THE EVOLUTION OF CHEMICAL TRUTH. 815 



in a somewhat sudden fashion made its appearance in the world, 

 till the moment of the fall of the Roman Empire, we know very 

 nearly what it was, but are hardly certain whence it came. The 

 study of which we are about to give an account assigns for it a 

 triple origin: the industrial processes of the ancient Egyptians, 

 the speculative theories of the Greek philosophers, and the mystic 

 reveries of the Alexandrines and Gnostics. This conclusion is 

 derived from the attentive examination of documents that have 

 not been studied before with this point in view ; among which are 

 Lepsius's memoir on the metals in antiquity, Egyptian papyruses 

 in Paris and Leyden, and Greek manuscripts in the French 

 National Library and St. Mark's Library in Venice. M. Ber- 

 thelot has compared with these texts, on one side, the beliefs of 

 the first alchemists concerning the origin of their art; and, on 

 the other, their positive knowledge, as well as the theories ac- 

 cepted in the second and third centuries of the Christian era. 

 The deductions from these different sources are quite concordant. 



Zosimus the Panopolitan, " the oldest of authentic chemists," 

 wrote, three hundred years after Christ, that "the Scriptures 

 teach that there is a certain race of demons that have commerce 

 with women. Hermes has spoken of them in his book on nature. 

 The ancient and holy Scriptures relate that certain angels, smit- 

 ten with love for women, came down upon the earth and taught 

 them the works of nature; on this account, they were driven 

 from heaven and condemned to perpetual exile. From this inter- 

 course sprang the race of giants. The book in which they 

 taught the arts is called Cliema, whence the name Cliema, which 

 is applied to the most excellent art." This idea of sinning angels 

 who revealed the occult arts and sciences to mortals, is found in 

 several countries. It is " in harmony with the old biblical myth 

 of the tree of knowledge placed in the garden, the fruit of which 

 when eaten brought about the fall of man." 



The Theban papyruses at Leipsic attribute the same mystical 

 character — a kind of seal of its Eastern origin — to alchemy. It 

 was Hermes Trismegistes who made known practical metallurgi- 

 cal processes, the hermetic science, the mysterious art of transmu- 

 tation. The Egyptian priests, who were instructed in it, had to 

 take an oath to keep the secret of it. This custom was preserved 

 among the Neoplatonists and magicians of the fourth century 

 and the alchemists of the middle ages and the Renaissance. 



Many of the traditions held in honor among the alchemists 

 seem to have been borrowed from the Theban priests. The num- 

 ber four was sacred with both. The philosopher's stone was 

 called the Egyptian stone in the middle ages. The alchemic sign 

 for water was the hieroglyph for that substance. The sign for 

 tin, which has been transferred to the metal mercury, was also 



