MODERN ALCHEMY. 139 



If "art can beget bees. . . . out of the carcasses and 

 dung of creatures/' why, the production of gold out of 

 lead ought to be, in comparison, a simple task, for, cer- 

 tainly, a bee is a more complicated structure than a metal. 

 But Surly is proof against the subtleties of Subtle, and 

 says: 



" That alchemy is a pretty kind of game 

 Somewhat like tricks o' the cards, to cheat a man 

 With charming;" and so, in truth it was; 



that wonderful transmuting stone still evaded the mind and 

 hand of man to find. 



The years rolled on; alchemy, glided into chemistry, and 

 the search for the one simple perfect thing capable of trans- 

 muting by its touch one element into another became itself 

 transmuted into the study of " how changes take place in the 

 combinations of the unchanging," the unchanging things 

 being what the chemists called the elements of matter, gold, 

 iron, copper and the like. The alchemists, fanatics, knaves, 

 or knavish-fanatics, gave place little by little to investigat- 

 ing men of another type, keen-minded, accurate, and con- 

 servative in their judgments; pre-eminently, men who did 

 not believe in fairy-tales. Robert Boyle in 1681 in the title 

 of his book " The Skyptical Chymist" defines, in general, 

 the character of all succeeding chemists, for " skyptical " 

 they have always been, beyond, even, the followers of any 

 other science. Beginning with Boyle, these men gradually 

 displaced the alchemical "simple, perfect essence" by a 

 thorough-going belief in the existence of from seventy to 

 eighty elements which they found it impossible to break 

 down into simpler bodies, and out of which in their various 

 combinations the world of matter is made. These elements 

 were undecomposable, unchanging, simple things. It is true 



