TRANSMUTATION OF THE METALS . 8l 



regarded by the best authorities as spurious the evi- 

 dence that they were the work of a far later age being 

 irrefragable. 



Several writers have taken the ground that the alchemi- 

 cal treatises which have come down to us from the early 

 writers on the subject, are purely allegorical and do not 

 relate to material things, but to the principles of a higher 

 religion which, in those days, it was dangerous to expound 

 in plain language. One or two elaborate works and several 

 articles supporting this view have been published, but the 

 common-sense reader who will glance through the im- 

 mense collection of alchemical tracts gathered together by 

 Mangetus in two folio volumes of a thousand pages each, 

 will rise from such examination, very thoroughly convinced 

 that it was the actual metal gold, and the fabled universal 

 medicine that these writers had in view. 



There can be little doubt that Geber, Roger Bacon, 

 Albertus Magnus, Raymond Lully, Helvetius, Van Hel- 

 mont, Basil Valentine, and others, describe very substan- 

 tial things with a minuteness of detail which leaves no 

 room for doubt as to their materiality though we cannot 

 always be sure of their identity. 



Some confusion of thought has been caused by the 

 difference which has been made between the terms alchemy 

 and chemistry and their applications. The word alcJiemy 

 is simply the word chemistry with the Arabic word al, 

 which signifies the, prefixed, and the history of alchemy is 

 really the history of chemistry wild and erratic in its 

 beginnings, and giving rise to strange hopes and still 

 stranger theories, but ever working along the line of dis- 

 covery and progress. And, although many of the profes- 

 sional chemists or alchemists of the middle ages were 



