14 VITALISM AND SCHOLASTICISM 



in an even more crude and chaotic condition 

 than it is to-day, the chemists, or, as they were 

 then called, the alchemists, believed that there 

 was a materia prima, a simple essence out of 

 which all existing substances were built. And 

 this being the case they held that there was no 

 real reason why any one substance might not 

 be turned into any other, no reason, for ex- 

 ample, why lead should not be transmuted into 

 gold. Stripped of all its gorgeous imagery, 

 deprived of its Red Dragon and the other 

 fanciful terms which it brought into its nomen- 

 clature, this was the underlying theory which 

 dominated all the work of the alchemists. This 

 domination continued until 1661, when Robert 

 Boyle "The Father of Chemistry and the uncle 

 of the Earl of Cork," as his monumental in- 

 scription styles him published his " Skyptical 

 Chymist," and turned men's minds to the 

 conception of unalterable and ab initio distinct 

 elements. And as time went on and new dis- 

 coveries were made, men laughed at the follies 

 of the alchemists and wondered that any 

 persons could have been so foolish as to imagine 

 that there was really only one kind of basal 

 principle of which the things that are were 

 various and differing manifestations. 

 Chemical So we were taught that there were seventy 

 elements to eighty chemical elements, and that each of 



