102 MEMOIR OF DR. DALTON, AND 



according to fixed laws, but according to man's deservings. 

 The latter was not much carried out, and the first corresponds 

 more closely to the general opinions of these writers. It is a 

 kind of physical mysticism also to confuse elements with each 

 other, and powers with substances, a state corresponding 

 exactly with the mysticism of a more mental character, which 

 confounds the Deity with his creatures, and desires to absorb 

 embodied man in his unembodied creator.* 



The four elements were preserved amongst the Arabians, 

 and their corresponding qualities, hot, cSld, dry, aud moist, 

 and the most wonderful power was given to a mixture of 

 them all ; it was in this way that " Hai Ebn Yokdan was 

 produced without father and mother ; it chanced that a certain 

 mass of earth was so fermented in some period of years, that 

 the four qualities, viz., hot, cold, dry, moist, were so equally 

 mixed, that none of them prevailed over the other."! This 

 was Avicenna's opinion of what was possible. 



Fermentation was a favourite method of explaining difficult 

 phenomena, and is now. As it has now been to a great extent 

 explained, the lovers of the occult will be obliged to seek 

 deeper for their theories. 



We may find then another origin for the mystic mode of 

 viewing matter, as well as for the four elements, as far east 

 as Hindostan, from which the Arabians may have brought it ; 

 but we cannot, with historical certainty, trace it to its home ; 

 and it is possible that these two origins, Asiatic and Egyptian, 

 may have been originally the same. But what is clear to me 

 is, that the style of the alchemist had the same origin as the 



• Whilst this Memoir was being printed, I obtained the " Hours with 

 the Mystics," by Robert Alfred Vaughan, B.A., who says, vol, 1, p. 26; 

 ••mysticism, whether in religion or philosophy, is that form of error which 

 mistakes for a divine manifestation the operations of a merely human faculty." 

 This has no doubt influenced the expressions used above. Hoefer has observed 

 the connection between the religious writers of early centuries, but has not 

 traced it up. 



f The Improvement of Eluman Reason, exhibited in the Life of Hai Ebn 

 Yokdan, by Abu Jaafar Ebn Tophail. Translated by Simon Ockley, A.M. 



