THE RAKER METALS AND THEIR ALLOYS. 499 



"the greater the number of attributes that attach to anything, the 

 more real that thing is." 1 Many of the less-known metals are very 

 real to me, and I want them to be so to you; listen to me, then, as 

 speaking for my silent metallic friends, while I try to secure for them 

 your sympathy, esteem, and intuitive perception of their beanty. 



First, as regards their origin and early history. I fully share Mr. 

 Lockyer's belief as to their origin, and think that a future generation 

 will speak of the evolution of metals as we now do of that of animals, 

 and that observers will naturally turn to the sun as the field in which 

 this evolution can best be studied. 



To the alchemists metals were almost sentient; they treated them 

 as if they were living beings, and had an elaborate pharmacopoeia of 

 "medicines" which they freely administered to metals in the hope of 

 perfecting their constitution. If the alchemists constantly drew par- 

 allels between living thiDgs and metals, it is not because they were 

 ignorant, but because they recognized in metals the possession of attri- 

 butes which closely resemble those organisms. "The first alchemists 

 were gnostics, and the old beliefs of Egypt blended with those of 

 Ghaldea in the second and third centuries. The old metals of the 

 Egyptians represented men, and this is probably the origin of the 

 homunculns of the middle ages, the notion of the creative power of 

 metals and that of life being confounded in the same symbol." 2 



Thus Albertus Magnus traces the influence of congenital defects in 

 the generation of metals and of animals, and Basil Valentine symbol- 

 izes the loss of metalline character, which we now know is due to 

 oxidation, to tbe escape from the metal of an indestructable spirit which 

 flies away aud becomes a soul. On the other hand, the "reduction" of 

 metals from their oxides was supposed to give the metals a new exist- 

 ence. :! A poem of the thirteenth century well embodies this belief in 

 the analogies between men and metals, in the quaint lines: 



Horns ont l'estre comrue metaulx, 

 Vie et augment des vegetaulx. 

 Instinct et sens coinrne les bruts, 

 Esprit comrae ange en attributs. 



'Men have being" — constitution — like metals; you see how closely 

 metals and life were connected in the minds of the alchemists, and we 

 inherit their traditions. 



" Who said these old renowns, dead long ago, could make me forget 

 the living worldj " are words which Browning places in the lips of 

 Paracelsus, and we metallurgists are not likely to forget the living 



^otze, "Metaphysic," section 49, quoted by IUingwortb. " Personality, Human 

 and Divine." Bampton Lectures, 1894, page 43. 



a Berthelot, Les Origines de PAlchimie, 1885 page 60. 



3 Les Remonstrances ou la Coinplainte de Nature a l'Alcbymiste Errant. Attributed 

 to Jehan de Meuug, wbo with Guillaume de Lorris wrote the Roman de la Rose. M. 

 Meon, the editor of the edition of 1814 of this celebrated work, doubts, however, 

 whether the attribution of the complainte de nature, to Meung is correct. 



