66 THE LIFE AND LEGEND OF MICHAEL SCOT 



medicine and in alchemy. Leaving for the present 

 what may hereafter be said of his name and fame as 

 a physician, let us examine the origin and nature of 

 his work as a student of the Arabian chemistry. 

 We have reached what would seem to be the 

 proper moment for such an inquiry. The treatises 

 of Michael Scot on this subject are not dated 

 indeed, but their form shows them to belong to the 

 epoch of his work as a translator. They were 

 therefore probably produced during the period of 

 his residence at Toledo, and as there is a long 

 interval, otherwise unaccounted for, between 1210, 

 when the Ahhreviatio Avicenna appeared, and the 

 date of his next publication some seven years 

 later, this blank cannot be better filled than 

 by supposing that it was during these years he 

 found time for the study of alchemy, and for the 

 translation or composition of the writings in that 

 branch of science which still bear his name. 



In this, as in almost all his other studies, 

 Michael Scot sat at the feet of Eastern masters. 

 But the Arabians themselves had derived their 

 chemical science, at least in its first principles and 

 primitive processes, from still older peoples. If we 

 are to understand the progress of human thought in 

 this science we must trace it from the beginning, 

 following again that beaten track of tradition by 

 which not physiognomy and alchemy alone, but 

 almost all the secrets of early times, have reached 

 the modern world. 



Primitive chemistry was closely connected with 

 the still older art of metallurgy, out of which it 

 arose by a natural process of development. Those 

 who worked with ores soon discovered the secret of 



