THE PHILOSOPHER'S STONE. 



solid metals, gold and silver, dissolved in clear 

 fluids, and subsequently recovered from them, 

 might well be excused for thinking that no 

 limits were set to human powers in this direc- 

 tion. 



The great lesson taught by modern chemical 

 science was that things are what they are, 

 and cannot be made into anything else ; that 

 silver may be dissolved and re-precipitated, 

 combined with other substances and separated 

 from them again, appearing sometimes in a 

 solid and opaque form, sometimes liquid and 

 transparent, sometimes as crystals, and some- 

 times metallic ; but that through all the 

 changes there is always present, in whatever 

 forms, exactly the same amount of silver as at 

 first, and that by proper means exactly this 

 quantity of silver can be recovered. Out of a 

 hundredweight of silver not a grain can be 

 changed into any other metal, nor a grain of 

 any other metal changed into it. 



The structure of the things in the world 

 was enormously simplified by finding that all 

 the complicated compounds which form our 

 environment could be analysed into (at that 

 time) sixty or seventy simple substances called 

 elements, which, by their combination in differ- 

 ent groups and proportions, formed the varied 

 assortment of substances among which we live. 



And the more nearly this task of simplifica- 

 tion became completed, the stronger grew the 



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