120 DR. R. ANGUS SMITH ON THE 



" Muir^ in ' Sanscrit Texts/ vol. v. p. 402^ refers to the 

 ' Eig-Veda/ x. 129, 4, where Kama is identified with the 

 idea of ''Epo? as the first of all the gods, according to 

 Hesiod. Dr. Muir also refers to the ' Atharva-Veda/ iii. 

 21, 4, where he says hama is distinctly identified with agni, 

 the Sanscrit for ' fire.^ In the Asiatic researches, in an 

 article hy Wilford, in which he identifies the cama or kama 

 of India with the chemia or chemi of Egypt, he says, ' It 

 has been conjectured that the more modern Greeks formed 

 the word chemia from this name of Egypt, whence they 

 derived their first knowledge of Chemistry.'' Gesenius 

 points out the similarity of the Sanscrit ham with the 

 Hebrew.^^ 



Thus Chem is connected with heat from Africa to India, 

 and in a secondary way with an " elixir of life,^^ whilst gra- 

 dually it has been made to mean that science which does so 

 many wonders by means of heat, having reference both to 

 the effects in external nature and the analogous influence 

 in the temper of man and the lower animals. 



We have followed the words far, and everywhere have 

 come upon '' heat •" and we find that there were many 

 chemical operations used in Egypt which required heat, 

 but that the word did not consolidate itself so as to mean 

 a science in Egypt; at least it did not appear to have done 

 so to the earliest writer who is known to have used the 

 word with somewhat o£ our meaning. Firmicus was not a 

 man to understand a science ; besides he was an astrologer^ 

 and the age in which he wrote was one in which the world 

 was getting into confusion ; he could only hear whispers of 

 truths in nature. The discussion on his position in Kopp^s 

 book is interesting. We see also, under the names Zosimus 

 and Democritus, that all of these men had a limited, 

 merely practical and unscientific view of things, behind 

 even what we may suppose to have existed under the very 



