mSTORT OF THE ATOMIC THEORY. 1 06 



The method of viewing matter being sufficiently confused 

 by any one of the systems, was not less so when they were 

 united, or rather, I may say, carelessly mixed and confounded. 

 When we add to them an infusion not only of the moral and 

 religious method, but of morals and religion themselves, as 

 elements in the production of results, we have a system of 

 nature which all minds refuse to contemplate with patience, 

 and on which our imagination refuses long to rest, so be- 

 wildering is it to the one, and so wanting in beauty to the 

 other. But in a history of man it will always form an im- 

 portant chapter; as a dissection of the njind it will always 

 have a psychological value, and as a portion of the progress 

 of physics it will never cease to be worth preserving for at 

 least one lesson to the student. 



The Arabian chemists who took the lead in introducing it, 

 acknowledge Geber to be their master, and he composes metals 

 of sulphur and mercury. At the same time he says, " We see 

 no ox transformed into a goat, nor any one species transmuted 

 into another, or by any other artifice so reduced. Therefore, 

 seeing metals differ in themselves, can you transform one into 

 another, according to its species, or of such a species make 

 such a species? This seems to us sufficiently absurd, and 

 remote from the verity of natural principles. For nature 

 perfects metals in a thousand years ; but how can you, in your 

 artifice of transmutation, live a thousand years, seeing you are 

 scarcely able to extend your life to a hundred ?" He considers 

 the work as done by the stars, which cause the generation 

 and corruption, but being ignorant of their power, we cannot 

 use it. " Likewise, also in things natural, this is the order ; 

 it is easier to destroy them than to make them. But we can 

 scarcely destroy gold, how then can we presume to fabricate 

 the same?" 



He was, therefore, not a gold maker, although holding the 

 abstract theory of the possibility of transmuting. His fol- 

 lowers did not follow him in this, and whilst quoting his 

 p 



