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Title: The Story of Alchemy and the Beginnings of Chemistry
Author: M. M. Pattison Muir
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THE STORY OF ALCHEMY AND THE BEGINNINGS OF CHEMISTRY
by
M. M. PATTISON MUIR, M.A.
Fellow and Formerly Prælector in Chemistry of Gonville and Caius College,
Cambridge
With Eighteen Illustrations
New and Enlarged Edition
Hodder and Stoughton
London, New York, Toronto
[Illustration: AN ALCHEMICAL LABORATORY]
"It is neither religious nor wise to judge that
of which you know nothing."
_A Brief Guide to the Celestial Ruby_, by PHILALETHES (17th century)
* * * * *
THE USEFUL KNOWLEDGE SERIES
Cloth, One Shilling net each
List of the first thirty-four volumes issued in the new style with
Pictorial Wrappers:--
WIRELESS TELEGRAPHY. By ALFRED T. STORY.
A PIECE OF COAL. By K.A. MARTIN, F.G.S.
ARCHITECTURE. By P.L. WATERHOUSE.
THE COTTON PLANT. By F. WILKINSON, F.G.S.
PLANT LIFE. By GRANT ALLEN.
WILD FLOWERS. By REV. PROF. G. HENSLOW, F.L.S., F.G.S.
THE SOLAR SYSTEM. By G.F. CHAMBERS, F.R.A.S.
ECLIPSES. By G.F. CHAMBERS, F.R.A.S.
THE STARS. By G.F.CHAMBERS, F.R.A.S.
THE WEATHER. By G.F. CHAMBERS, F.R.A.S.
ANIMAL LIFE. By B. LINDSAY.
GEOGRAPHICAL DISCOVERY. By JOSEPH JACOBS.
THE ATMOSPHERE. By DOUGLAS ARCHIBALD, M.A.
ALPINE CLIMBING. By FRANCIS GRIBBLE
FOREST AND STREAM. By JAMES RODWAY, F.L.S.
FISH LIFE. By W.P. PYCRAFT, F.Z.S.
BIRD LIFE. By W.P. PYCRAFT, F.Z.S.
PRIMITIVE MAN. By EDWARD CLODD.
ANCIENT EGYPT. By ROBINSON SOUTTAR, M.A., D.C.L.
STORY OF LOCOMOTION. By BECKLES WILLSON.
THE EARTH IN PAST AGES. By H.G. SEELEY, F.R.S.
THE EMPIRE. By E. SALMON.
KING ALFRED. By SIR WALTER BESANT.
LOST ENGLAND. By BECKLES WILLSON.
ALCHEMY, OR THE BEGINNINGS OF CHEMISTRY. By M.M. PATTISON MUIR, M.A.
THE CHEMICAL ELEMENTS. By M.M. PATTISON MUIR, M.A.
THE WANDERINGS OF ATOMS. By M.M. PATTISON MUIR, M.A.
GERM LIFE: BACTERIA. By H.W. CONN.
LIFE IN THE SEAS. By SIDNEY J. HICKSON F.R.S.
LIFE'S MECHANISM. By H.W. CONN.
REPTILE LIFE. By W.P. PYCRAFT, F.Z.S.
THE GRAIN OF WHEAT. By WILLIAM C. EDGAR.
THE POTTER. By C.F. BINNS.
* * * * *
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 illustrates 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.
* * * * *
NOTE TO NEW EDITION.
A few small changes have been made. The last chapter has been
re-written and considerably enlarged.
M.M.P.M.
FARNHAM, September 1913.
* * * * *
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER
I. THE EXPLANATION OF MATERIAL CHANGES GIVEN BY GREEK THINKERS
II. A SKETCH OF ALCHEMICAL THEORY
III. THE ALCHEMICAL NOTION OF THE UNITY AND SIMPLICITY OF NATURE
IV. THE ALCHEMICAL ELEMENTS AND PRINCIPLES
V. THE ALCHEMICAL ESSENCE
VI. ALCHEMY AS AN EXPERIMENTAL ART
VII. THE LANGUAGE OF ALCHEMY
VIII. THE DEGENERACY OF ALCHEMY
IX. PARACELSUS, AND SOME OTHER ALCHEMISTS
X. SUMMARY OF THE ALCHEMICAL DOCTRINE--THE REPLACEMENT OF THE THREE
PRINCIPLES OF THE ALCHEMISTS BY THE SINGLE PRINCIPLE OF PHLOGISTON
XI. THE EXAMINATION OF THE PHENOMENA OF COMBUSTION
XII. THE RECOGNITION OF CHEMICAL CHANGES AS THE INTERACTIONS OF
DEFINITE SUBSTANCES
XIII. THE CHEMICAL ELEMENTS CONTRASTED WITH THE ALCHEMICAL PRINCIPLES
XIV. THE MODERN FORM OF THE ALCHEMICAL QUEST OF THE ONE THING
INDEX
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
FIG.
AN ALCHEMICAL LABORATORY (Frontispiece)
1. THE MORTIFICATION OF METALS PRESENTED BY THE IMAGE OF A KING
DEVOURING HIS SON
2 and 3. THE MORTIFICATION OF METALS PRESENTED BY IMAGES OF DEATH
AND BURIAL
4 and 5. TWO MUST BE CONJOINED TO PRODUCE ONE
6. HERMETICALLY SEALING THE NECK OF A GLASS VESSEL
7. SEALING BY MEANS OF A MERCURY TRAP
8. AN ALCHEMICAL COMMON COLD STILL
9. A _BALNEUM MARIÆ_
10. ALCHEMICAL DISTILLING APPARATUS
11. A PELICAN
12. AN ALCHEMIST WITH A RETORT
13. AN ALCHEMIST PREPARING OIL OF VITRIOL
14. ALCHEMICAL APPARATUS FOR RECTIFYING SPIRITS
15. PURIFYING GOLD PRESENTED BY THE IMAGE OF A SALAMANDER IN THE FIRE
16. PRIESTLEY'S APPARATUS FOR WORKING WITH GASES
17. APPARATUS USED BY LAVOISIER IN HIS EXPERIMENTS ON BURNING MERCURY
IN AIR
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 assured 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 transmuted, because it is their
qualities, not their substances which are contrary." (Stephanus 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 homogeneous
water. Thus we must destroy the particular form of gold, and
change it into its generic homogeneous 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 God, 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 nobler and higher form of life is produced.... If the
hidden central fire, which during life was in a state of
passivity, 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.)
"Cause that which is above to be below; that which is visible to
be invisible; that which is palpable to become impalpable. Again
let that which is below become that which is above; let the
invisible become visible, and the impalpable become palpable. Here
you see the perfection of our Art, without any defect or
diminution." (Basil Valentine, 15th century.)
"Think most diligently about this; often bear in mind, observe and
comprehend, that all minerals and metals together, in the same
time, and after the same fashion, and of one and the same
principal matter, are produced and generated. That matter is no
other than a mere vapour, which is extracted from the elementary
earth by the superior stars, or by a sidereal distillation of the
macrocosm; which sidereal hot infusion, with an airy sulphurous
property, descending upon inferiors, so acts and operates as that
there is implanted, spiritually and invisibly, a certain power and
virtue in those metals and minerals; which fume, moreover,
resolves in the earth into a certain water, wherefrom all metals
are thenceforth generated and ripened to their perfection, and
thence proceeds this or that metal or mineral, according as one of
the three principles acquires dominion, and they have much or
little of sulphur and salt, or an unequal mixture of these; whence
some metals are fixed--that is, constant or stable; and some are
volatile and easily changeable, as is seen in gold, silver,
copper, iron, tin, and lead." (Basil Valentine.)
"To grasp the invisible elements, to attract them by their
material correspondences, to control, purify, and transform them
by the living power of the Spirit--this is true Alchemy."
(Paracelsus.)
"Destruction perfects that which is good; for the good cannot
appear on account of that which conceals it.... Each one of the
visible metals is a concealment of the other six metals."
(Paracelsus.)
These sayings read like sentences in a forgotten tongue.
Humboldt tells of a parrot which had lived with a tribe of American
Indians, and learnt scraps of their language; the tribe totally
disappeared; the parrot alone remained, and babbled words in the
language which no living human being could understand.
Are the words I have quoted unintelligible, like the parrot's prating?
Perhaps the language may be reconstructed; perhaps it may be found to
embody something worth a hearing. Success is most likely to come by
considering the growth of alchemy; by trying to find the ideas which
were expressed in the strange tongue; by endeavouring to look at our
surroundings as the alchemists looked at theirs.
Do what we will, we always, more or less, construct our own universe.
The history of science may be described as the history of the
attempts, and the failures, of men "to see things as they are."
"Nothing is harder," said the Latin poet Lucretius, "than to separate
manifest facts from doubtful, what straightway the mind adds on of
itself."
Observations of the changes which are constantly happening in the sky,
and on the earth, must have prompted men long ago to ask whether there
are any limits to the changes of things around them. And this question
must have become more urgent as working in metals, making colours and
dyes, preparing new kinds of food and drink, producing substances with
smells and tastes unlike those of familiar objects, and other pursuits
like these, made men acquainted with transformations which seemed to
penetrate to the very foundations of things.
Can one thing be changed into any other thing; or, are there classes
of things within each of which change is possible, while the passage
from one class to another is not possible? Are all the varied
substances seen, tasted, handled, smelt, composed of a limited number
of essentially different things; or, is each fundamentally different
from every other substance? Such questions as these must have pressed
for answers long ago.
Some of the Greek philosophers who lived four or five hundred years
before Christ formed a theory of the transformations of matter, which
is essentially the theory held by naturalists to-day.
