1 14 MEMOIR OF DR. DALTON, AND 



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 to- 

 wards 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 16 th 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 Completes de Bernard Palissy. Edition par Paul 

 Antoine Cap, J 844. 



