THE OLD AND THE NEW ALCHEMY 1 



1. Les Origines de I'Alchimie. Par M. BERTHELOT. Paris: 

 Georges Steinheil. 1885. 



2. Die Alchemie in alter er und neuerer Zeit. Von HERMANN KOPP. 

 Heidelberg: Carl Winter. 1886. 



3. Histoire de la Philosophic Hermetique. Par N. LENGLET DU 

 FRESNOY. 3 vols. Paris. 1742. 



4. Das Letzte AufflacJcern der Alchemie in Deutschland. Von E. 

 SCHULTZE. Leipzig. 1897. 



5. Lives of Alchemistical Philosophers. By ARTHUR EDWARD 

 WAITE. London. 1888. 



6. 'Radio- Active Transformations. By E. RUTHERFORD, F.R.S. 

 London: A. Constable. 1906. 



TIME does indeed " bring in his revenges." Old Horace 

 knew it, and we are experiencing the truth of his Multa 

 renascentur. Thought, like the planets, has its 'stations 

 and retrogradations. ' Now and again, its course seems 

 not unfitly symbolized by the mystic ouroboros, or coiled 

 serpent. The head has overtaken the tail. Yet we do not 

 really get back to the starting-point. There are no closed 

 circuits in human affairs. The very earth progresses 

 spirally. It wheels round a sun on the march, and returns 

 no more on last year's track. 



Modern physicists have not then reverted to the precise 

 theories of Stephanus of Alexandria, still less to the prac- 

 tices, however legitimate in their time, of Friar Bacon or 

 Cornelius Agrippa. But they have gained a point of view 

 from which the search for the philosopher's stone appears 

 less aberrant from reason than it did to their confident 

 predecessors in the Victorian era. The attitude of science 

 has been notably changed by the disclosure of electronic 

 activities. Possibilities are now taken into serious account 



Published in The Edinburgh Eeview for January, 1907. 

 245 



