ELISHA MITCHELL SCIENTIFIC SOCIETY 3 
was, the more mercury entered into its composition. If only 
something could be found which would remove the grossness 
from these essences, some unchanging, all-powerful essence, 
which, because of their search for it, gradually became 
known as the ‘philosophers’ stone,’ then the baser metals 
might be transmuted into the noble gold when the sulphur 
and mercury were perfectly balanced and free from all dis- 
tempers. 
As has been said, these principles entering, all or some of 
them, into every known substance, were supposed to be not 
necessarily capable of individual existence themselves. This 
was the view held by the followers of Aristotle. With the. 
reaction against the domination of the scholiasts, other views 
began to be held. It was Boyle who first gave voice to these 
changed views in his ‘Sceptical Chymist’ (1661). He defined 
elements as ‘‘certain primitive bodies, which, not being 
made of any other bodies, or of one another, are the in 
gredients of which all those called perfectly mixed bodies are 
immediately compounded, and into which they are ultimately 
resolved.” He, however, did not believe himself warranted, 
from the knowledge then possessed, in clainting the positive 
existence of such elements. 
But little attention was paid to the subject by the subse- 
quent chemists. The phlogistics were too much occupied 
with their theory of combustion, and none could see the bear- 
ing of this question and its importance to exact science. _ 
Macquer, in his ‘Dictionary of Chemistry’ (1777), words his 
definition as follows: ‘‘Those bodies are called elements 
which are so simple that they cannot by any known means be 
decomposed or even altered and which also enter as principles 
or constituent parts, into the combination of other bodies,” 
To this he adds: ‘‘The bodies in which this simplicity has 
been observed are fire, air and purest earth.” In all of this 
may be observed the resolution of observed forms of matter 
into primal principles following the dream of Lucretius and 
the early Epicurean philosophers, a dream abandoned by the 
atomic school following, though largely holding to the same 
definition. 