These philosophers taught that to understand nature we must get
beneath the superficial qualities of things. "According to
convention," said Democritus (born 460 B.C.), "there are a sweet and a
bitter, a hot and a cold, and according to convention there is
colour. In truth there are atoms and a void." Those investigators
attempted to connect all the differences which are observed between
the qualities of things with differences of size, shape, position, and
movement of atoms. They said that all things are formed by the
coalescence of certain unchangeable, indestructible, and impenetrable
particles which they named atoms; the total number of atoms is
constant; not one of them can be destroyed, nor can one be created;
when a substance ceases to exist and another is formed, the process is
not a destruction of matter, it is a re-arrangement of atoms.
Only fragments of the writings of the founders of the atomic theory
have come to us. The views of these philosophers are preserved, and
doubtless amplified and modified, in a Latin poem, _Concerning the
Nature of Things_, written by Lucretius, who was born a century before
the beginning of our era. Let us consider the picture given in that
poem of the material universe, and the method whereby the picture was
produced.[2]
[2] The quotations from Lucretius are taken from Munro's
translation (4th Edition, 1886).
All knowledge, said Lucretius, is based on "the aspect and the law of
nature." True knowledge can be obtained only by the use of the senses;
there is no other method. "From the senses first has proceeded the
knowledge of the true, and the senses cannot be refuted. Shall reason,
founded on false sense, be able to contradict [the senses], wholly
founded as it is on the senses? And if they are not true, then all
reason as well is rendered false." 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."
The first-beginnings, or atoms, of things were thought of by Lucretius
as always moving; "there is no lowest point in the sum of the
universe" where they can rest; they meet, clash, rebound, or sometimes
join together into groups of atoms which move about as wholes. Change,
growth, decay, formation, disruption--these are the marks of all
things. "The war of first-beginnings waged from eternity is carried on
with dubious issue: now here, now there, the life-bringing elements of
things get the mastery, and are o'ermastered in turn; with the funeral
wail blends the cry which babies raise when they enter the borders of
light; and no night ever followed day, nor morning night, that heard
not, mingling with the sickly infant's cries, the attendants' wailings
on death and black funeral."
Lucretius pictured the atoms of things as like the things perceived by
the senses; he said that atoms of different kinds have different
shapes, but the number of shapes is finite, because there is a limit
to the number of different things we see, smell, taste, and handle; he
implies, although I do not think he definitely asserts, that all atoms
of one kind are identical in every respect.
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 often makes a great difference," he said, "with what
things, and in what positions the same first-beginnings are held in
union, and what motions they mutually impart and receive." For
instance, certain atoms may be so arranged at one time as to produce
fire, and, at another time, the arrangement of the same atoms may be
such that the result is a fir-tree. The differences between the
colours of things are said by Lucretius to be due to differences in
the arrangements and motions of atoms. As the colour of the sea when
wind lashes it into foam is different from the colour when the waters
are at rest, so do the colours of things change when the atoms whereof
the things are composed change from one arrangement to another, or
from sluggish movements to rapid and tumultuous motions.
[3] See the chapter _Molecular Architecture_ in the _Story of
the Chemical Elements_.
Lucretius pictured a solid substance as a vast number of atoms
squeezed closely together, a liquid as composed of not so many atoms
less tightly packed, and a gas as a comparatively small number of
atoms with considerable freedom of motion. Essentially the same
picture is presented by the molecular theory of to-day.
To meet the objection that atoms are invisible, and therefore cannot
exist, Lucretius enumerates many things we cannot see although we know
they exist. No one doubts the existence of winds, heat, cold and
smells; yet no one has seen the wind, or heat, or cold, or a smell.
Clothes become moist when hung near the sea, and dry when spread in
the sunshine; but no one has seen the moisture entering or leaving the
clothes. A pavement trodden by many feet is worn away; but the minute
particles are removed without our eyes being able to see them.
Another objector urges--"You say the atoms are always moving, yet the
things we look at, which you assert to be vast numbers of moving
atoms, are often motionless." Him Lucretius answers by an analogy.
"And herein you need not wonder at this, that though the
first-beginnings of things are all in motion, yet the sum is seen to
rest in supreme repose, unless when a thing exhibits motions with its
individual body. For all the nature of first things lies far away from
our senses, beneath their ken; and, therefore, since they are
themselves beyond what you can see, they must withdraw from sight
their motion as well; and the more so, that the things which we can
see do yet often conceal their motions when a great distance off.
Thus, often, the woolly flocks as they crop the glad pastures on a
hill, creep on whither the grass, jewelled with fresh dew, summons or
invites each, and the lambs, fed to the full, gambol and playfully
butt; all which objects appear to us from a distance to be blended
together, and to rest like a white spot on a green hill. 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. And yet there is some
spot on the high hills, seen from which they appear to stand still and
to rest on the plains as a bright spot."
The atomic theory of the Greek thinkers was constructed by reasoning
on natural phenomena. Lucretius constantly appeals to observed facts
for confirmation of his theoretical teachings, or refutation of
opinions he thought erroneous. Besides giving a general mental
presentation of the material universe, the theory was applied to many
specific transmutations; but minute descriptions of what are now
called chemical changes could not be given in terms of the theory,
because no searching examination of so much as one such change had
been made, nor, I think, one may say, could be made under the
conditions of Greek life. More than two thousand years passed before
investigators began to make accurate measurements of the quantities of
the substances which take part in those changes wherein certain
things seem to be destroyed and other totally different things to be
produced; until accurate knowledge had been obtained of the quantities
of the definite substances which interact in the transformations of
matter, the atomic theory could not do more than draw the outlines of
a picture of material changes.
A scientific theory has been described as "the likening of our
imaginings to what we actually observe." So long as we observe only in
the rough, only in a broad and general way, our imaginings must also
be rough, broad, and general. It was the great glory of the Greek
thinkers about natural events that their observations were accurate,
on the whole, and as far as they went, and the theory they formed was
based on no trivial or accidental features of the facts, but on what
has proved to be the very essence of the phenomena they sought to
bring into one point of view; for all the advances made in our own
times in clear knowledge of the transformations of matter have been
made by using, as a guide to experimental inquiries, the conception
that the differences between the qualities of substances are connected
with differences in the weights and movements of minute particles; and
this was the central idea of the atomic theory of the Greek
philosophers.
The atomic theory was used by the great physicists of the later
Renaissance, by Galileo, Gassendi, Newton and others. Our own
countryman, John Dalton, while trying (in the early years of the 19th
century) to form a mental presentation of the atmosphere in terms of
the theory of atoms, rediscovered the possibility of differences
between the sizes of atoms, applied this idea to the facts concerning
the quantitative compositions of compounds which had been established
by others, developed a method for determining the relative weights of
atoms of different kinds, and started chemistry on the course which it
has followed so successfully.
Instead of blaming the Greek philosophers for lack of quantitatively
accurate experimental inquiry, we should rather be full of admiring
wonder at the extraordinary acuteness of their mental vision, and the
soundness of their scientific spirit.
The ancient atomists distinguished the essential properties of things
from their accidental features. The former cannot be removed,
Lucretius said, without "utter destruction accompanying the
severance"; the latter may be altered "while the nature of the thing
remains unharmed." As examples of essential properties, Lucretius
mentions "the weight of a stone, the heat of fire, the fluidity of
water." Such things as liberty, war, slavery, riches, poverty, and the
like, were accounted accidents. Time also was said to be an accident:
it "exists not by itself; but simply from the things which happen, the
sense apprehends what has been done in time past, as well as what is
present, and what is to follow after."
As our story proceeds, we shall see that the chemists of the middle
ages, the alchemists, founded their theory of material changes on the
difference between a supposed essential substratum of things, and
their qualities which could be taken off, they said, and put on, as
clothes are removed and replaced.
How different from the clear, harmonious, orderly, Greek scheme, is
any picture we can form, from such quotations as I have given from
their writings, of the alchemists' conception of the world. The Greeks
likened their imaginings of nature to the natural facts they observed;
the alchemists created an imaginary world after their own likeness.
While Christianity was superseding the old religions, and the
theological system of the Christian Church was replacing the
cosmogonies of the heathen, the contrast between the power of evil and
the power of good was more fully realised than in the days of the
Greeks; a sharper division was drawn between this world and another
world, and that other world was divided into two irreconcilable and
absolutely opposite parts. 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. The conditions were
favourable to the growth of magic; for man was regarded as the measure
of the universe, the central figure in an awful tragedy.
Magic is an attempt, by thinking and speculating about what we
consider must be the order of nature, to discover some means of
penetrating into the secret life of natural things, of realising the
hidden powers and virtues of things, grasping the concealed thread of
unity which is supposed to run through all phenomena however seemingly
diverse, entering into sympathy with the supposed inner oneness of
life, death, the present, past, and future. 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. That
saying expresses the fundamental hypothesis, and the method, of all
systems of magic and mysticism. Of such systems, alchemy was one.
CHAPTER II.
A SKETCH OF ALCHEMICAL THEORY.
The system which began to be called _alchemy_ in the 6th and 7th
centuries of our era had no special name before that time, but was
known as _the sacred art, the divine science, the occult science, the
art of Hermes_.
A commentator on Aristotle, writing in the 4th century A.D., calls
certain instruments used for fusion and calcination "_chuika organa_,"
that is, instruments for melting and pouring. Hence, probably, came
the adjective _chyic_ or _chymic_, and, at a somewhat later time, the
word _chemia_ as the name of that art which deals with calcinations,
fusions, meltings, and the like. The writer of a treatise on
astrology, in the 5th century, speaking of the influences of the stars
on the dispositions of man, says: "If a man is born under Mercury he
will give himself to astronomy; if Mars, he will follow the profession
of arms; if Saturn, he will devote himself to the science of alchemy
(_Scientia alchemiae_)." The word _alchemia_ which appears in this
treatise, was formed by prefixing the Arabic _al_ (meaning _the_) to
_chemia_, a word, as we have seen, of Greek origin.
