essentially dependent on the efficacy of prayers, which prayers were at first used only to determine its duration. In the seventeenth century, the transformation of alchemistical ideas into religious notions had become so complete, that alchemistical expressions were frequently employed to designate religious ideas. In the writings of the mystics (for example, in those of the enthusiastic Jacob Böhme, 1624), the term "philosopher's stone" no longer signifies the substance which transmutes baser metals into gold, but "conversion"; the clay furnace is "the earthly body"; and the green lion is "the Lion of David."

Previous to the invention of printing, it was easy for an alchemist to keep secret his discoveries. He exchanged them only for the observations of other adepts. The chemical processes which they published are clearly and intelligibly described, in so far, at least, as they are not such as to lead to any practical result in reference to the chief object of their search; but they expressed their views, and described their labors, on the subject of "the grand arcanum" in figurative language and in mysterious symbols. They propounded in an unintelligible language that which, in their own minds, was only the faint dawn of an idea.

That which chiefly excites our wonder is, that the existence of the philosopher's stone should have been regarded, for so many centuries, as a truth established beyond all doubt, while yet no one possessed it, and each adept only maintained that it was in the possession of another.

Who, indeed, could entertain a doubt, after Van Helmont had declared, in 1618, that on several occasions there had been sent to him, from an unknown hand, one-fourth of a grain of the precious material, with which he had converted into pure gold eight ounces of quicksilver? Did not Helvétius, the distinguished body physician to the Prince of Orange, and the bitter opponent of alchemy, himself relate, in his "Vitulus Aureus quem Mundus Adorat et Orat" (1667), that he had obtained the most convincing proofs of the existence of the philosopher's stone? For he, the skeptic, had received, from a stranger, a fragment of the size of half a rape seed, and therewith, in presence of his wife and son, had transmuted six drams of lead into gold, which stood the tests applied to it by the warden of the mint at the Hague! Were not two pounds and a half of quicksilver converted into pure gold, of which a large medal was struck (Kopp. Geschichte der Chemie, IV. 171), with the figure of the God of Day (Sol or

gold) holding the caduceus of Mercury, to indicate the origin of the precious metal, and the legend "Divina Metamorphosis Exhibita Praga," XV. Jan., An. MDCXLVII? in "Præsentia Sac. Cæs. Maj. Ferdinandi Tertü," etc.? Was not this done at Prague, in presence of the Emperor Ferdinand III. (1637-1657) by the Burgomaster, Count von Russ, with the aid of one grain of a red powder, which he had received from a certain Richthausen, and he again from an unknown? (According to J. F. Gmelin, this medal was still extant in 1797, in the treasury at Vienna.) The Landgrave of Hesse, Darmstadt also, Ernst Ludwig, as we are told by the alchemists, received, from an unknown hand, a packet containing red and white tincture, with directions for their use. Ducats were coined of the gold which had been made from lead by this means, and from the silver thus obtained were coined the Hessian specie dollars" of 1717, on which is the legend, "Sic Deo Placuit in Tribulationibus." (Kopp. II. 172.)

It can hardly be doubted that the amateurs of alchemy in these cases experienced something similar to that which befell the distinguished and highly deserving professor of theology, Semler, in Halle (1791), who occupied himself at one time in experiments with a then renowned universal medicine, which was offered for sale under the name of atmospheric salt (Luftsalz) by a certain Baron von Hirsch. Semler thought he had discovered that gold grew, or was produced in this salt when kept warm and moist. He sent, in 1787, a portion of the salt, with the gold grown in it to the Academy of Sciences, at Berlin. Klaproth, who examined it, found it to contain glauber salt (sulphate of soda) and sulphate of magnesia, enveloped in a magna," and gold leaf in considerable quantity. Semler also sent to Klaproth some of the salt in which no gold had yet grown, and a liquor which contained the germ of gold, and which impregnated the atmospheric salt in a proper warm temperature." It appeared, however, that the salt was already mixed with gold. Semler firmly believed in the production of the gold. In 1788 he wrote, Two glasses are bearing gold. Every five or six days I remove it; each time about twelve to fifteen grains. Two or three other glasses are in progress, and the gold blooms out below." A new portion which was sent to Klaproth in leaves of from four to nine square inches proved that the gold plant had unfortunately degenerated, for it now bore adulterated gold or pinchbeck. At last the matter was cleared up. Semler's servant, who had to

g

take care of the hothouse, had introduced gold into the glasses, in order to give his master pleasure; but being on one occasion prevented from doing so himself, his wife undertook the business; but she was of opinion that pinchbeck leaf was much cheaper and would serve the purpose equally well.

