80 THE SEVEN FOLLIES OF SCIENCE 



the image in a looking-glass (to which notion we find 

 several allusions in the evangelists); that they know all 

 things, appeared to men and conversed with them, fell 

 in love with women, had intrigues with them and revealed 

 secrets. From the same fable probably arose that of the 

 Sibyl, who is said to have obtained of Apollo the gift of 

 prophecy, and revealing the will of heaven in return for 

 a like favor. So prone is the roving mind of man to fig- 

 ments, which it can at first idly amuse itself with, and at 

 length fall down and worship." 



This idea of the supernatural origin of the arts perme- 

 ates the ancient mythology which everywhere teaches that 

 men were taught the sacred arts of medicine and chemis- 

 try by gods and demigods. 



Modern science discards all these mythological accounts. 

 Whatever knowledge the ancients acquired of medicine and 

 chemistry was, no doubt, reached along two lines phar- 

 macy and metallurgy. That the pharmacist or apothecary 

 exercised his calling at a very early period we have posi- 

 tive knowledge ; thus in the Book of Ecclesiastes we are 

 told that " dead flies cause the ointment of the apothecary 

 to send forth a stinking savor," and that men at a very 

 early day found out the means of working iron, copper, 

 gold, silver, etc., is evident from the accounts given of 

 Vulcan and Tubalcain, as well as from the remains of old 

 tools and weapons. And that Alchemy, as it is generally 

 understood, is a comparatively modern outgrowth of these 

 two arts, is pretty certain. No mention of the art of con- 

 verting the baser metals into gold, and no account of a 

 universal medicine or elixir of life is to be found in any of 

 the authentic writings of the ancients. Homer, Aristotle, 

 and even Pliny are all silent on the subject, and those 

 writings which treat of the art, and which claim an ancient 

 origin, such as the books of Hermes Trismegistus, are now 