It is the growth, development, and transformation into chemistry, of
this _alchemia_ which we have to consider.
Alchemy, that is, _the_ art of melting, pouring, and transforming,
must necessarily pay much attention to working with crucibles,
furnaces, alembics, and other vessels wherein things are fused,
distilled, calcined, and dissolved. The old drawings of alchemical
operations show us men busy calcining, cohobating, distilling,
dissolving, digesting, and performing other processes of like
character to these.
The alchemists could not be accused of laziness or aversion to work in
their laboratories. Paracelsus (16th century) says of them: "They are
not given to idleness, nor go in a proud habit, or plush and velvet
garments, often showing their rings on their fingers, or wearing
swords with silver hilts by their sides, or fine and gay gloves on
their hands; but diligently follow their labours, sweating whole days
and nights by their furnaces. They do not spend their time abroad for
recreation, but take delight in their laboratories. They put their
fingers among coals, into clay and filth, not into gold rings. They
are sooty and black, like smiths and miners, and do not pride
themselves upon clean and beautiful faces."
In these respects the chemist of to-day faithfully follows the
practice of the alchemists who were his predecessors. You can nose a
chemist in a crowd by the smell of the laboratory which hangs about
him; you can pick him out by the stains on his hands and clothes. He
also "takes delight in his laboratory"; he does not always "pride
himself on a clean and beautiful face"; he "sweats whole days and
nights by his furnace."
Why does the chemist toil so eagerly? Why did the alchemists so
untiringly pursue their quest? I think it is not unfair to say: the
chemist experiments in order that he "may liken his imaginings to the
facts which he observes"; the alchemist toiled that he might liken the
facts which he observed to his imaginings. The difference may be put
in another way by saying: the chemist's object is to discover "how
changes happen in combinations of the unchanging"; the alchemist's
endeavour was to prove the truth of his fundamental assertion, "that
every substance contains undeveloped resources and potentialities, and
can be brought outward and forward into perfection."
Looking around him, and observing the changes of things, the alchemist
was deeply impressed by the growth and modification of plants and
animals; he argued that minerals and metals also grow, change,
develop. He said in effect: "Nature is one, there must be unity in all
the diversity I see. When a grain of corn falls into the earth it
dies, but this dying is the first step towards a new life; the dead
seed is changed into the living plant. So it must be with all other
things in nature: the mineral, or the metal, seems dead when it is
buried in the earth, but, in reality, it is growing, changing, and
becoming more perfect." The perfection of the seed is the plant. What
is the perfection of the common metals? "Evidently," the alchemist
replied, "the perfect metal is gold; the common metals are trying to
become gold." "Gold is the intention of Nature in regard to all
metals," said an alchemical writer. Plants are preserved by the
preservation of their seed. "In like manner," the alchemist's argument
proceeded, "there must be a seed in metals which is their essence; if
I can separate the seed and bring it under the proper conditions, I
can cause it to grow into the perfect metal." "Animal life, and human
life also," we may suppose the alchemist saying, "are continued by the
same method as that whereby the life of plants is continued; all life
springs from seed; the seed is fructified by the union of the male and
the female; in metals also there must be the two characters; the union
of these is needed for the production of new metals; the conjoining of
metals must go before the birth of the perfect metal."
"Now," we may suppose the argument to proceed, "now, the passage from
the imperfect to the more perfect is not easy. 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. A
careful examination of the alchemical argument shows that it rests on
a (supposed) intimate knowledge of nature's plan of working, and the
certainty that simplicity is the essential mark of that plan.
That the alchemists were satisfied of the great simplicity of nature,
and their own knowledge of the ways of nature's work, is apparent from
their writings.
The author of _The New Chemical Light_ (17th century) says:
"Simplicity is the seal of truth.... Nature is wonderfully simple, and
the characteristic mark of a childlike simplicity is stamped upon all
that is true and noble in Nature." In another place the same author
says: "Nature is one, true, simple, self-contained, created of God,
and informed with a certain universal spirit." The same author,
Michael Sendivogius, remarks: "It may be asked how I come to have this
knowledge about heavenly things which are far removed beyond human
ken. My answer is that the sages have been taught by God that this
natural world is only an image and material copy of a heavenly and
spiritual pattern; that the very existence of this world is based upon
the reality of its heavenly archetype.... Thus the sage sees heaven
reflected in Nature as in a mirror, and he pursues this Art, not for
the sake of gold or silver, but for the love of the knowledge which it
reveals."
The _Only True Way_ advises all who wish to become true alchemists to
leave the circuitous paths of pretended philosophers, and to follow
nature, which is simple; the complicated processes described in books
are said to be the traps laid by the "cunning sophists" to catch the
unwary.
In _A Catechism of Alchemy_, Paracelsus asks: "What road should the
philosopher follow?" He answers, "That exactly which was followed by
the Great Architect of the Universe in the creation of the world."
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." But the
alchemical method found it easier to begin by introspection. The
alchemist spun his universe from his own ideas of order, symmetry, and
simplicity, as the spider spins her web from her own substance.
A favourite saying of the alchemists was, "What is above is as what is
below." In one of its aspects this saying meant, "processes happen
within the earth like those which occur on the earth; minerals and
metals live, as animals and plants live; all pass through corruption
towards perfection." In another aspect the saying meant "the human
being is the world in miniature; as is the microcosm, so is the
macrocosm; to know oneself is to know all the world."
Every man knows he ought to try to rise to better things, and many men
endeavour to do what they know they ought to do; therefore, he who
feels sure that all nature is fashioned after the image of man,
projects his own ideas of progress, development, virtue, matter and
spirit, on to nature outside himself; and, as a matter of course, this
kind of naturalist uses the same language when he is speaking of the
changes of material things as he employs to express the changes of his
mental states, his hopes, fears, aspirations, and struggles.
The language of the alchemists was, therefore, rich in such
expressions as these; "the elements are to be so conjoined that the
nobler and fuller life may be produced"; "our arcanum is gold exalted
to the highest degree of perfection to which the combined action of
nature and art can develop it."
Such commingling of ethical and physical ideas, such application of
moral conceptions to material phenomena, was characteristic of the
alchemical method of regarding nature. The necessary results were;
great confusion of thought, much mystification of ideas, and a
superabundance of _views_ about natural events.
When the author of _The Metamorphosis of Metals_ was seeking for an
argument in favour of his view, that water is the source and primal
element of all things, he found what he sought in the Biblical text:
"In the beginning the spirit of God moved upon the face of the
waters." Similarly, the author of _The Sodic Hydrolith_ clenches his
argument in favour of the existence of the Philosopher's Stone, by the
quotation: "Therefore, thus saith the Lord; behold I lay in Zion for a
foundation a Stone, a tried Stone, a precious corner Stone, a sure
foundation. He that has it shall not be confounded." This author works
out in detail an analogy between the functions and virtues of the
_Stone_, and the story of man's fall and redemption, as set forth in
the Old and New Testaments. The same author speaks of "Satan, that
grim pseudo-alchemist."
That the attribution, by the alchemists, of moral virtues and vices to
natural things was in keeping with some deep-seated tendency of human
nature, is shown by the persistence of some of their methods of
stating the properties of substances: we still speak of "perfect and
imperfect gases," "noble and base metals," "good and bad conductors of
electricity," and "laws governing natural phenomena."
Convinced of the simplicity of nature, certain that all natural events
follow one course, sure that this course was known to them and was
represented by the growth of plants and animals, the alchemists set
themselves the task, firstly, of proving by observations and
experiments that their view of natural occurrences was correct; and,
secondly, of discovering and gaining possession of the instrument
whereby nature effects her transmutations and perfects her operations.
The mastery of this instrument would give them power to change any
metal into gold, the cure of all diseases, and the happiness which
must come from the practical knowledge of the supreme secret of
nature.
The central quest of alchemy was the quest of an undefined and
undefinable something wherein was supposed to be contained all the
powers and potencies of life, and whatever makes life worth living.
The names given to this mystical something were as many as the
properties which were assigned to it. It was called _the one thing,
the essence, the philosopher's stone, the stone of wisdom, the
heavenly balm, the divine water, the virgin water, the carbuncle of
the sun, the old dragon, the lion, the basilisk, the phoenix_; and
many other names were given to it.
We may come near to expressing the alchemist's view of the essential
character of the object of their search by naming it _the soul of all
things_. "Alchemy," a modern writer says, "is the science of the soul
of all things."
The essence was supposed to have a material form, an ethereal or
middle nature, and an immaterial or spiritual life.
No one might hope to make this essence from any one substance,
because, as one of the alchemists says, "It is the attribute of God
alone to make one out of one; you must produce one thing out of two
by natural generation." The alchemists did not pretend to create gold,
but only to produce it from other things.
The author of _A Brief Guide to the Celestial Ruby_ says: "We do not,
as is sometimes said, profess to create gold and silver, but only to
find an agent which ... is capable of entering into an intimate and
maturing union with the Mercury of the base metals." And again: "Our
Art ... only arrogates to itself the power of developing, through the
removal of all defects and superfluities, the golden nature which the
baser metals possess." Bonus, in his tract on _The New Pearl of Great
Price_ (16th century), says: "The Art of Alchemy ... does not create
metals, or even develop them out of the metallic first-substance; it
only takes up the unfinished handicraft of Nature and completes it....
Nature has only left a comparatively small thing for the artist to
do--the completion of that which she has already begun."
