604 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY, 



rnedan conquerors, the alliance of these pursuits was further strength- 

 ened by the fatalism of the Arabian. Seeking for the philosopher's 

 stone an ideal of material perfection, and uniting with this pursuit that 

 of the physician, the alchemist was led to regard the imperfection of 

 the baser metals as a disease, the supposed operation of the stone as a 

 process of healing, and to ascribe to it the properties of a universal 

 medicine. Transferred to northern soil, at the time when mediaeval 

 Christianity attained its most exalted development, alchemy became 

 thoroughly infused with the religious spirit of the period and its ten- 

 dency to regard things material as analogous to and symbolical of 

 things spiritual. Passing into the shadow of the cloud and mist-born 

 Northern deities, still hovering over the thrones from which they had 

 been hurled by the Christian angelic host, alchemistic pursuits became 

 involved with the belief in magic and witchcraft. And then the great 

 spiritual revolution which struck at the power of Catholic Rome also 

 weakening the authority of ancient alchemistic views, they became 

 the adroitly-wielded weapons of swindler and charlatan, who were 

 only disarmed when the calm criticism of chemical science disproved 

 the assertions of fraud. 



But, at the time when the belief in the reality of the philosopher's 

 stone was general among the cultivated as well as the ignorant, al- 

 chemistic hypocrisy was not common. More frequently, then, the 

 alchemist was either an excited enthusiast, led astray by the mirage 

 of his hope, or the cautious. commentator who lent the weight of his 

 name merely to give currency to the reports of older authorities. Nor 

 was covetousness always the leading motive of the alchemists. Some 

 of the most illustrious of them apparently persevered in their search 

 for the philosopher's stone without a single sordid thought; many 

 sought to make their pursuit tributary to the healing art ; many also 

 regarded their labor as one of the duties of a life of religious devotion. 



Alchemy is often represented as immature chemical science, but 

 even this view is only partially correct. The essence of science con- 

 sists in experimental investigation ; but, though many of the alchemists 

 made discoveries, and some of them were investigators, the greater 

 number, and some of the most illustrious, were rather men who, born 

 to the habit of religious enthusiasm, and led by a beacon-light from 

 the ideal world across the threshold of reality, only now and then 

 stumbled over a new fact. Closer by far is the relationship subsisting 

 between the alchemy of the past and the chemical technics of to- 

 day. Most generally, the aim of the alchemist was not to discover, 

 but to create. Indeed, alchemy had a constant purpose — the produc- 

 tion of a perfect agent of chemical change — the philosopher's stone. 

 It was a purpose which was never accomplished, an aim which could 

 not possibly be attained — at least, not in the way and time dreamt of 

 by the alchemistic enthusiast, nor by^fche means at his command. 



Most of the arts reward the laborer, who engages in their pursuit, 



