OLD AND NEW ALCHEMY 257 



man should have been at once so profuse and so profound. 

 This structure of falsehood has, indeed, a nucleus of truth. 

 M. Berthelot, at any rate, believes that he can recognize 

 such a nucleus in some Arabic manuscripts preserved in 

 the public libraries of Paris and Leyden. They are suffi- 

 ciently primitive in purport to have been composed in the 

 eighth century; their style is of the mystical kind proper 

 to occultists ; they lay stress on the planetary relationships 

 of metals, and, in fact, show no appreciable deviation from 

 the Byzantine standpoint. They might then very well have 

 been indited by a real though insignificant Geber, ampli- 

 fied by subsequent accretions to the imposing dimensions of 

 the author of the Summa Perfections. Basilius Valen- 

 tinus, on the other hand, the final product of the alchemistic 

 tradition, appears to have been a pure and gratuitous inven- 

 tion. The successful exertion of the mythopoeic faculty by 

 which he came into being took effect in the full daylight of 

 the seventeenth century. He was stated to have been born 

 in the Upper Rhenish provinces late in the fourteenth 

 century, to have traveled long in Spain, England, and the 

 Low Countries, and to have ultimately entered a Benedict- 

 ine convent somewhere in Germany. His rumored learning 

 excited the curiosity of the Emperor Maximilian, who 

 vainly attempted to localize his retreat. It was only after 

 a hundred years had passed that the obscurity seemed to 

 dissipate. A certain Johannes Tholde published at Frank- 

 enhausen, early in the seventeenth century, a collection of 

 works by the author, or authors, styled Basilius Valentinus. 

 They were remarkable enough to justify his high reputa- 

 tion. They showed him to have possessed great technical 

 skill; they completed the theory of the composition of 

 metals by adding "salt" (any principle of solidification) 

 to the mercury and sulphur previously admitted as their 

 ingredients; while a tract entitled "The Triumphal Car 

 of Antimony" described several preparations of that metal 

 clearly intended for internal use. These recipes are con- 

 sidered to have paved the way for the advent of true medic- 

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