98 MEMOIR OF DR. DALTON, AND 



CHAPTER V. 



FROM LUCRETIUS TILL THE DECAY OF ALCHEMY. 



Egypt seems to have attained to a knowledge of the qualities 

 of matter never attained in the Greek and Roman empire, 

 and it is highly probable that a more correct theory existed 

 in conformity with the more advanced practice. But it con- 

 cealed its knowledge of science as it concealed its history, and 

 the treatises which profess an Egyptian origin are more unin- 

 telligible than hieroglyphics. One is at first inclined to 

 believe that the mystic mode of writing was simply a result 

 of ignorance, because when the Alexandrian school begins to 

 philosophize, it uses language as clear as it is capable of 

 obtaining, although prevented from great clearness by the 

 mystic nature of its region of thought. But the results of the 

 arts exist to tell us that in the region of actual knowledge 

 they were no triflers, whilst in that of speculation they made 

 such efforts to gain a knowledge of things superhuman, that 

 if they have failed it is not for want of devotion, truth, and 

 energy. 



We have seen matter viewed in various aspects according 

 to the philosophies of the time, and we might almost have 

 added according to the speculations, viz., those of the popular 

 beliefs and the mythologies of the time, when substance was 

 strangely mingled with spirit, and when the gods of the woods 

 were scarcely separated from the woods themselves. Such a 

 view is analogous to the ancient Scandinavian method of look- 

 ing at creation, when they formed the earth from the body of 

 Ymir, and the sea from his blood.* It shews us that the 

 intellect does not readily conceive of mind and matter, of 



* Prose Edda : Mallet's Northern Antiquities. 