If the essence were ever attained, it would be by following the course
which nature follows in producing the perfect plant from the imperfect
seed, by discovering and separating the seed of metals, and bringing
that seed under the conditions which alone are suitable for its
growth. Metals must have seed, the alchemists said, for it would be
absurd to suppose they have none. "What prerogative have vegetables
above metals," exclaims one of them, "that God should give seed to the
one and withhold it from the other? Are not metals as much in His
sight as trees?"
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 application of the doctrine of the existence of seed in metals led
to the performance of many experiments, and, hence, to the
accumulation of a considerable body of facts established by
experimental inquiries. The belief of the alchemists that all natural
events are connected by a hidden thread, that everything has an
influence on other things, that "what is above is as what is below,"
constrained them to place stress on the supposed connexion between the
planets and the metals, and to further their metallic transformations
by performing them at times when certain planets were in conjunction.
The seven principal planets and the seven principal metals were called
by the same names: _Sol_ (gold), _Luna_ (silver), _Saturn_ (lead),
_Jupiter_ (tin), _Mars_ (iron), _Venus_ (copper), and _Mercury_
(mercury). The author of _The New Chemical Light_ taught that one
metal could be propagated from another only in the order of
superiority of the planets. He placed the seven planets in the
following descending order: Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Sol, Venus,
Mercury, Luna. "The virtues of the planets descend," he said, "but do
not ascend"; it is easy to change Mars (iron) into Venus (copper), for
instance, but Venus cannot be transformed into Mars.
Although the alchemists regarded everything as influencing, and
influenced by, other things, they were persuaded that the greatest
effects are produced on a substance by substances of like nature with
itself. Hence, most of them taught that the seed of metals will be
obtained by operations with metals, not by the action on metals of
things of animal or vegetable origin. Each class of substances, they
said, has a life, or spirit (an essential character, we might say) of
its own. "The life of sulphur," Paracelsus said, "is a combustible,
ill-smelling, fatness.... The life of gems and corals is mere
colour.... The life of water is its flowing.... The life of fire is
air." Grant an attraction of like to like, and the reason becomes
apparent for such directions as these: "Nothing heterogeneous must be
introduced into our magistery"; "Everything should be made to act on
that which is like it, and then Nature will perform her duty."
Although each class of substances was said by the alchemists to have
its own particular character, or life, nevertheless they taught that
there is a deep-seated likeness between all things, inasmuch as the
power of _the essence_, or _the one thing_, is so great that under its
influence different things are produced from the same origin, and
different things are caused to pass into and become the same thing.
In _The New Chemical Light_ it is said: "While the seed of all things
is one, it is made to generate a great variety of things."
It is not easy now--it could not have been easy at any time--to give
clear and exact meanings to the doctrines of the alchemists, or the
directions they gave for performing the operations necessary for the
production of the object of their search. And the difficulty is much
increased when we are told that "The Sage jealously conceals [his
knowledge] from the sinner and the scornful, lest the mysteries of
heaven should be laid bare to the vulgar gaze." We almost despair when
an alchemical writer assures us that the Sages "Set pen to paper for
the express purpose of concealing their meaning. The sense of a whole
passage is often hopelessly obscured by the addition or omission of
one little word, for instance the addition of the word _not_ in the
wrong place." Another writer says: "The Sages are in the habit of
using words which may convey either a true or a false impression; the
former to their own disciples and children, the latter to the
ignorant, the foolish, and the unworthy." Sometimes, after
descriptions of processes couched in strange and mystical language,
the writer will add, "If you cannot perceive what you ought to
understand herein, you should not devote yourself to the study of
philosophy." Philalethes, in his _Brief Guide to the Celestial Ruby_,
seems to feel some pity for his readers; after describing what he
calls "the generic homogeneous water of gold," he says: "If you wish
for a more particular description of our water, I am impelled by
motives of charity to tell you that it is living, flexible, clear,
nitid, white as snow, hot, humid, airy, vaporous, and digestive."
Alchemy began by asserting that nature must be simple; it assumed that
a knowledge of the plan and method of natural occurrences is to be
obtained by thinking; and it used analogy as the guide in applying
this knowledge of nature's design to particular events, especially the
analogy, assumed by alchemy to exist, between material phenomena and
human emotions.
CHAPTER III.
THE ALCHEMICAL CONCEPTION OF THE UNITY AND SIMPLICITY OF NATURE.
In the preceding chapter I have referred to the frequent use made by
the alchemists of their supposition that nature follows the same plan,
or at any rate a very similar plan, in all her processes. If this
supposition is accepted, the primary business of an investigator of
nature is to trace likenesses and analogies between what seem on the
surface to be dissimilar and unconnected events. As this idea, and
this practice, were the foundations whereon the superstructure of
alchemy was raised, I think it is important to amplify them more fully
than I have done already.
Mention is made in many alchemical writings of a mythical personage
named _Hermes Trismegistus_, who is said to have lived a little later
than the time of Moses. Representations of Hermes Trismegistus are
found on ancient Egyptian monuments. We are told that Alexander the
Great found his tomb near Hebron; and that the tomb contained a slab
of emerald whereon thirteen sentences were written. The eighth
sentence is rendered in many alchemical books as follows:
"Ascend with the greatest sagacity from the earth to heaven, and then
again descend to the earth, and unite together the powers of things
superior and things inferior. Thus you will obtain the glory of the
whole world, and obscurity will fly away from you."
This sentence evidently teaches the unity of things in heaven and
things on earth, and asserts the possibility of gaining, not merely a
theoretical, but also a practical, knowledge of the essential
characters of all things. Moreover, the sentence implies that this
fruitful knowledge is to be obtained by examining nature, using as
guide the fundamental similarity supposed to exist between things
above and things beneath.
The alchemical writers constantly harp on this theme: follow nature;
provided you never lose the clue, which is simplicity and similarity.
The author of _The Only Way_ (1677) beseeches his readers "to enlist
under the standard of that method which proceeds in strict obedience
to the teaching of nature ... in short, the method which nature
herself pursues in the bowels of the earth."
The alchemists tell us not to expect much help from books and written
directions. When one of them has said all he can say, he adds--"The
question is whether even this book will convey any information to one
before whom the writings of the Sages and the open book of Nature are
exhibited in vain." Another tells his readers the only thing for them
is "to beseech God to give you the real philosophical temper, and to
open your eyes to the facts of nature; thus alone will you reach the
coveted goal."
"Follow nature" is sound advice. But, nature was to be followed with
eyes closed save to one vision, and the vision was to be seen before
the following began.
The alchemists' general conception of nature led them to assign to
every substance a condition or state natural to it, and wherein alone
it could be said to be as it was designed to be. Each substance, they
taught, could be caused to leave its natural state only by violent, or
non-natural, means, and any substance which had been driven from its
natural condition by violence was ready, and even eager, to return to
the condition consonant with its nature.
Thus Norton, in his _Ordinal of Alchemy_, says: "Metals are generated
in the earth, for above ground they are subject to rust; hence above
ground is the place of corruption of metals, and of their gradual
destruction. The cause which we assign to this fact is that above
ground they are not in their proper element, and an unnatural position
is destructive to natural objects, as we see, for instance, that
fishes die when they are taken out of the water; and as it is natural
for men, beasts, and birds to live in the air, so stones and metals
are naturally generated under the earth."
In his _New Pearl of Great Price_ (16th century), Bonus says:--"The
object of Nature in all things is to introduce into each substance the
form which properly belongs to it; and this is also the design of our
Art."
This view assumed the knowledge of the natural conditions of the
substances wherewith experiments were performed. It supposed that man
could act as a guide, to bring back to its natural condition a
substance which had been removed from that condition, either by
violent processes of nature, or by man's device. The alchemist
regarded himself as an arbiter in questions concerning the natural
condition of each substance he dealt with. He thought he could say,
"this substance ought to be thus, or thus," "that substance is
constrained, thwarted, hindered from becoming what nature meant it to
be."
In Ben Jonson's play called _The Alchemist_, Subtle (who is the
alchemist of the play) says, " ... metals would be gold if they had
time."
The alchemist not only attributed ethical qualities to material
things, he also became the guardian and guide of the moral practices
of these things. He thought himself able to recall the erring metal to
the path of metalline virtue, to lead the extravagant mineral back to
the moral home-life from which it had been seduced, to show the
doubting and vacillating salt what it was ignorantly seeking, and to
help it to find the unrealised object of its search. The alchemist
acted as a sort of conscience to the metals, minerals, salts, and
other substances he submitted to the processes of his laboratory. He
treated them as a wise physician might treat an ignorant and somewhat
refractory patient. "I know what you want better than you do," he
seems often to be saying to the metals he is calcining, separating,
joining and subliming.
But the ignorant alchemist was not always thanked for his treatment.
Sometimes the patient rebelled. For instance, Michael Sendivogius, in
his tract, _The New Chemical Light drawn from the Fountain of Nature
and of Manual Experience_ (17th century), recounts _a dialogue between
Mercury, the Alchemist, and Nature_.
