208 THE REVIVAL OF ALCHEMY. 



astrology; medicine was iutluenced by magic; natural history was sub- 

 ject to blind belief in authorities, and scientific chemistry was entirely 

 overwhelmed by the chimeras of alchemy. Kepler and Tycho Brahe, 

 at the court of Rudolph II did not think it beneath their dignity to 

 cast horoscopes for gain and to predict the future by consulting the 

 positions of celestial bodies, even while formulatiug the laws govern- 

 ing their motions. European crowned heads retained astrologers and 

 alchemists as members of their courts. A century later Sir Isaac New- 

 ton dabbled with furnaces and chemicals in true hermetic style; and 

 Leibnitz showed the courage of his convictions by acting as secretary 

 of an alchemical society in Germany. The intluence of superstition 

 on the mental attitude of truly great men decreased with the advance- 

 ment of learning, and when the foundations of scientific chemistry 

 were laid by Priestley, Lavoisier, Scheele, and their contemporaries the 

 doctrines of alchemy were abandoned. And yet not wholly aban- 

 doned, for there seems to have been a small number of persons in all 

 countries who have clung to the hope of realizing transmutation, a 

 hope sustained by the desire to reap the golden reward. This minor- 

 ity rejected the extravagant belief in a life-prolonging elixir, and in 

 the divine origin of tbe profound secrets of the initiated, and sought 

 to appropriate from the growing sciences such discoveries and theories 

 as could be interpreted in favor of transmutation. 

 ■ The printing press has never ceased to issue works devoted to the 

 subject. Some authors have written of a "higher chemistry," and 

 others have sought to reconcile the new doctrines of chemists with 

 the ancient theories of alchemists. As recently as 1832 a German 

 professor wrote a learned volume with the avowed intent of proving 

 the verity of transmutation from historical sources (Schmieder's 

 Geschichte der Alchemic, Halle, 1832). The number of reprints of the 

 grotesque writings of reputed adepts which have appeared since 

 chemistry has become an exact science is surprisingly large, and the 

 fact that they find purchasers indicates a small but zealous class of 

 hermetic students. So eminent a chemist as Sir Humphrey Davy did 

 not hesitate to affirm that some of the doctrines of alchemy are not 

 unphilosophical. 



Recent discoveries in i)hysics, chemistry, and i)sychology have given 

 the disciples of Hermes renewed hopes, and the present i^osition of 

 chemical j)hilosophy has given the fundamental doctrine of alchemy a 

 substantial impetus. The favorite theory of a prima materia, or primary 

 matter, the basis of all the elementary bodies, has received new support 

 by the discoveries of allotropism of the elements, isomerism of organic 

 compounds, the revelations of the spectroscope, the practical demon- 

 strations by Xorman Lockyer, the experiments on the specific heat of 

 gaseous bodies at a high temperature by Mallard and Le Chatelier, the 

 discoveries of Sir William Crookes (as set forth in his monograph on 

 Metaelements), the discovery by Carey Lea of several singular alio- 



