THE EEVIVAL OF ALCHEMY. 213 



metal used, and that he depended upon smell and taste for proofs of the 

 carbon compounds. The tongue and the nose are incontestably useful 

 adjuncts to the reagents of a chemical laboratory, but additional tests 

 for ether and acetic acid would have been more conclusive. In Tiff'e- 

 reatt's recent writings he attributes the transmutation of a base metal 

 into the most precious one to the action of the "microbe of gold." 



For a student of chemistry to read, digest, and write down in intelli- 

 gible language, in a limited space, the principles of this new school of 

 chemical philosophers is a difficult task, even for one somewhat familiar 

 with the literature of the ancient alchemists; consequently the follow- 

 ing analysis falls far short of the ideal. It is properly the work of a 

 kabalist, a theosophist, and a magician, proud designations which the 

 writer disclaims. The modern alchemists accept all the traditions of 

 their ancient predecessors, but give them a new significance, and in- 

 terweave the novel phenomena derived from researches in pure science. 

 They claim that during the fourteenth, fifteenth and sixteenth cen- 

 turies the official schools of instruction taught exclusively the physical 

 part of the sciences, and that the metaphysical part (which is the real 

 life and soul of the study) has been rejected under the opprobrious 

 name of occult science. This living aspect of science has, however, 

 been studied in the secret -societies of the initiated, which have pre- 

 served the traditions of the kabala, the mysteries of hermetism, and 

 the practice of transmutation. The study of science is as much a reli- 

 gious question as an intellectual one, and worship at an altar should sus- 

 tain and enlighten the worker in a laboratory. . '' Chemistry, alchemy, 

 and hermetic philosophy form three steps of the ladder which leads the 

 initiated from the laboratory, through artistic realization, to the oratory : 

 Labora, Opera, Ora et InveniesP 



The modern alchemists also maintain that Darwin and his disciples 

 appreciated but a small part of the great doctrine of evolution, which 

 should be applied to the chemical elements as well as to living beings. 

 The starting point in the evolution of elements is the ether (the uni 

 versal astral fluid of the kabalists), the infinitely divisible particles of 

 which form chemical atoms by agglomeration. This ether is condensed 

 energy, and hence all matter is resolved into energy. 



Energy, matter, and motion form a trinity analogous to the Divine 

 Trinity, one in substance, three in appearance. Matter is one in kind, 

 and the diversity of chemical bodies results from differences in group 

 ing and in motions of the constituent particles. Intelligence is allied 

 in a mysterious way with matter and energy, forming another trinity. 

 Every atom centralizes intelligence, is in itself a living entity, and by 

 a process of self-evolution yields the diverse natural bodies. " Ether 

 is the father of hydrogen, from which are derived oxygen, nitrogen, 

 carbon, etc., combinations due to etheric vortices." " Perhaps helium 

 should precede hydrogen." This view of matter as a living entity is 

 greatly insisted on, and the doctrine is called Hylozoism. An alchem 



