292 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



had become a part of the creed of the Church. Martin Luther 

 was especially drawn to believe in the alchemistic doctrine of 

 transmutation by this analogy. The Bible was everywhere used, 

 both among Protestants and Catholics, in support of these mystic 

 adulterations of science, and one writer, as late as 1751, based his 

 alchemistic arguments on more than a hundred passages of Script- 

 ure. As an example of this sort of reasoning, we have a proof 

 that the elect will preserve the philosopher's stone until the last 

 judgment, drawn from a passage in St. Paul's Epistle to the Co- 

 rinthians, " This treasure have we in earthen vessels." 



The greatest thinkers devoted themselves to adding new in- 

 gredients to this strange mixture of scientific and theologic 

 thought ; the Catholic philosophy of Thomas Aquinas, the Prot- 

 estant mysticism of Jacob Boehme, and the alchemistic reveries 

 of Basil Valentine were all cast into this seething mass. 



And when alchemy in its old form had been discredited, we 

 find scriptural arguments no less perverse and even comical used 

 on the other side. As an example of this, just before the great 

 discoveries by Stahl, we find the valuable scientific efforts of 

 Becher opposed with the following syllogism : " King Solomon, 

 according to the Scriptures, possessed the united wisdom of heaven 

 and earth ; but King Solomon knew nothing about alchemy (or 

 chemistry in the form which then existed), and sent his vessels to 

 Ophir to seek gold, and levied taxes upon his subjects ; ergo 

 alchemy (or chemistry) has no reality or truth." And we find 

 that Becher is absolutely turned away from his labors, and obliged 

 to devote himself to proving that Solomon used more money than 

 he possibly could have obtained from Ophir or his subjects, and 

 therefore that he must have possessed a knowledge of chemical 

 methods and the philosopher's stone as the result of them.* 



* For an extract from Agrippa's Occulta Philosophia giving examples of the way in which 

 mystical names were obtained from the Bible, see Rydberg, Magic of the Middle Ages, pp. 

 143 et seq. For the germs of many mystic beliefs regarding number and the like, which 

 were incorporated into mediaeval theology, see Zeller, Plato and the Older Academy, English 

 translation pp. 254 and 572, and elsewhere. As to the connection of spiritual things with 

 inorganic Nature in relation to chemistry, see Eicken, p. 634. On the injury to science 

 wrought by Platonism acting through mediasval theology, see Hoefer, Histoire de la Chimie, 

 vol. i, p. 90. As to the influence of mysticism upon strong men in science, see Hoefer ; 

 also Kopp, Geschichte der Alchemie, vol. i, p. 211. For a very curious Catholic treatise on 

 sacred numbers, see the Abbe Auber, Symbolisrue Religieux, Paris, 1870 ; and for an 

 equally important Protestant work, see Samuell, Seven the Sacred Number, London, 1887. 

 It is interesting to note that the latter writer, having been forced to gtve up the seven 

 planets, consoles himself with the statement that " The earth is the seventh planet, count- 

 ing from Neptune and calling the asteroids one " (see p. 426). For the clectrum magicum, 

 the seven metals composing it, and its wonderful qualities, see extracts from Paracelsus's 

 writings in Hartman's Life of Paracelsus, London, 1887, pp. 169 et seq. For Basil Valen- 

 tine's view, see Hoefer, vol. i. pp. 453^65; Schmieder, Geschichte der Alchemie, pp. 197- 

 209 ; Allgemeine deutsche Biographie, article Basilius. For the discussions referred to on 