"On a certain bright morning a number of Alchemists met together in a
meadow, and consulted as to the best way of preparing the
Philosopher's Stone.... Most of them agreed that Mercury was the first
substance. Others said, no, it was sulphur, or something else.... Just
as the dispute began to run high, there arose a violent wind, which
dispersed the Alchemists into all the different countries of the
world; and as they had arrived at no conclusion, each one went on
seeking the Philosopher's Stone in his own old way, this one expecting
to find it in one substance, and that in another, so that the search
has continued without intermission even unto this day. One of them,
however, had at least got the idea into his head that Mercury was the
substance of the Stone, and determined to concentrate all his efforts
on the chemical preparation of Mercury.... He took common Mercury and
began to work with it. He placed it in a glass vessel over the fire,
when it, of course, evaporated. So in his ignorance he struck his
wife, and said: 'No one but you has entered my laboratory; you must
have taken my Mercury out of the vessel.' The woman, with tears,
protested her innocence. The Alchemist put some more Mercury into the
vessel.... The Mercury rose to the top of the vessel in vaporous
steam. Then the Alchemist was full of joy, because he remembered that
the first substance of the Stone is described by the Sages as
volatile; and he thought that now at last he _must_ be on the right
track. He now began to subject the Mercury to all sorts of chemical
processes, to sublime it, and to calcine it with all manner of things,
with salts, sulphur, metals, minerals, blood, hair, aqua fortis,
herbs, urine, and vinegar.... Everything he could think of was tried;
but without producing the desired effect." The Alchemist then
despaired; after a dream, wherein an old man came and talked with him
about the "Mercury of the Sages," the Alchemist thought he would charm
the Mercury, and so he used a form of incantation. The Mercury
suddenly began to speak, and asked the Alchemist why he had troubled
him so much, and so on. The Alchemist replied, and questioned the
Mercury. The Mercury makes fun of the philosopher. Then the Alchemist
again torments the Mercury by heating him with all manner of horrible
things. At last Mercury calls in the aid of Nature, who soundly rates
the philosopher, tells him he is grossly ignorant, and ends by saying:
"The best thing you can do is to give yourself up to the king's
officers, who will quickly put an end to you and your philosophy."
As long as men were fully persuaded that they knew the plan whereon
the world was framed, that it was possible for them to follow exactly
"the road which was followed by the Great Architect of the Universe in
the creation of the world," a real knowledge of natural events was
impossible; for every attempt to penetrate nature's secrets
presupposed a knowledge of the essential characteristics of that which
was to be investigated. But genuine knowledge begins when the
investigator admits that he must learn of nature, not nature of him.
It might be truly said of one who held the alchemical conception of
nature that "his foible was omniscience"; and omniscience negatives
the attainment of knowledge.
The alchemical notion of a natural state as proper to each substance
was vigorously combated by the Honourable Robert Boyle (born 1626,
died 1691), a man of singularly clear and penetrative intellect. 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. But
notwithstanding so general a consent of men in this point, I confess,
I cannot yet be satisfied about it in the sense wherein it is wont to
be taken. It is not, that I believe, that there is no sense in which,
or in the account upon which, a body may he said to be in its natural
state; but that I think the common distinction of a natural and
violent state of bodies has not been clearly explained and
considerately settled, and both is not well grounded, and is
oftentimes ill applied. 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."
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. It is so easy, so authoritative, apparently so satisfactory.
No amount of thinking and reasoning will ever demonstrate its falsity.
It can be conquered only by a patient, unbiassed, searching
examination of some limited portion of natural events.
CHAPTER IV.
THE ALCHEMICAL ELEMENTS AND PRINCIPLES.
The alchemists were sure that the intention of nature regarding metals
was that they should become gold, for gold was considered to be the
most perfect metal, and nature, they said, evidently strains after
perfection. The alchemist found that metals were worn away, eaten
through, broken, and finally caused to disappear, by many acid and
acrid liquids which he prepared from mineral substances. But gold
resisted the attacks of these liquids; it was not changed by heat, nor
was it affected by sulphur, a substance which changed limpid, running
mercury into an inert, black solid. Hence, gold was more perfect in
the alchemical scale than any other metal.
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. If by any means this superfluous
impure matter could be organically removed from the baser metals, they
would become gold and silver. So miners tell us that lead has in many
cases developed into silver in the bowels of the earth, and we contend
that the same effect is produced in a much shorter time by means of
our Art."
Stories were told about the finding of gold in deserted mines which
had been worked out long before; these stories were supposed to prove
that gold was bred in the earth. 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; was he not given dominion over all things when the world was
created?
In asserting that the baser metals could be transmuted into gold, and
in attempting to effect this transmutation, the alchemist was not
acting on a vague; haphazard surmise; he was pursuing a policy
dictated by his conception of the order of nature; he was following
the method which he conceived to be that used by nature herself. The
transmutation of metals was part and parcel of a system of natural
philosophy. If this transmutation were impossible, the alchemical
scheme of things would be destroyed, the believer in the transmutation
would be left without a sense of order in the material universe. And,
moreover, the alchemist's conception of an orderly material universe
was so intimately connected with his ideas of morality and religion,
that to disprove the possibility of the great transmutation would be
to remove not only the basis of his system of material things, but the
foundations of his system of ethics also. To take away his belief in
the possibility of changing other metals into gold would be to convert
the alchemist into an atheist.
How, then, was the transmutation to be accomplished? Evidently by the
method whereby nature brings to perfection other living things; for
the alchemist's belief in the simplicity and unity of nature compelled
him to regard metals as living things.
Plants are improved by appropriate culture, by digging and enriching
the soil, by judicious selection of seed; animals are improved by
careful breeding. By similar processes metals will be encouraged and
helped towards perfection. The perfect state of gold will not be
reached at a bound; it will be gained gradually. Many partial
purifications will be needed. As _Subtle_ says in _The Alchemist_--
'twere absurd
To think that nature in the earth bred gold
Perfect in the instant; something went before,
There must be remote matter....
Nature doth first beget the imperfect, then
Proceeds she to the perfect.
At this stage the alchemical argument becomes very ultra-physical. It
may, perhaps, be rendered somewhat as follows:--
Man is the most perfect of animals; in man there is a union of three
parts, these are body, soul, and spirit. Metals also may be said to
have a body, a soul, and a spirit; there is a specific bodily, or
material, form belonging to each metal; there is a metalline soul
characteristic of this or that class of metals; there is a spirit, or
inner immaterial potency, which is the very essence of all metals.
The soul and spirit of man are clogged by his body. If the spiritual
nature is to become the dominating partner, the body must be
mortified: the alchemists, of course, used this kind of imagery, and
it was very real to them. In like manner the spirit of metals will be
laid bare and enabled to exercise its transforming influences, only
when the material form of the individual metal has been destroyed. The
first thing to do, then, is to strip off and cast aside those
properties of metals which appeal to the senses.
"It is necessary to deprive matter of its qualities in order to draw
out its soul," said Stephanus of Alexandria in the 7th century; and in
the 17th century Paracelsus said, "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."
But the possession of the soul of metals is not the final stage:
mastery of the soul may mean the power of transmuting a metal into
another like itself; it will not suffice for the great transmutation,
for in that process a metal becomes gold, the one and only perfect
metal. Hence the soul also must be removed, in order that the spirit,
the essence, the kernel, may be obtained.
And as it is with metals, so, the alchemists argued, it is with all
things. There are a few _Principles_ which may be thought of as
conditioning the specific bodily and material forms of things; beneath
these, there are certain _Elements_ which are common to many things
whose principles are not the same; and, hidden by the wrappings of
elements and principles, there is the one _Essence_, the spirit, the
mystic uniting bond, the final goal of the philosopher.
I propose in this chapter to try to analyse the alchemical conceptions
of Elements and Principles, and in the next chapter to attempt some
kind of description of the Essence.
In his _Tract Concerning the Great Stone of the Ancient Sages_, Basil
Valentine speaks of the "three Principles," salt, sulphur, and
mercury, the source of which is the Elements.
"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 earth."
Of the element _Earth_, he says:--"In this element the other three,
especially fire, are latent.... It is gross and porous, specifically
heavy, but naturally light.... It receives all that the other three
project into it, conscientiously conceals what it should hide, and
brings to light that which it should manifest.... Outwardly it is
visible and fixed, inwardly it is invisible and volatile."
Of the element _Water_, Basil Valentine says:--"Outwardly it is
volatile, inwardly it is fixed, cold, and humid.... It is the solvent
of the world, and exists in three degrees of excellence: the pure, the
purer, and the purest. Of its purest substance the heavens were
created; of that which is less pure the atmospheric air was formed;
that which is simply pure remains in its proper sphere where ... it is
guardian of all subtle substances here below."
Concerning the element _Air_, he writes:--"The most noble Element of
Air ... is volatile, but may be fixed, and when fixed renders all
bodies penetrable.... It is nobler than Earth or Water.... It
nourishes, impregnates, conserves the other elements."
Finally, of the element _Fire_:--"Fire is the purest and noblest of
all Elements, full of adhesive unctuous corrosiveness, penetrant,
digestive, inwardly fixed, hot and dry, outwardly visible, and
tempered by the earth.... This Element is the most passive of all, and
resembles a chariot; when it is drawn, it moves; when it is not drawn,
it stands still."
Basil Valentine then tells his readers that Adam was compounded of the
four pure Elements, but after his expulsion from Paradise he became
subject to the various impurities of the animal creation. "The pure
Elements of his creation were gradually mingled and infected with the
corruptible elements of the outer world, and thus his body became more
and more gross, and liable, through its grossness, to natural decay
and death." The process of degeneration was slow at first, but "as
time went on, the seed out of which men were generated became more and
more infected with perishable elements. The continued use of
corruptible food rendered their bodies more and more gross; and human
life was soon reduced to a very brief span."
Basil Valentine then deals with the formation of the three
_Principles_ of things, by the mutual action of the four Elements.
Fire acting on Air produced _Sulphur_; Air acting on Water produced
_Mercury_; Water acting on Earth produced _Salt_. Earth having nothing
to act on produced nothing, but became the nurse of the three
Principles. "The three Principles," he says, "are necessary because
they are the immediate substance of metals. The remoter substance of
metals is the four elements, but no one can produce anything out of
them but God; and even God makes nothing of them but these three
Principles."
