M. M. Pattison Muir

“ The exact investigation of material changes called chemistry rests on the statement that mass, and mass is practically measured by weight, is the one property of what we call matter, the determination whereof enables us to decide whether a change is a combination, or coalescence, of different things, or a separation of one thing into parts. That any part of a material system can be removed without the weight of the portion which remains being less than the original weight of the whole system, is unthinkable, in the present state of our knowledge of material changes. ”

“ There must be something very fascinating and comforting in the alchemical view of nature, as a harmony constructed on one simple plan, which can be grasped as a whole, and also in its details, by the introspective processes of the human intellect; for that conception prevails to-day among those who have not investigated natural occurrences for themselves. The alchemical view of nature still forms the foundation of systems of ethics, of philosophy, of art. It appeals to the innate desire of man to make himself the measure of all things. ”

“ We have learned, in previous chapters, that the central idea of alchemy was expressed in the saying: "Matter must be deprived of its properties in order to draw out its soul." The properties of substances are everything to the modern chemist—indeed, such words as iron, copper, water, and gold are to him merely convenient expressions for certain definable groups of properties—but the phlogisteans regarded the properties of things, including mass, as of secondary importance; they were still trying to get beneath the properties of a thing, to its hypothetical essence, or substance. ”

“ But the desire to make gold must always have been a very powerful incentive in determining men to attempt the laborious discipline of alchemy; and with them, as with all men, the love of money was the root of much evil. When a man became a student of alchemy merely for the purpose of making gold, and failed to make it—as he always did—it was very easy for him to pretend he had succeeded in order that he might really make gold by cheating other people. ”

“ In trying to attach definite meanings to the alchemical accounts of Principles, Elements, and the One Thing, and the directions which the alchemists give for changing one substance into others, we are very apt to be misled by the use of such an expression as the transmutation of the elements. To a chemist that phrase means the change of an element into another element, an element being a definite substance, which no one has been able to produce by the combination of two or more substances unlike itself, or to separate into two or more substances unlike itself. ”

“ I have always regarded two facts as most interesting and instructive: that the doctrine of the essential unity of all things, and the simplicity of natural order, was accepted for centuries by many, I think one may say, by most men, as undoubtedly a true presentation of the divine scheme of things; and, secondly, that in more recent times people were quite as certain of the necessary truth of the doctrine, the exact opposite of the alchemical, that the Creator had divided his creation into portions each of which was independent of all the others. ”

“ Man came to be regarded as the centre of a tremendous and never-ceasing battle, urged between the powers of good and the powers of evil. The sights and sounds of nature were regarded as the vestments, or the voices, of the unseen combatants. Life was at once very real and the mere shadow of a dream. ”

“ I have tried to show that alchemy aimed at giving experimental proof of a certain theory of the whole system of nature, including humanity. The practical culmination of the alchemical quest presented a threefold aspect; the alchemists sought the stone of wisdom, for by gaining that they gained the control of wealth; they sought the universal panacea, for that would give them the power of enjoying wealth and life; they sought the soul of the world, for thereby they could hold communion with spiritual existences, and enjoy the fruition of spiritual life. ”

“ The alchemists went a step further in their classification of things. They asserted that there is One Thing present in all things; that everything is a vehicle for the more or less perfect exhibition of the properties of the One Thing; that there is a Primal Element common to all substances. The final aim of alchemy was to obtain the One Thing, the Primal Element, the Soul of all Things, so purified, not only from all specific substances, but also from all admixture of the four Elements and the three Principles, as to make possible the accomplishment of any transmutation by the use of it. ”

“ The younger students of natural science of to-day are beginning to forget what their fathers told them of the fierce battle which had to be fought, before the upholders of the Darwinian theory of the origin of species were able to convince those for whom the older view, that species are, and always have been, absolutely distinct, had become a matter of supreme scientific, and even ethical, importance. ”

“ The first principle in nature is asserted by Lucretius to be that "Nothing is ever gotten out of nothing." "A thing never returns to nothing, but all things after disruption go back to the first bodies of matter." If there were not imperishable seeds of things, atoms, "first-beginnings of solid singleness," then, Lucretius urges, "infinite time gone by and lapse of days must have eaten up all things that are of mortal body." ”

“ One might suppose it would be easier, and perhaps more profitable, to examine, observe, and experiment, than to turn one's eyes inwards with the hope of discovering exactly "the road followed by the Great Architect of the Universe in the creation of the world." ”

“ There is a substance of a metalline species which looks so cloudy that the universe will have nothing to do with it. Its visible form is vile; it defiles metalline bodies, and no one can readily imagine that the pearly drink of bright Phœbus should spring from thence. Its components are a most pure and tender mercury, a dry incarcerate sulphur, which binds it and restrains fluxation.... ”

“ Forgetting that the statements wherein the men of science of our own time describe the relations between natural events are, and must be, expressed in terms of some general conception, some theory, of these relations; forgetting that the simplest natural occurrence is so complicated that our powers of description are incapable of expressing it completely and accurately; forgetting the uselessness of disconnected facts; we are inclined to overestimate the importance of our own views of nature's ways, and to underestimate the usefulness of the views of our predecessors. ”

“ For when I consider that whatever state a body be put into, or kept in, it obtains or retains that state, assenting to the catholic laws of nature, I cannot think it fit to deny that in this sense the body proposed is in a natural state; but then, upon the same ground, it will he hard to deny but that those bodies which are said to be in a violent state may also be in a natural one, since the violence they are presumed to suffer from outward agents is likewise exercised no otherwise than according to the established laws of universal nature. ”

