HISTORY OF THE ATOMIC THEORY. Ill 



of knowledge, and an illustration of the danger of a little 

 learning. 



This prima materia was even supposed by some to be the 

 substance on which it was needful to begin to operate, 

 so far had it descended. Flamel says, " Having thus obtained 

 this delicate and precious book, I did nothing else day and 

 night but study upon it, conceiving very well all the opera- 

 tions it pointed forth, but wholly ignorant of the prima 

 materia with which I should begin, which made me sad and 

 discontented." * Although this, as is afterwards shewn, was 

 a matter of preparation also, the point of departure of the 

 second process. 



Artephius, who lived in the twelfth century, and was bom, 

 according to his own account, in the second, and wrote a 

 book on prolonging life at the age of 1052! may be quoted 

 as a true mystic chemist, shewing us, too, by the numerous 

 names that he gives to this liquid, that he even at that time 

 inherited it from a long ancestry. " Our dissolving matter, 

 therefore, carries with it a great tincture, and a great melting 

 or dissolving ; because that when it feels the vulgar fire, if 

 there be in it the pure or fine bodies of sol or luna, it imme- 

 diately melts them, and converts them into its white substance, 

 such as itself is, and gives to the body colour, weight, and 

 tincture. In it also is a power of liquefying or melting all 

 things that can be melted or dissolved ; it is a water ponder- 

 ous, viscous, precious, and worthy to be esteemed, resolving 

 all crude bodies, into their prima materia^ or first matter, 

 viz., into earth and a viscous powder, that is into sulphur and 

 mercury." The indefinite notion of the origin of properties 

 we see, when he says, " the property, therefore, of our water 

 is, that it melts or dissolves gold and silver, and increases 

 their native tincture or colour; for it changes their bodies 



• The Lives of the adepts in Alchemystical Philosophy, with a Critical 

 Catalogue of the Books in this Science, and a Selection of the most celebrated 

 Treatises on the Theory and Practice of the Hermetic Art. Page 34. 



