108 MEMOIR OF DR. DALTON, AND 



spirit of life has fled ; therefore the spirit is the life and soul 

 of the earth, it dwells in it, and is operated on from 

 celestial and sidereal, into terrestrial ; for all herbs, trees, and 

 roots, as well as metals and minerals, receive their strength, 

 increase, and nourishment from the spirit of the earth." * 

 Although this leads to conclusions beyond the known facts, 

 it is a style of reasoning not to be entirely found fault with, 

 and much less can it be called irrational. It is a kind of 

 middle path between calling earth an animal and our present 

 opinions ; but Basil Valentine showed intellectual vigor, and 

 formed an epoch in his science. He was born about 1413. 



Raymund Lully, who takes us back again to the age of 

 Albertus Magnus and Roger Bacon, was universally quoted 

 by alchemists as a great master, he was born about 1235. 

 He writes ; 



" Matter says I am a being from which something is made 

 by passionhood,'\ and that substantially and accidentally, 

 because I am the leader, since from me who am the primi- 

 tive is made that particular matter which is the substantial 

 part of substance, as the matter of a rose, of a horse, and so 

 on. — God is my end and cause, and I am simply his effect. — 



" Matter says, I am absolute passionhood under absolute 

 form to which I am conjoined, and as all the river waters are 

 derived from the sea and return to it, so from me are derived 

 all matters in particular because I am absolute." 



" Again matter says, I am not a being absolutely existing, 

 potentially so ; because, if so, the subject in which I am 

 would be sustained potentially, and so successively ad in- 

 Jinitum, which is impossible. I am, therefore, a being 

 existing potentially to all particular substances existing under 

 particular forms." 



" In my nature there is not found form, which is from me 



* Museum Hermeticum, p. 403. 

 t I imagine this word to imply better than any I know the state of ready 

 excitability to impressions. 