To endeavour to obtain the four pure Elements is a hopeless task. But
the Sage has the three Principles at hand. "The artist should
determine which of the three Principles he is seeking, and should
assist it so that it may overcome its contrary." "The art consists in
an even mingling of the virtues of the Elements; in the natural
equilibrium of the hot, the dry, the cold, and the moist."
The account of the Elements given by Philalethes differs from that of
Basil Valentine.
Philalethes enumerates three Elements only: Air, Water, and Earth.
Things are not formed by the mixture of these Elements, for
"dissimilar things can never really unite." By analysing the
properties of the three Elements, Philalethes reduced them finally to
one, namely, Water. "Water," he says, "is the first principle of all
things." "Earth is the fundamental Element in which all bodies grow
and are preserved. Air is the medium into which they grow, and by
means of which the celestial virtues are communicated to them."
According to Philalethes, _Mercury_ is the most important of the three
Principles. Although gold is formed by the aid of Mercury, it is only
when Mercury has been matured, developed, and perfected, that it is
able to transmute inferior metals into gold. The essential thing to do
is, therefore, to find an agent which will bring about the maturing
and perfecting of Mercury. This agent, Philalethes calls "Our divine
Arcanum."
Although it appears to me impossible to translate the sayings of the
alchemists concerning Elements and Principles into expressions which
shall have definite and exact meanings for us to-day, still we may,
perhaps, get an inkling of the meaning of such sentences as those I
have quoted from Basil Valentine and Philalethes.
Take the terms _Fire_ and _Water_. In former times all liquid
substances were supposed to be liquid because they possessed something
in common; this hypothetical something was called the _Element,
Water_. Similarly, the view prevailed until comparatively recent
times, that burning substances burn because of the presence in them of
a hypothetical imponderable fluid, called "_Caloric_"; the alchemists
preferred to call this indefinable something an Element, and to name
it _Fire_.
We are accustomed to-day to use the words _fire_ and _water_ with
different meanings, according to the ideas we wish to express. When we
say "do not touch the fire," or "put your hand into the water," we are
regarding fire and water as material things; when we say "the house is
on fire," or speak of "a diamond of the first water," we are thinking
of the condition or state of a burning body, or of a substance as
transparent as water. When we say "put out the fire," or "his heart
became as water," we are referring to the act of burning, or are using
an image which likens the thing spoken of to a substance in the act of
liquefying.
As we do to-day, so the alchemists did before us; they used the words
_fire_ and _water_ to express different ideas.
Such terms as hardness, softness, coldness, toughness, and the like,
are employed for the purpose of bringing together into one point of
view different things which are alike in, at least, one respect. Hard
things may differ in size, weight, shape, colour, texture, &c. A soft
thing may weigh the same as a hard thing; both may have the same
colour or the same size, or be at the same temperature, and so on. By
classing together various things as hard or soft, or smooth or rough,
we eliminate (for the time) all the properties wherein the things
differ, and regard them only as having one property in common. The
words hardness, softness, &c., are useful class-marks.
Similarly the alchemical Elements and Principles were useful
class-marks.
We must not suppose that when the alchemists spoke of certain things
as formed from, or by the union of, the same Elements or the same
Principles, they meant that these things contained a common substance.
Their Elements and Principles were not thought of as substances, at
least not in the modern meaning of the expression, _a substance_; they
were qualities only.
If we think of the alchemical elements earth, air, fire, and water, as
general expressions of what seemed to the alchemists the most
important properties of all substances, we may be able to attach some
kind of meaning to the sayings of Basil Valentine, which I have
quoted. For instance, when that alchemist tells us, "Fire is the most
passive of all elements, and resembles a chariot; when it is drawn, it
moves; when it is not drawn, it stands still"--we may suppose he meant
to express the fact that a vast number of substances can be burnt, and
that combustion does not begin of itself, but requires an external
agency to start it.
Unfortunately, most of the terms which the alchemists used to
designate their Elements and Principles are terms which are now
employed to designate specific substances. The word _fire_ is still
employed rather as a quality of many things under special conditions,
than as a specific substance; but _earth_, _water_, _air_, _salt_,
_sulphur_, and _mercury_, are to-day the names applied to certain
groups of properties, each of which is different from all other groups
of properties, and is, therefore, called, in ordinary speech, a
definite kind of matter.
As knowledge became more accurate and more concentrated, the words
_sulphur_, _salt_, _mercury_, &c., began to be applied to distinct
substances, and as these terms were still employed in their alchemical
sense as compendious expressions for certain qualities common to great
classes of substances, much confusion arose. Kunckel, the discoverer
of phosphorus, who lived between 1630 and 1702, complained of the
alchemists' habit of giving different names to the same substance, and
the same name to different substances. "The sulphur of one," he says,
"is not the sulphur of another, to the great injury of science. To
that one replies that everyone is perfectly free to baptise his infant
as he pleases. Granted. You may if you like call an ass an ox, but you
will never make anyone believe that your ox is an ass." Boyle is very
severe on the vague and loose use of words practised by so many
writers of his time. In _The Sceptical Chymist_ (published 1678-9) he
says: "If judicious men, skilled in chymical affairs, shall once agree
to write clearly and plainly of them, and thereby keep men from being
stunned, as it were, or imposed upon by dark and empty words; it is to
be hoped that these [other] men finding, that they can no longer write
impertinently and absurdly, without being laughed at for doing so,
will be reduced either to write nothing, or books that may teach us
something, and not rob men, as formerly, of invaluable time; and so
ceasing to trouble the world with riddles or impertinences, we shall
either by their books receive an advantage, or by their silence escape
an inconvenience."
Most of the alchemists taught that the elements produced what they
called _seed_, by their mutual reactions, and the principles matured
this seed and brought it to perfection. They supposed that each class,
or kind, of things had its own seed, and that to obtain the seed was
to have the power of producing the things which sprung from that seed.
Some of them, however, asserted that all things come from a common
seed, and that the nature of the products of this seed is conditioned
by the circumstances under which it is caused to develop.
Thus Michael Sendivogius writes as follows in _The New Chemical Light,
drawn from the fountain of Nature and of Manual Experience_ (17th
century):--
"Wherever there is seed, Nature will work through it, whether it
be good or bad." "The four Elements, by their continued action,
project a constant supply of seed to the centre of the earth,
where it is digested, and whence it proceeds again in generative
motions. Now the centre of the earth is a certain void place where
nothing is at rest, and upon the margin or circumference of this
centre the four Elements project their qualities.... The magnetic
force of our earth-centre attracts to itself as much as is needed
of the cognate seminal substance, while that which cannot be used
for vital generation is thrust forth in the shape of stones and
other rubbish. This is the fountain-head of all things
terrestrial. Let us illustrate the matter by supposing a glass of
water to be set in the middle of a table, round the margin of
which are placed little heaps of salt, and of powders of different
colours. If the water be poured out, it will run all over the
table in divergent rivulets, and will become salt where it touches
the salt, red where it touches the red powder, and so on. The
water does not change the '_places_,' but the several '_places_'
differentiate the water.[4] In the same way, the seed which is the
product of the four Elements is projected in all directions from
the earth-centre, and produces different things, according to the
quality of the different places. Thus, while the seed of all
things is one, it is made to generate a great variety of
things.... So long as Nature's seed remains in the centre it can
indifferently produce a tree or a metal, a herb or a stone, and in
like manner, according to the purity of the place, it will produce
what is less or more pure."
[4] The author I am quoting had said--"Nature is divided into
four '_places_' in which she brings forth all things that
appear and that are in the shade; and according to the good or
bad quality of the '_place_,' she brings forth good or bad
things.... It is most important for us to know her '_places_'
... in order that we may join things together according to
Nature."
CHAPTER V.
THE ALCHEMICAL ESSENCE.
In the last chapter I tried to describe the alchemical view of the
interdependence of different substances. Taking for granted the
tripartite nature of man, the co-existence in him of body, soul, and
spirit (no one of which was defined), the alchemists concluded that
all things are formed as man is formed; that in everything there is a
specific bodily form, some portion of soul, and a dash of spirit. I
considered the term _soul_ to be the alchemical name for the
properties common to a class of substances, and the term _spirit_ to
mean the property which was thought by the alchemists to be common to
all things.
The alchemists considered it possible to arrange all substances in
four general classes, the marks whereof were expressed by the terms
hot, cold, moist, and dry; they thought of these properties as
typified by what they called the four Elements--fire, air, water, and
earth. Everything, they taught, was produced from the four Elements,
not immediately, but through the mediation of the three
Principles--mercury, sulphur, and salt. These Principles were regarded
as the tools put into the hands of him who desired to effect the
transmutation of one substance into another. The Principles were not
thought of as definite substances, nor as properties of this or that
specified substance; they were considered to be the characteristic
properties of large classes of substances.
The chemist of to-day places many compounds in the same class because
all are acids, because all react similarly under similar conditions.
It used to be said that every acid possesses more or less of _the
principle of acidity_. Lavoisier changed the language whereby certain
facts concerning acids were expressed. He thought that experiments
proved all acids to be compounds of the element oxygen; and for many
years after Lavoisier, the alchemical expression _the principle of
acidity_ was superseded by the word _oxygen_. Although Lavoisier
recognised that not every compound of oxygen is an acid, he taught
that every acid is a compound of oxygen. We know now that many acids
are not compounds of oxygen, but we have not yet sufficient knowledge
to frame a complete definition of the term _acid_. Nevertheless it is
convenient, indeed it is necessary, to place together many compounds
which react similarly under certain defined conditions, and to give a
common name to them all. The alchemists also classified substances,
but their classification was necessarily more vague than ours; and
they necessarily expressed their reasons for putting different
substances in the same class in a language which arose out of the
general conceptions of natural phenomena which prevailed in their
time.
