218 COSMOS. 



chemistry, a science for which this race created a new era 

 It must be admitted that alchemistic and new Platonic fan- 

 cies were as much blended with chemistry as astrology with 

 astronomy. The requirements of pharmacy, and the equally 

 urgent demands of the technical arts, led to discoveries which 

 were promoted, sometimes designedly, and sometimes by a 

 happy accident depending upon alchemistical investigation 

 into the study of metallurgy. The labors of Geber, or rather 

 Djaber (Abu-Mussah-Dschafar-al-Kufi), and the much more 

 recent ones of Razes (Abu-Bekr Arrasi), have been attended 

 by the most important results. This period is characterized 

 by the preparation of sulphuric and nitric acids,^ aqua regia, 

 preparations of mercury, and of the oxyds of other metals, and 

 by the knowledge of the alcoholic process of fermentation. t 

 The first scientific foundation, and the subsequent advances of 

 chemistry, are so much the more important, as they imparted 

 a knowledge of the heterogeneous character of matter, and 

 the nature of forces not made manifest by motion, but which 

 now led to the recognition of the importance of comjjosition, 

 no less than to that of the perfectibility of form assumed in 

 accordance with the doctrines of Pythagoras and Plato. Dif- 

 ferences of form and of composition are, however, the elements 

 of all our knowledge of matter — the abstractions which we 

 believe capable, by means of measurement and analysis, of 

 enabling us to comprehend the whole universe. 



It is difficult, at present, to decide what the Arabian chem- 

 ists may have acquired through their acquaintance with In- 

 dian literature (the writings on the Rasayana) ;$ from the 



* The preparation of nitric acid and aqua regia by Djaber (more 

 properly Abu-Mussah-Dschafar) dates back more than five hundred 

 years b^ore Albei'tus Magnus and Raymond Lully, and almost seven 

 hundred years before the Erfurt monk, Basilius Valentinus. The dis- 

 covery of these decomposing (dissolving) acids, which constitutes an 

 epoch in the history of science, was, however, long ascribed to the three 

 last-named experimentalists. 



t For the rules given by Razes for the vinous fermentation of amylum 

 and sugar, and for the distillation of alcohol, see Hofer, Hist, de la 

 Chimie, t. i., p. 325. Although Alexander of Aphrodisias {Joannis 

 Philoponi Grammatici, in libr. de Oeneratione et Interitu Comm., Venet., 

 1527, p. 97), properly speaking, only gives a circumstantial description 

 of distillation from sea water, he also draws attention to the fact that 

 wine may likewise be distilled. This statement is the more remark 

 able, because Aristotle (MeteoroL, ii., 3, p. .^58, Bekker) had advanced 

 the erroneous opinion that in natural evaporation fresh water only ros« 

 from wine, as from the salt water of the sea. 



t The chemistry of the Indians, embracing alchemistic arts, is called 

 raaayana {rasa, juice or fluid, also quicksilver ; and dyana, course or 



