256 MODERN SCIENCE READER 



shroud their origin. Medieval discoverers, far from put- 

 ting forward eager claims to priority in their innovations, 

 sought to give them eclat by passing them off as antique. 

 Enveloping them in the glamour of an established reputa- 

 tion, they fired their darts, so to speak, from under the 

 shield of some Ajax of their choice. The early stages of 

 chemical history hence evade exact inquiry. 



The circumstance is singular and characteristic that the 

 two latest masters in alchemy, like the majority of their 

 far-off precursors, were elaborate impostors. Abu Musa 

 Djabir ben Hal j an, currently known as Geber, had a posi- 

 tion assigned to him in hermetic science not inferior to that 

 rightly occupied by Hipparchus in the history of astronomy. 

 His writings were regarded as canonical; his decisions as 

 indisputable. Rhazes and Avicenna designated him 

 magister magistrorum Cardan extolled him as one of the 

 twelve greatest geniuses the world had seen, and he even 

 now enjoys a certain nebulous fame. Yet his personality 

 was never -quite clearly defined. According to Abulfeda, 

 an Arab geographer of the fourteenth century, he was a 

 native of Harar in Mesopotamia ; his birthplace is elsewhere 

 located in Khorassan; Leo Africanus asserted him to have 

 been a renegade Greek. He is variously spoken of as a 

 Syrian disciple of Khaled, as an Indian prince, and as hav- 

 ing died at Seville in the year 765. An astronomer of the 

 same name, who genuinely flourished in Spain during the 

 twelfth century, has frequently been confounded with him, 

 and he has been credited with the invention of algebra. 

 Nothing is certain except the spuriousness of the numerous 

 tracts and essays circulated under his name. This has 

 been proved by M. Berthelot from the most convincing 

 internal evidence. 1 By a sort of regenerative process, the 

 works and their imaginary author acquired secular renown. 

 They mutually reinforced one another's prestige; for the 

 accumulated productions of successive forgers had at least 

 merit enough to add continually to the wonder that a single 

 1 La Chlmie au Moyen-age, t. i. page 231. 



