4 RISE AND PROGRESS 



Studded*. Hut wo cannot, from these instances, conclude ; 

 clu-mi-tiN v\,i> then cultivated as a separate branch of science, or 

 distinguished in its application, from a variety of other arts which 

 must have been exercised for the support and convenience of human 

 life. All of these had probably some dependence on chemical 

 principles, but they were then, as they are at present, practised 

 by the several arti>ts without their having any theoretical know- 

 ledge of their respective employments. Nor can we pay much 

 attention in this inquiry to the obscure accounts which are given of 

 the two great Egyptian philosophers, Hermes the elder, supposed 

 to be the same with Mizraim, grandson of Noah ; and Hermes, 

 surnamed Trismegistus, the younger, from whom chemistry has by 

 some been affectedly called the Hermetic art. 



The chemical skill of Moses, displayed in his burning, reducing 

 to an impalpable powder, and rendering potable the golden calf in 

 the wilderness, has been generally extolled by writers on this sub- 

 ject ; and constantly adduced as a proof of the then flourishing 

 state of chemistry amongst the Egyptians, in whose learning he is 

 said to have been well versed. If Moses had really reduced the 

 gold of which the calf consisted, into ashes, by calcining it in the 

 fire ; or made it any other way soluble in water, this instance 

 would have been greatly in point; but neither in Exodus nor in 

 Deuteronomy, where the fact is mentioned, is there any thing said 

 of its being dissolved in water. The enemies of revelation, on 

 the other hand, conceiving it to be impossible to calcine gold, or 

 to render it potable, have produced this account as containing a 

 proof of the want of veracity in the sacred historian. Both sides 

 seem to be in an error ; Stahl, and other chemists, have shewn that 

 it is possible to make gold potable, but we have no reason to coo. 

 elude that Moses either used the process of Stahl, or any other 

 chemical means for effecting the purpose intended " he took the 

 calf which they had made, and burnt it in the fire, and ground it 

 to powder, and strewed it upon the water, and made the children 

 of Israel to drink of it t." Here is not the least intimation given 

 of the gold having been dissolved, chemically speaking, in water ; 

 it was stamped and ground, or, as the Arabic and Syriac versions 



Sr Delaval's ingcnioug Inquiry into the Cause of the Changes of Colours, 

 Pref. LTI. ; and Dutcns' learned Inquiry into the Discoveries attributed to thr 

 Modrnu, p. 241. 



t Eiod. xxxii. 90. 



