from being corporeal, into a spirituality, and it is this which turns the bodies or corporeal substance into a vapour, which is a soul that is whiteness itself, subtle and full of fire."

Here is an attempt to separate chemical action mechanical." It appears then that this composition is work of the hands, but a change of the natures; be nature dissolves and joins itself, sublimes and lifts itsel The nature of the treatises which he studied is seen quotation of his own. "It is also the most acrid vi concerning which an ancient philosopher has said, I bes the Lord and he shewed me a pure clear water, which I to be the pure vinegar, altering, penetrating, and diges I say a penetrating vinegar, and the moving instrume putrefying, resolving and reducing gold or silver into prima materia or first matter." *

That the chief aim was this originally metaphysical id matter, we see also as late as 1691, in the Second Aph of "Baron Urbiger," whose more modern style has helped to a more condensed expression. "An indeterminate m being the beginning of all metals and minerals, it follows as soon as any one shall be so happy as to know and con it, he shall easily comprehend also their natures, qualities properties."" It is found every where, at all times, and by our science."

A favourite mode of representing chemical action, wa the analogies in the growing of plants and animals. Zos says it is the (Hydrargyrum) water-silver, the male-fe principle, the principle always escaping constant in its perties. The same idea proceeded forward, and in 1 Nicholas Flamel says, "minerals taken out of the earth be changed if beforehand they be spiritualized, and red into their sulphureous and argent-vive nature, which are

two sperms, composed of the elements, the one masculine, the other feminine. The male sulphur is nothing but fire and air; and the true sulphur is as a fire, but not the vulgar, which contains no metallic substance. The feminine sperm is argent-vive, which is nothing but earth and water," &c. And Norton, about the same time, reasons thus;

"Metalls of kinde grow lowe under grounde,

For above erth rust in them is found;
Soe above erth appeareth corruption
Of metalls, and in long tyme destruction,
Whereof noe cause is found in this case,

But that above erth thei be not in their place."

But he denies, like Geber, any growing in glass vessels ; "For cause efficient of mettalls find ye shall,

Only to be the vertue minerall,

Which in everie erth is not found,

But in certain places of eligible ground."

When once grown, however, they could not multiply according to him;

"Trewly ye maie trust as I said before,

How of one ounce of silver, maie silver be no more."

But this was not the general opinion, as they were supposed to grow in the preparation, as Ripley says; On calcination, v. 15;†

"If thou intend therefore to make

Gold and sylver by craft of our philosophy;
Thereto nother eggs nor blood thou take,
But gold and sylver which naturally,
Calcyned wysely, and not manually,
And new generation wyll forth bryng,

Incresying theyr kynde as doth each thyng."

As metals grew by their life, and life is the blood, so it was a desirable thing to find out the blood of metals

s;

"The true blood of mettalls is hard to have.”‡

As the prima materia was of indeterminate properties, was

* Ashmole's "Theatrum Chemicum," 1652, pp. 18, 19, and 20.

† Same, p. 132.

"Anon." Same, p. 406.

Q

in fact originally only an intellectual conception, come to in the consideration of matter, abstracted from its apparently unnecessary properties, and converted into a reality by the alchemists, so they, in their turn, converted their elements, which are partly the usual four, partly sulphur and mercury, or with salt added, into mere abstract ideas. Their sulphur was an ideal sulphur, and Paracelsus gave every body its own peculiar sulphur and other elements. This was a step towards a recognition of many distinct indestructible bodies, and a progress out of the purely mystical consideration of the subject.

The opinions held generally by alchemists, having arisen, as I think, from the spiritual and religious state of man, more than his directly intellectual, it would require more space than can be given here for a history such as would suit this view of the case. The early Greek manuscripts, mentioned by Olaus Borrichius, and partly given by Hoefer, show the inclination there was to write with, or to proceed from, the current religious opinions. Isis and Osiris were important alchemistic names from the Alexandrian school, and salt, sulphur, and mercury, have been connected with the trinity of Christians.

It is not the place here to follow the detailed opinions of the alchemists, they are taken rather in the mass, and twelve or fourteen hundred years of their opinions thrown with little order together. This I see no great reason to alter, the men differed so little in their radical opinions. Salt, sulphur, and mercury, were sometimes the origin of the metals, sometimes of all things, each had its own spiritualization, each was the greatest or the least in its turn; and as a curious instance of recurrence of opinion, we find Palissy, in the 16th century, a man full of shrewdness of observation, saying, as Thales did so long before, "that the commencement and origin of all natural things is water." * But then he believes in more

*

p. 217. Oeuvres Complètes de Bernard Palissy. Edition par Paul Antoine Cap, 1844.

than one kind of water, one of which he considers a fifth element. This, however, has to do with the history of the idea of liquid and fluid, which must not be entered on here. In saying this, Palissy was reasoning from the state of metals in solution, for he believes they grew, and were found in common water. As he says;

"Il (le createur) a commandé à nature de trauailler, produire et engendrer, consommer et dissiper; comme tu vois que le feu consomme plusieurs choses, aussi il nourrit et soustient plusieurs choses; les eaux debordees dissipent et gastent plusieurs choses, et toutefois sans elles nulle chose ne pourroit dire ie suis. Et tout ainsi que l'eau et le feu dissipent d'vne part, ils engendrent et produisent d'autre. Suyuant quoy ie ne puis dire autre chose des metaux, sinon que la matiere d'iceux est vn sel dissoult et liquifié parmy les eaux communes, lequel sel est inconneu aux hommes; d'autant qu'iceluy estant entremeslé parmi les eaux, estant de la mesme couleur que les eaux liquides et diafanes on transparentes, ìl est indistinguible et ìnconnu a tous; n'ayant aucun signe apparent, par lequel les hommes le puissent distinguer d' auec les eaux communes."*

Matter then appeared to the alchemists as it has done to the greater part of early thinkers, and to most of those who do not think, as a power subtle and changeable, capable of every transformation, and dependent on laws by some held eternal and immutable, by others dependent on the spiritual condition of man. We have no distinct clue in such opinions to any definite ideas about composition.

串

Same, p. 194. In his objection to alchemy, Palissy has not shone so much as in his pottery, and even in his other scientific inquiries. Bötticher, also a potter, a less honourable and less able man, has been, by his discoveries in Dresden porcelain, the occasion of a saying suitable to the times, and shewing the true value of the alchemists, viz. ; their accidental discoveries in the arts. When his gold making failed, and he made porcelain, it was said—

p. 303.

O Gott Du grosser Schoepfer,

Aus einem goldmacher wird ein Toepfer.

Ye heavens, alchemy has win my votes,

A goldmaker's changed to a maker of pots.

Hist. Crit. Untersuchung der Alchemie. By Wiegleb, 1791.

On the four elements we have occasionally opinions which may be called definite, as when they are said to form various combinations with various properties, but these are held with no tenacity. In the salt, sulphur, and mercury, we have a clue to definite composition, but we have seen them spiritualized and held with still less tenacity. In the elements of Leucippus, Democritus, and Lucretius, we have a definite view taken of the subject, but that was soon neglected, to be revived in part when alchemy was falling. We have had an approach to a distinct view before us in that of forces, or unextended points, forming the origin of matter, brought forward later, and, perhaps, in an entirely original form, but at least more detailed, by Boscovich.