“ The science of chemistry rests on this law; every quantitative analysis assumes the accuracy, and is a proof of the validity, of it.11
By accepting the accuracy of this generalisation, and using it in every experiment, Lavoisier was able to form a clear mental picture of a chemical change as the separation and combination of homogeneous substances; for, by using the balance, he was able to follow each substance through the maze of changes, to determine when it united with other substances, and when it separated into substances simpler than itself. ”

“ Inasmuch as the alchemical Essence was thought of as the Universal Spirit to whose presence is due whatever degree of perfection any specific substance exhibits, it followed that the more perfect a substance the greater is the quantity of the Essence in it. But even in the most perfect substance found in nature—which substance, the alchemists said, is gold—the Essence is hidden by wrappings of specific properties which prevent the ordinary man from recognising it. ”

“ Again, when mighty legions fill with their movements all parts of the plains, waging the mimicry of war, the glitter lifts itself up to the sky, and the whole earth round gleams with brass, and beneath a noise is raised by the mighty tramplings of men, and the mountains, stricken by the shouting, echo the voices to the stars of heaven, and horsemen fly about, and suddenly wheeling, scour across the middle of the plains, shaking them with the vehemence of their charge. ”

“ In A Paradox of the Natural and Supernatural States of Bodies, Especially of the Air, Boyle says:—"I know that not only in living, but even in inanimate, bodies, of which alone I here discourse, men have universally admitted the famous distinction between the natural and preternatural, or violent state of bodies, and do daily, without the least scruple, found upon it hypotheses and ratiocinations, as if it were most certain that what they call nature had purposely formed bodies in such a determinate state, and were always watchful that they should not by any external violence be put out of it. ”

“ Magic grows, and gathers strength, when men are sure their theory of the universe must be the one true theory, and they see only through the glasses which their theory supplies. "He who knows himself thoroughly knows God and all the mysteries of His nature," says a modern writer on magic. ”

“ As metals, then, possess seed, it is evident how this seed is to be made active; the seed of a plant is quickened by descending into the earth, therefore the seed of metals must be destroyed before it becomes life-producing. "The processes of our art must begin with dissolution of gold; they must terminate in a restoration of the essential quality of gold." "Gold does not easily give up its nature, and will fight for its life; but our agent is strong enough to overcome and kill it, and then it also has power to restore it to life, and to change the lifeless remains into a new and pure body." ”

“ The author of A Brief Guide to the Celestial Ruby speaks thus of the agent—"It is our doorkeeper, our balm, our honey, oil, urine, maydew, mother, egg, secret furnace, oven, true fire, venomous dragon, Theriac, ardent wine, Green Lion, Bird of Hermes, Goose of Hermogenes, two-edged sword in the hand of the Cherub that guards the Tree of Life.... It is our true secret vessel, and the Garden of the Sages in which our sun rises and sets. It is our Royal Mineral, our triumphant vegetable Saturnia, and the magic rod of Hermes, by means of which he assumes any shape he likes." ”

“ The facts that pieces of silver were found in tin and lead mines, and gold was found in silver mines, were adduced as proofs that, as the author of The New Pearl of Great Price says, "Nature is continually at work changing other metals into gold, because, though in a certain sense they are complete in themselves, they have not yet reached the highest perfection of which they are capable, and to which nature has destined them." What nature did in the earth man could accomplish in the workshop. For is not man the crown of the world, the masterpiece of nature, the flower of the universe ”

“ We now know that many compounds exist which are formed by the union of the same quantities by weight of the same elements, and, nevertheless, differ in properties; modern chemistry explains this fact by saying that the properties of a substance depend, not only on the kind of atoms which compose the minute particles of a compound, and the number of atoms of each kind, but also on the mode of arrangement of the atoms.3 The same doctrine was taught by Lucretius, two thousand years ago. ”

“ It is harder to practise virtue than to acquiesce in vice; virtue comes not naturally to man; that he may gain the higher life, he must be helped by grace. Therefore, the task of exalting the purer metals into the perfect gold, of developing the lower order into the higher, is not easy. If Nature does this, she does it slowly and painfully; if the exaltation of the common metals to a higher plane is to be effected rapidly, it can be done only by the help of man."
So far as I can judge from their writings, the argument of the alchemists may be rendered by some such form as the foregoing. ”

“ Since gold was considered to be the most perfect metal, it was self-evident to the alchemical mind that nature must form gold slowly in the earth, must transmute gradually the inferior metals into gold.
"The only thing that distinguishes one metal from another," writes an alchemist who went under the name of Philalethes, "is its degree of maturity, which is, of course, greatest in the most precious metals; the difference between gold and lead is not one of substance, but of digestion; in the baser metal the coction has not been such as to purge out its metallic impurities. ”

“ The founder of that theory, who flourished about 500 B.C., said that every substance is a collocation of a vast number of minute particles, which are unchangeable, indestructible, and impenetrable, and are therefore properly called atoms; that the differences which are observed between the qualities of things are due to differences in the numbers, sizes, shapes, positions, and movements of atoms, and that the process which occurs when one substance is apparently destroyed and another is produced in its place, is nothing more than a rearrangement of atoms. ”

“ I answered, 'Such a medicine would be a most desirable acquisition for any physician; nor can any man tell how many secrets there may be hidden in Nature; yet, though I have read much about the truth of this art, it has never been my good fortune to meet with a real master of the alchemical science.' ... ”

“ A theory which has prevailed for generations in natural science, and has been accepted and used by everyone, can be replaced by a more accurate description of the relations between natural facts, only by the determination, labour, and genius of a man of supreme power. Such a service to science, and humanity, was rendered by Darwin; a like service was done, more than three-quarters of a century before Darwin, by Lavoisier. ”