CHAPTER VII. 



SEEKING THE PHILOSOPHERS' STONE. 



"The mischief a secret any of them know, above the con- 

 suming of coals and drawing of usquebaugh ! Howsoever they 

 may pretend, under the specious names of Geber, Arnold, Lully 

 or Bombast von Hohenheim, to commit miracles in art and 

 treason against nature! As if the title of Philosopher, that 

 creature of glory, were to be fetched out of a furnace." 



Ben Jettison's Masque. 



JLBRECHT YON BOLLSTADT, commonly known as 

 Albertus Magnus, the great oracle of savants in the 

 Middle Ages, enumerated the conditions to be ob- 

 served by persons seeking the Philosophers' stone; 



in the treatise De Alchimia, written in the thirteenth century, 



he says : 



I. The alchemist should be discreet and silent, revealing 



to no one the results of his operations. 

 He should reside in a private house, in an isolated 



situation, containing two or three rooms set apart 



for the experiments. 

 He should choose his days and hours for labor with 



discretion. 



He should have patience, diligence and perseverance. 

 He should perform according to fixed rules tritura- 



tion, sublimation, fixation, calcination, solution, 



distillation and coagulation. 



62 



II. 



III. 



IV. 

 V. 