The primary classification of substances made by the alchemists was
expressed by saying; these substances are rich in the principle
_sulphur_, those contain much of the principle _mercury_, and this
class is marked by the preponderance of the principle _salt_. The
secondary classification of the alchemists was expressed by saying;
this class is characterised by dryness, that by moisture, another by
coldness, and a fourth by hotness; the dry substances contain much of
the element _Earth_, the moist substances are rich in the element
_Water_, in the cold substances the element _Air_ preponderates, and
the hot substances contain more of the element _Fire_ than of the
other elements.
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.
If a person ignorant of its powers were to obtain the Essence, he
might work vast havoc and cause enormous confusion; it was necessary,
therefore, to know the conditions under which the potencies of the
Essence became active. Hence there was need of prolonged study of the
mutual actions of the most seemingly diverse substances, and of minute
and patient examination of the conditions under which nature performs
her marvellous transmutations. The quest of the One Thing was fraught
with peril, and was to be attempted only by those who had served a
long and laborious apprenticeship.
In _The Chemical Treatise of Thomas Norton, the Englishman, called
Believe-me, or the Ordinal of Alchemy_ (15th century), the adept is
warned not to disclose his secrets to ordinary people.
"You should carefully test and examine the life, character, and mental
aptitudes of any person who would be initiated in this Art, and then
you should bind him, by a sacred oath, not to let our Magistery be
commonly or vulgarly known. Only when he begins to grow old and
feeble, he may reveal it to one person, but not to more, and that one
man must be virtuous.... If any wicked man should learn to practise
the Art, the event would be fraught with great danger to Christendom.
For such a man would overstep all bounds of moderation, and would
remove from their hereditary thrones those legitimate princes who rule
over the peoples of Christendom."
The results of the experimental examination of the compositions and
properties of substances, made since the time of the alchemists, have
led to the modern conception of the chemical element, and the
isolation of about seventy or eighty different elements. No substance
now called an element has been produced in the laboratory by uniting
two, or more, distinct substances, nor has any been separated into
two, or more, unlike portions. The only decided change which a
chemical element has been caused to undergo is the combination of it
with some other element or elements, or with a compound or compounds.
But it is possible that all the chemical elements may be combinations
of different quantities of one primal element. Certain facts make this
supposition tenable; and some chemists expect that the supposition
will be proved to be correct. If the hypothetical primal element
should be isolated, we should have fulfilled the aim of alchemy, and
gained the One Thing; but the fulfilment would not be that whereof the
alchemists dreamed.
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. Remove these wrappings from some special substance, and you have
the perfect form of that thing; you have some portion of the Universal
Spirit joined to the one general property of the class of things
whereof the particular substance is a member. Then remove the
class-property, often spoken of by the alchemists as _the life_, of
the substance, and you have the Essence itself.
The alchemists thought that to every thing, or at any rate to every
class of things, there corresponds a more perfect form than that which
we see and handle; they spoke of gold, and the _gold of the Sages_;
mercury, and the _mercury of the Philosophers_; sulphur, and the
_heavenly sulphur of him whose eyes are opened_.
To remove the outer wrappings of ordinary properties which present
themselves to the untrained senses, was regarded by the alchemists to
be a difficult task; to tear away the soul (the class-property) of a
substance, and yet retain the Essence which made that substance its
dwelling place, was possible only after vast labour, and by the use of
the proper agent working under the proper conditions. An exceedingly
powerful, delicate, and refined agent was needed; and the mastery of
the agent was to be acquired by bitter experience, and, probably,
after many disappointments.
"Gold," an alchemist tells us, "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 the power to restore it to
life, and to change the lifeless remains into a new and pure body."
Thomas Norton, the author of _The Ordinal of Alchemy_, writing in the
15th century, says the worker in transmutations is often tempted to be
in a hurry, or to despair, and he is often deceived. His servants will
be either stupid and faithful, or quick-witted and false. He may be
robbed of everything when his work is almost finished. The only
remedies are infinite patience, a sense of virtue, and sound reason.
"In the pursuit of our Art," he says, "you should take care, from time
to time, to unbend your mind from its sterner employments with some
convenient recreation."
The choice of workmen to aid in the mechanical parts of the quest was
a great trouble to the alchemists. On this subject Norton says--"If
you would be free from all fear over the gross work, follow my
counsel, and never engage married men; for they soon give in and
pretend they are tired out.... Hire your workmen for certain
stipulated wages, and not for longer periods than twenty-four hours at
a time. Give them higher wages than they would receive elsewhere, and
be prompt and ready in your payments."
Many accounts are given by alchemical writers of the agent, and many
names are bestowed on it. 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."
Sometimes we are told that the agent is mercury, sometimes that it is
gold, but not common mercury or common gold. "Supplement your common
mercury with the inward fire which it needs, and you will soon get rid
of all superfluous dross." "The agent is gold, as highly matured as
natural and artificial digestion can make it, and a thousand times
more perfect than the common metal of that name. Gold, thus exalted,
radically penetrates, tinges, and fixes metals."
The alchemists generally likened the work to be performed by their
agent to the killing of a living thing. They constantly use the
allegory of death, followed by resurrection, in describing the steps
whereby the Essence was to be obtained, and the processes whereby the
baser metals were to be partially purified. They speak of the
mortification of metals, the dissolution and putrefaction of
substances, as preliminaries to the appearance of the true life of the
things whose outward properties have been destroyed. For instance,
Paracelsus says: "Destruction perfects that which is good; for the
good cannot appear on account of that which conceals it." The same
alchemist speaks of rusting as the mortification of metals; he says:
"The mortification of metals is the removal of their bodily
structure.... The mortification of woods is their being turned into
charcoal or ashes."
Paracelsus distinguishes natural from artificial mortification,
"Whatever nature consumes," he says, "man cannot restore. But whatever
man destroys man can restore, and break again when restored." Things
which had been mortified by man's device were considered by Paracelsus
not to be really dead. He gives this extraordinary illustration of his
meaning: "You see this is the case with lions, which are all born
dead, and are first vitalised by the horrible noise of their parents,
just as a sleeping person is awakened by a shout."
The mortification of metals is represented in alchemical books by
various images and allegories. Fig. I. is reduced from a cut in a 16th
century work, _The Book of Lambspring, a noble ancient Philosopher,
concerning the Philosophical Stone_.
[Illustration: Here the father devours the son;
The soul and spirit flow forth from the body.
FIG. I.]
The image used to set forth the mortification of metals is a king
swallowing his son. Figs. II. and III. are reduced from Basil
Valentine's _Twelve Keys_. Both of these figures represent the process
of mortification by images connected with death and burial.
[Illustration: FIG. II.]
In his explanation (?) of these figures, Basil Valentine says:--
"Neither human nor animal bodies can be multiplied or propagated
without decomposition; the grain and all vegetable seed, when cast
into the ground, must decay before it can spring up again;
moreover, putrefaction imparts life to many worms and other
animalculæ.... If bread is placed in honey, and suffered to decay,
ants are generated ... maggots are also developed by the decay of
nuts, apples, and pears. The same thing may be observed in regard
to vegetable life. Nettles and other weeds spring up where no such
seed has ever been sown. This occurs only by putrefaction. The
reason is that the soil in such places is so disposed, and, as it
were, impregnated, that it produces these fruits; which is a
result of the properties of sidereal influences; consequently the
seed is spiritually produced in the earth, and putrefies in the
earth, and by the operation of the elements generates corporeal
matter according to the species of nature. Thus the stars and the
elements may generate new spiritual, and ultimately, new vegetable
seed, by means of putrefaction.... Know that, in like manner, no
metallic seed can develop, or multiply, unless the said seed, by
itself alone, and without the introduction of any foreign
substance, be reduced to a perfect putrefaction."
[Illustration: FIG. III.]
The action of the mineral agent in perfecting substances is often
likened by the alchemists to the conjoining of the male and the
female, followed by the production of offspring. They insist on the
need of a union of two things, in order to produce something more
perfect than either. The agent, they say, must work upon something;
alone it is nothing.
The methods whereby the agent is itself perfected, and the processes
wherein the agent effects the perfecting of the less perfect things,
were divided into stages by the alchemists. They generally spoke of
these stages as _Gates_, and enumerated ten or sometimes twelve of
them. As examples of the alchemical description of these gates, I give
some extracts from _A Brief Guide to the Celestial Ruby_.
The first gate is _Calcination_, which is "the drying up of the
humours"; by this process the substance "is concocted into a black
powder which is yet unctuous, and retains its radical humour." When
gold passes through this gate, "We observe in it two natures, the
fixed and the volatile, which we liken to two serpents." The fixed
nature is likened to a serpent without wings; the volatile, to a
serpent with wings: calcination unites these two into one. The second
gate, _Dissolution_, is likened to death and burial; but the true
Essence will appear glorious and beautiful when this gate is passed.
The worker is told not to be discouraged by this apparent death. _The
mercury of the sages_ is spoken of by this author as the queen, and
gold as the king. The king dies for love of the queen, but he is
revived by his spouse, who is made fruitful by him and brings forth "a
most royal son."
Figs. IV. and V. are reduced from _The Book of Lambspring_; they
express the need of the conjunction of two to produce one.
[Illustration: Here you behold a great marvel--
Two Lions are joined into one.
The spirit and soul must be united in their body.
FIG. IV.]
