomena, and is now. As it has now been to a great extent explained, the lovers of the occult will be obliged to seek deeper for their theories.

We may find then another origin for the mystic mode of viewing matter, as well as for the four elements, as far east as Hindostan, from which the Arabians may have brought it; but we cannot, with historical certainty, trace it to its home; and it is possible that these two origins, Asiatic and Egyptian, may have been originally the same. But what is clear to me is, that the style of the alchemist had the same origin as the

* Whilst this Memoir was being printed, I obtained the "Hours with the Mystics," by Robert Alfred Vaughan, B.A., who says, vol. 1, p. 26; "mysticism, whether in religion or philosophy, is that form of error which mistakes for a divine manifestation the operations of a merely human faculty." This has no doubt influenced the expressions used above. Hoefer has observed the connection between the religious writers of early centuries, but has not traced it up.

†The Improvement of Human Reason, exhibited in the Life of Hai Ebn Yokdan, by Abu Jaafar Ebn Tophail. Translated by Simon Ockley, A.M.

mystic style introduced into religion and philosophy. The same condition of mind would produce both, according to the subject to which it was applied, and that condition seems to have a historical as well as natural connection.

Albertus Magnus followed closely the reasoning of Avicenna. He was born in 1193, a few years earlier than Roger Bacon. Some of his opinions on matter shew distinctly their origin. He says, * "That matter and power are the principles of each body is clear from the reasoning; for having taken away all the accidental forms, we arrive at length at a substantial form, which being removed by the intellect, there remains a something very occult, which is the first matter.” (Tandem venitur ad formam substantialem qua adhuc abstracta per intellectum; remanet quoddam valde occultum quod est prima materia.) He says also, cap. iii., "Matter has a natural appetite for form." He discusses whether the metals are generated, and decides by a peculiar reasoning that the materia prima is not generated, but created, "because if it were generated it would be from some other matter, therefore matter would contain other matter, and so on without end; therefore the first matter is not generated, but created. Creation means to make out of nothing." But the elements may be generated, and Albertus Magnus easily changes one into the other. "The generation of one is the corruption of the other, and e converso. From the generation of one then follows the corruption of the other.”†

That the four elements held their ground we see from no one more clearly than Roger Bacon, born 1214. We see there, too, the opinion that the original matter, yle, has none of the qualities of a body, but is matter in the abstract. words are:

His

"Elementa sunt quatuor, ignis, aqua, aer, terra, modi id est

* In the portion of his work on natural philosophy, entitled " Physicorum,"

cap. 2.

His chapter, De Generatione Elementorum.

proprietates, sunt quatuor, calor, frigiditas, siccitas et humiditas; et yle est res in qua non est calor, nec frigiditas, nec siccitas, nec humiditas et non est corpus. Et Elementa sunt facta de yle; et unumquodque elementorum convertitur in naturam alterius elementi et omnis res in quamlibet. Nam hordeum est equus per vim, id est, naturam occultam; et triticum est homo per vim, et homo est triticum per vim."*

"There are four elements, fire, water, air, and earth, that is the properties of their condition are four, heat, cold, dryness, and wetness, and yle (the true matter) contains no heat, nor cold, nor dryness, nor wetness. The elements are made of yle, and each of the elements is converted into the nature of the other element, and everything into anything else. For barley is a horse by possibility, that is, occult nature, and wheat is a possible man, and man is possible wheat."†

This explanation is exceedingly clear and rational, and founded on a good deal of observation. We see here in Roger Bacon's ideas, which are truly in the spirit of the ancient philosophers, the atomic being excepted, that all being might arise from this source, called yle. There is, however, an improvement in the mode of expression; we understand perfectly what he means, and there is a terseness seldom, if ever attained, either by those before him, or after him. It separates him from the mystics, properly so called, although there is the easy passage of one element into the other, and the unsubstantial principle from which all are made.

To this scholastic form the mystic method attached itself, coming apparently with the Arabian learning into Europe, as well as by direct transmission through Greece and Rome, having lived for some centuries with little growth, and destined to be led with more vigor towards its extremes by the reviving intellect of the West.

* De Arte Chymiae.

†This yle is the Greek vŋ, matter.

The method of viewing matter being sufficiently confused by any one of the systems, was not less so when they were united, or rather, I may say, carelessly mixed and confounded. When we add to them an infusion not only of the moral and religious method, but of morals and religion themselves, as elements in the production of results, we have a system of nature which all minds refuse to contemplate with patience, and on which our imagination refuses long to rest, so bewildering is it to the one, and so wanting in beauty to the other. But in a history of man it will always form an important chapter; as a dissection of the mind it will always have a psychological value, and as a portion of the progress of physics it will never cease to be worth preserving for at least one lesson to the student.

The Arabian chemists who took the lead in introducing it, acknowledge Geber to be their master, and he composes metals of sulphur and mercury. At the same time he says, "We see no ox transformed into a goat, nor any one species transmuted into another, or by any other artifice so reduced. Therefore, seeing metals differ in themselves, can you transform one into another, according to its species, or of such a species make such a species? This seems to us sufficiently absurd, and remote from the verity of natural principles. For nature perfects metals in a thousand years; but how can you, in your artifice of transmutation, live a thousand years, seeing you are scarcely able to extend your life to a hundred ?" He considers the work as done by the stars, which cause the generation and corruption, but being ignorant of their power, we cannot use it. "Likewise, also in things natural, this is the order; it is easier to destroy them than to make them. But we can scarcely destroy gold, how then can we presume to fabricate the same?"

He was, therefore, not a gold maker, although holding the abstract theory of the possibility of transmuting. His followers did not follow him in this, and whilst quoting his

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authority, probably knew nothing of his more rational practice; they evidently retrograded, but it was probably needful, in order to satisfy themselves.

A few specimens of the Stoechiometry of the period onward to Boyle will be needful to explain to what a woeful state the science fell; or shall we say rather what a dreadful struggle it had to come to the light; or shall we say that it was only in analogy with the general opinions of the times, and a picture of the general state of mind? For the honor of human nature I would prefer to say that the highest minds being engaged in the cultivation of the more spiritual faculties, in the development of the moral nature of man, in struggling for freedom of body and of mind; the lower ones were engaged with science, and lived a miserable existence, fed by the crusts from the table of the brighter intellects. We may add also that science was, with many persons, as now, a mode of making money only; and many who had no love for it, joined in the pursuit, and are now by us apt to be confounded with true men. This explains many, but not all the cases.

Science and religion have always influenced each other, and it is interesting to trace them. In the Tractatus aureus, by a German philosopher, the piety is seen. In making experiments, he says to every pious God-fearing chemist: "Above all it is needful to be pious, to lift the heart to Him, with true, ardent, and not doubtful prayer, and to ask the gift from Him only."* Again, of the Quinta essentia. "It is the universal and scintillating fire of the light of nature, which has the celestial spirit within it animated in the beginning by God, and penetrating all things, called therefore, by Avicenna, the spirit of the world. For as the soul is found in all the members of the human body, and moves itself, so this spirit is found in all the elementary

* Museum Hermeticum, page 80.