During the sixteenth century alchemists were found in the courts of all princes. The Emperor Rudolph II. and the Elector Palatine Frederick were known as patrons of alchemy. Men of all ranks studied transmutation, and strove to attain possession of the grand arcanum. Just as in the present day vast sums are expended by princes, private persons, and associations in mining enterprises for the discovery of metallic ores, of coal, or of strata of salt, so were vast sums squandered in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries for the researches deemed necessary in order to discover the philosopher's stone. A multitude of adventurers appeared, who endeavored, at the courts of the great and mighty, to pass for adepts, that is, possessors of the secret; but this was a dangerous game, for those who at one court, or at another, succeeded, by dexterously managed transmutations, in establishing their character as adepts, and carried off honors and riches as their reward, were sure finally to fail elsewhere; and their end commonly was, to be hung in a robe covered with gold leaf on a gallows adorned in a like manner. Those, again, whose imposture could not be proved, expiated the fatal honor of being believed to possess the philosopher's stone, under the hands of covetous princes, by imprisonment and tortures. Indeed, the cruel treatment which such adventurers experienced was regarded as the strongest proof of the truth of their art.*

The great (Francis) Bacon, Benedict Spinoza, and Leibnitz believed in the philosopher's stone, and in the possibility of the transmutation of metals; and the decisions of Faculties of Jurisprudence prove how deep and how widely extended these ideas had at that period become. The Faculty of Law in Leipsic declared in 1580, in their judgment against David Beuther, that he was proved to possess the knowledge of the philosopher's stone; and the same faculty, in 1725, gave a decision in the affair of the Countess Anna Sophia von Erbach against her husband, Count Frederick Charles von Erbach. The lady had granted protection, in her castle of Frankenstein, to a fugitive, who was pursued and hunted like a wild beast; and he, who was an adept,

* Kopp.

had, to show his gratitude, converted the silver plate of the countess into gold. The count claimed the half of it, because the increase in its value had been obtained on his territory, and under coverture. But the faculty decided against him, because the object claimed had been, before its conversion into gold, the property of the countess, and she could not lose her right of property in it by the transmutation.

In our day, men are only too much disposed to regard the views of the disciples and followers of the Arabian school, and of the late alchemists, on the subject of transmutation of metals, as a mere hallucination of the human mind, and, strangely enough, to lament it. But the idea of the variable and changeable corresponds to universal experience, and always precedes that of the unchangeable. The notion of bodies, chemically simple, was first firmly established in the science by the introduction of the Daltonian doctrine, which admits the existence of solid particles, not further divisible, or atoms. But the ideas connected with this view are so little in accordance with our experience of nature, that no chemist of the present day holds the metals, absolutely, for simple, undecomposable bodies, for true elements. Only a few years since, Berzelius was firmly convinced of the compound nature of nitrogen, chlorine, bromine, and iodine; and we allow our so-called simple substances to pass for such, not because we know that they are in reality undecomposable, but because they are as yet undecomposed; that is, because we cannot yet demonstrate their decomposability, so as to satisfy the requirements of science. But we all hold it possible that this may be done to-morrow. In the year 1807, the alkalies, alkaline earths, and earths proper, were regarded as simple bodies, till Davy demonstrated that they were compounds of metals with oxygen.

In the last twenty-five years of the preceding century, many of the most distinguished philosophers believed in the transmutation of water into earth. Indeed, the belief was so widely prevalent, that Lavoisier, the greatest chemist of his day, thought it advisable, in a series of beautiful experiments, to submit to investigation the grounds on which it rested, and to point out their fallacy. Such notions as that of the production of lime during the incubation of eggs, and of iron and metallic oxides in the animal and vegetable vital processes, have found, even in the present century, acute and enthusiastic defenders.

It is the prevailing ignorance of chemistry, and especially of its history, which is the source of the very ludicrous and excessive estimation of ourselves, with which many look back on the age of alchemy; as if it were possible or even conceivable that for more than a thousand years the most learned and acute men, such as Francis Bacon, Spinoza, and Leibnitz, could have regarded as true and well-founded an opinion void of all foundation. On the contrary, must we not suppose, as a matter beyond a doubt, that the idea of the transmutability of metals stood in the most perfect harmony with all the observation and all the knowledge of that age, and in contradiction to none of these?

In the first stage of the development of science, the alchemists could not possibly have any other notions of the nature of metals than those which they actually held. No others were admissible or even possible; and their views were consequently, by natural law, inevitable. Without these ideas, chemistry would not now stand in its present perfection; and in order to call that science into existence, and in the course of fifteen hundred or two thousand years to bring it to the point which it has now reached, it would have been necessary to create the science anew. We hear it said that the idea of the philosopher's stone was an error; but all our views have been developed from errors, and that which to-day we regard as truth in chemistry, may, perhaps, before to-morrow, be recognized as a fallacy.

Alchemy was never at any time anything different from chemistry. It is utterly unjust to confound it, as is generally done, with the goldmaking of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Among the alchemists there was always to be found a nucleus of genuine philosophers, who often deceived themselves in their theoretical views; whereas the goldmakers, properly so called, knowingly deceived both themselves and others. Alchemy was the pure science, goldmaking included all those processes in which chemistry was technically applied. The achievements of such alchemists as Glauber, Böttger, and Kunkel, in this direction, may be boldly compared to the greatest discoveries of our century.

From "Letters on Chemistry.»