602 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



themselves. And the consideration of the subject which such exam- 

 ples would afford, could not fail to hasten the adoption of what I am 

 fairly entitled to call, the Natural, in place of the present Artificial 

 Treatment of the body after death. — Contemporary Review. 



♦ »» 



THE FUTURE OF ALCHEMY. 



Br CHAELES FEOEBEL. 



THERE are few ideas more fatal to the exercise of that prophetic 

 sight, by which we hope to penetrate the uncertainty of the 

 what-is-to be, and distinguish the dark forms of the future, than the 

 two notions : that history repeats itself, and that any form of feeling, 

 of thought, or of motive, when once extinguished, must forever remain 

 so. Though widely accepted, these two notions evidently contradict 

 each other, and this contradiction is in itself a sufficient proof of their 

 necessary mutual limitation. Yet, when limited by comparison, the 

 two ideas find a joint expression in the moral law, that while infalli- 

 bility is not of the human mind, and while all our views and forms of 

 mental activity enshrine but a spirit of verity in a clay of illusion, it is 

 only this body of error which the scythe of Time consigns to the grave, 

 while the immortal soul of truth lives on. 



Some centuries ago, the system of ideas known to history as Al- 

 chemy held universal sway over the minds of men ; now there are 

 none, among the cultivated at least, who dare to defend its assertions. 

 And yet we may inquire what there was in these ideas that so com- 

 mended them to men's minds, that at a time their authority was almost 

 beyond dispute. What, we may ask, was the soul of truth, the im- 

 mortal part, in the day-dreams of wealth, of power and of beauty, of 

 magic and mystery, which formed the erroneous body of alchemistic 

 belief? 



The opinion most widely and popularly entertained at the present 

 time ascribes to the alchemistical pursuits of the middle ages a mixed 

 character : it holds the aim of alchemy to have mainly consisted in 

 the transmutation of the baser metals into gold ; it regards the alche- 

 mist as a man who, intensely selfish in his purpose, bore either the 

 character of the unreasoning, visionary dreamer, of the magician mov- 

 ing among the phantoms of superstition, or of the charlatan and cheat 

 living upon the credulity of the avaricious, and who sought, in the 

 application of an exceedingly limited stock of scientific knowledge, 

 the means for the accomplishment of his ends. 



But, to the thoughtful student of history — not the history of po- 

 litical events, it is true, nor the history of science, or of any other iso- 

 lated and abstract phase of human activity, but of history in its 

 highest conception; a history which seeks and finds, in each of the 



