Part 1 (1/2)

The Story of Alchemy and the Beginnings of Chemistry.

by M. M. Pattison Muir.

PREFACE.

The Story of Alchemy and the Beginnings of Chemistry is very interesting in itself. It is also a pregnant example of the contrast between the scientific and the emotional methods of regarding nature; and it admirably ill.u.s.trates the differences between well-grounded, suggestive, hypotheses, and baseless speculations.

I have tried to tell the story so that it may be intelligible to the ordinary reader.

M.M. PATTISON MUIR.

CAMBRIDGE, November 1902.

CHAPTER I

THE EXPLANATION OF MATERIAL CHANGES GIVEN BY THE GREEK THINKERS.

For thousands of years before men had any accurate and exact knowledge of the changes of material things, they had thought about these changes, regarded them as revelations of spiritual truths, built on them theories of things in heaven and earth (and a good many things in neither), and used them in manufactures, arts, and handicrafts, especially in one very curious manufacture wherein not the thousandth fragment of a grain of the finished article was ever produced.

The accurate and systematic study of the changes which material things undergo is called chemistry; we may, perhaps, describe alchemy as the superficial, and what may be called subjective, examination of these changes, and the speculative systems, and imaginary arts and manufactures, founded on that examination.

We are a.s.sured by many old writers that Adam was the first alchemist, and we are told by one of the initiated that Adam was created on the sixth day, being the 15th of March, of the first year of the world; certainly alchemy had a long life, for chemistry did not begin until about the middle of the 18th century.

No branch of science has had so long a period of incubation as chemistry. There must be some extraordinary difficulty in the way of disentangling the steps of those changes wherein substances of one kind are produced from substances totally unlike them. To inquire how those of acute intellects and much learning regarded such occurrences in the times when man's outlook on the world was very different from what it is now, ought to be interesting, and the results of that inquiry must surely be instructive.

If the reader turns to a modern book on chemistry (for instance, _The Story of the Chemical Elements_, in this series), he will find, at first, superficial descriptions of special instances of those occurrences which are the subject of the chemist's study; he will learn that only certain parts of such events are dealt with in chemistry; more accurate descriptions will then be given of changes which occur in nature, or can be produced by altering the ordinary conditions, and the reader will be taught to see certain points of likeness between these changes; he will be shown how to disentangle chemical occurrences, to find their similarities and differences; and, gradually, he will feel his way to general statements, which are more or less rigorous and accurate expressions of what holds good in a large number of chemical processes; finally, he will discover that some generalisations have been made which are exact and completely accurate descriptions applicable to every case of chemical change.

But if we turn to the writings of the alchemists, we are in a different world. There is nothing even remotely resembling what one finds in a modern book on chemistry.

Here are a few quotations from alchemical writings [1]:

[1] Most of the quotations from alchemical writings, in this book, are taken from a series of translations, published in 1893-94, under the supervision of Mr A.E. Waite.

”It is necessary to deprive matter of its qualities in order to draw out its soul.... Copper is like a man; it has a soul and a body ... the soul is the most subtile part ... that is to say, the tinctorial spirit. The body is the ponderable, material, terrestrial thing, endowed with a shadow.... After a series of suitable treatments copper becomes without shadow and better than gold.... The elements grow and are trans.m.u.ted, because it is their qualities, not their substances which are contrary.” (Stepha.n.u.s of Alexandria, about 620 A.D.)

”If we would elicit our Medecine from the precious metals, we must destroy the particular metalic form, without impairing its specific properties. The specific properties of the metal have their abode in its spiritual part, which resides in h.o.m.ogeneous water. Thus we must destroy the particular form of gold, and change it into its generic h.o.m.ogeneous water, in which the spirit of gold is preserved; this spirit afterwards restores the consistency of its water, and brings forth a new form (after the necessary putrefaction) a thousand times more perfect than the form of gold which it lost by being reincrudated.” (Philalethes, 17th century.)

”The bodily nature of things is a concealing outward vesture.”

(Michael Sendivogius, 17th century.)

”Nothing of true value is located in the body of a substance, but in the virtue ... the less there is of body, the more in proportion is the virtue.” (Paracelsus, 16th century.)

”There are four elements, and each has at its centre another element which makes it what it is. These are the four pillars of the world.... It is their contrary action which keeps up the harmony and equilibrium of the mundane machinery.” (Michael Sendivogius.)

”Nature cannot work till it has been supplied with a material: the first matter is furnished by G.o.d, the second matter by the sage.”

(Michael Sendivogius.)

”When corruptible elements are united in a certain substance, their strife must sooner or later bring about its decomposition, which is, of course, followed by putrefaction; in putrefaction, the impure is separated from the pure; and if the pure elements are then once more joined together by the action of natural heat, a much n.o.bler and higher form of life is produced.... If the hidden central fire, which during life was in a state of pa.s.sivity, obtain the mastery, it attracts to itself all the pure elements, which are thus separated from the impure, and form the nucleus of a far purer form of life.” (Michael Sendivogius.)