After dissolution came _Conjunction_, wherein the separated elements
were combined. Then followed _Putrefaction_, necessary for the
germination of the seed which had been produced by calcination,
dissolution, and conjunction. Putrefaction was followed by
_Congelation_ and _Citation_. The passage through the next gate,
called _Sublimation_, caused the body to become spiritual, and the
spiritual to be made corporal. _Fermentation_ followed, whereby the
substance became soft and flowed like wax. Finally, by _Exaltation_,
the Stone was perfected.
[Illustration: Here are two birds, great and strong--the body and
spirit; one devours the other.
Let the body be placed in horse-dung, or a warm bath,
the spirit having been extracted from it. The body has
become white by the process, the spirit red by our art.
All that exists tends towards perfection, and thus is
the Philosopher's Stone prepared.
FIG. V.]
The author of _The Open Entrance_ speaks of the various stages in the
perfecting of the agent as _regimens_. The beginning of the heating
of gold with mercury is likened to the king stripping off his golden
garments and descending into the fountain; this is the _regimen of
Mercury_. As the heating is continued, all becomes black; this is the
_regimen of Saturn_. Then is noticed a play of many colours; this is
the _regimen of Jupiter_: if the heat is not regulated properly, "the
young ones of the crow will go back to the nest." About the end of the
fourth month you will see "the sign of the waxing moon," and all
becomes white; this is the _regimen of the Moon_. The white colour
gives place to purple and green; you are now in the _regimen of
Venus_. After that, appear all the colours of the rainbow, or of a
peacock's tail; this is the _regimen of Mars_. Finally the colour
becomes orange and golden; this is the _regimen of the Sun_.
The reader may wish to have some description of the Essence. The
alchemists could describe it only in contraries. It had a bodily form,
but its method of working was spiritual. In _The Sodic Hydrolith, or
Water Stone of the Wise_ we are told:--
"The stone is conceived below the earth, born in the earth,
quickened in heaven, dies in time, and obtains eternal glory....
It is bluish-grey and green.... It flows like water, yet it makes
no wet; it is of great weight, and is small."
Philalethes says, in _A Brief Guide to the Celestial Ruby_: "The
Philosopher's Stone is a certain heavenly, spiritual, penetrative, and
fixed substance, which brings all metals to the perfection of gold or
silver (according to the quality of the Medicine), and that by natural
methods, which yet in their effects transcend Nature.... Know then
that it is called a stone, not because it is like a stone, but only
because, by virtue of its fixed nature, it resists the action of fire
as successfully as any stone. In species it is gold, more pure than
the purest; it is fixed and incombustible like a stone, but its
appearance is that of very fine powder, impalpable to the touch, sweet
to the taste, fragrant to the smell, in potency a most penetrative
spirit, apparently dry and yet unctuous, and easily capable of tinging
a plate of metal.... If we say that its nature is spiritual, it would
be no more than the truth; if we described it as corporeal, the
expression would be equally correct."
The same author says: "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 Phoebus should
spring from thence. Its components are a most pure and tender mercury,
a dry incarcerate sulphur, which binds it and restrains fluxation....
Know this subject, it is the sure basis of all our secrets.... To deal
plainly, it is the child of Saturn, of mean price and great venom....
It is not malleable, though metalline. Its colour is sable, with
intermixed argent which mark the sable fields with veins of glittering
argent."
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. But whatever may have been the alchemical
meaning of the word _element_, it was certainly not that given to the
same word to-day. Nor did the word _transmutation_ mean to the
alchemist what it means to the chemist.
The facts which are known at present concerning the elements make
unthinkable such a change as that of lead into silver; but new facts
_may_ be discovered which will make possible the separation of lead
into things unlike itself, and the production of silver by the
combination of some of these constituents of lead. The alchemist
supposed he knew such facts as enabled him not only to form a mental
picture of the change of lead into silver, or tin into gold, but also
to assert that such changes must necessarily happen, and to accomplish
them. Although we are quite sure that the alchemist's facts were only
imaginings, we ought not to blame him for his reasoning on what he
took to be facts.
Every metal is now said to be an element, in the modern meaning of
that word: the alchemist regarded the metals as composite substances;
but he also thought of them as more simple than many other things.
Hence, if he was able to transmute one metal into another, he would
have strong evidence in support of his general conception of the
unity of all things. And, as transmutation meant, to the alchemist,
the bringing of a substance to the condition of greatest perfection
possible for that substance, his view of the unity of nature might be
said to be proved if he succeeded in changing one of the metals, one
of these comparatively simple substances, into the most perfect of all
metals, that is, into gold.
The transmutation of the baser metals into gold thus came to be the
practical test of the justness of the alchemical scheme of things.
Some alchemists assert they had themselves performed the great
transmutation; others tell of people who had accomplished the work.
The following story is an example of the accounts given of the making
of gold. It is taken from _John Frederick Helvetius' Golden Calf,
which the world worships and adores_ (17th century):--
"On the 27th December 1666, in the forenoon, there came to my
house a certain man, who was a complete stranger to me, but of an
honest grave countenance, and an authoritative mien, clothed in a
simple garb.... He was of middle height, his face was long and
slightly pock-marked, his hair was black and straight, his chin
close-shaven, his age about forty-three or forty-four, and his
native province, as far as I could make out, North Holland. After
we had exchanged salutations, he asked me whether he might have
some conversation with me. He wished to say something to me about
the Pyrotechnic Art, as he had read one of my tracts (directed
against the Sympathetic Powder of Dr Digby), in which I hinted a
suspicion whether the Grand Arcanum of the Sages was not after all
a gigantic hoax. He, therefore, took that opportunity of asking me
whether I could not believe that such a grand mystery might exist
in the nature of things, by means of which a physician could
restore any patient whose vitals were not irreparably destroyed. 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.' ... After some further
conversation, the Artist Elias (for it was he) thus addressed me:
'Since you have read so much in the works of the alchemists about
this stone, its substance, its colour and its wonderful effects,
may I be allowed the question, whether you have not prepared it
yourself?' On my answering his question in the negative, he took
out of his bag a cunningly-worked ivory box, in which were three
large pieces of substance resembling glass, or pale sulphur, and
informed me that here was enough of the tincture for the
production of twenty tons of gold. When I had held the precious
treasure in my hand for a quarter of an hour (during which time I
listened to a recital of its wonderful curative properties), I was
compelled to restore it to its owner, which I could not help doing
with a certain degree of reluctance.... My request that he would
give me a piece of his stone (though it were no larger than a
coriander seed), he somewhat brusquely refused, adding, in a
milder tone, that he could not give it me for all the wealth I
possessed, and that not on account of its great preciousness, but
for some other reason which it was not lawful for him to
divulge.... Then he inquired whether I could not show him into a
room at the back of the house, where we should be less liable to
the observation of passers-by. On my conducting him into the state
parlour (which he entered without wiping his dirty boots), he
demanded of me a gold coin, and while I was looking for it, he
produced from his breast pocket a green silk handkerchief, in
which were folded up five medals, the gold of which was infinitely
superior to that of my gold piece." Here follows the inscriptions
on the medals. "I was filled with admiration, and asked my visitor
whence he had obtained that wonderful knowledge of the whole
world. He replied that it was a gift freely bestowed on him by a
friend who had stayed a few days at his house." Here follows the
stranger's account of this friend's experiments. "When my strange
visitor had concluded his narrative, I besought him to give me a
proof of his assertion, by performing the transmutatory operation
on some metals in my presence. He answered evasively, that he
could not do so then, but that he would return in three weeks, and
that, if he was then at liberty to do so, he would show me
something that would make me open my eyes. He appeared punctually
to the promised day, and invited me to take a walk with him, in
the course of which we discoursed profoundly on the secrets of
Nature in fire, though I noticed that my companion was very chary
in imparting information about the Grand Arcanum.... At last I
asked him point blank to show me the transmutation of metals. I
besought him to come and dine with me, and to spend the night at
my house; I entreated; I expostulated; but in vain. He remained
firm. I reminded him of his promise. He retorted that his promise
had been conditional upon his being permitted to reveal the secret
to me. At last, however, I prevailed upon him to give me a piece
of his precious stone--a piece no larger than a grain of rape
seed.... He bid me take half an ounce of lead ... and melt it in
the crucible; for the Medicine would certainly not tinge more of
the base metal than it was sufficient for.... He promised to
return at nine o'clock the next morning.... But at the stated hour
on the following day he did not make his appearance; in his stead,
however, there came, a few hours later, a stranger, who told me
that his friend the artist was unavoidably detained, but that he
would call at three o'clock in the afternoon. The afternoon came;
I waited for him till half-past seven o'clock. He did not appear.
Thereupon my wife came and tempted me to try the transmutation
myself. I determined however to wait till the morrow. On the
morrow ... I asked my wife to put the tincture in wax, and I
myself ... prepared six drachms of lead; I then cast the tincture,
enveloped as it was in wax, on the lead; as soon as it was melted,
there was a hissing sound and a slight effervescence, and after a
quarter of an hour I found that the whole mass of lead had been
turned into the finest gold.... We immediately took it to the
goldsmith, who at once declared it the finest gold he had ever
seen, and offered to pay fifty florins an ounce for it." He then
describes various tests which were made to prove the purity of the
gold. "Thus I have unfolded to you the whole story from beginning
to end. The gold I still retain in my possession, but I cannot
tell you what has become of the Artist Elias."
CHAPTER VI.
ALCHEMY AS AN EXPERIMENTAL ART.
A modern writer, Mr A.E. Waite, in his _Lives of the Alchemystical
Philosophers_, says: "The physical theory of transmutation is based on
the composite character of the metals, on their generation in the
bowels of the earth, and on the existence in nature of a pure and
penetrating matter which applied to any substance exalts and perfects
it after its own kind." It must he admitted that the alchemists could
cite many instances of transmutations which seemed to lead to the
conclusion, that there is no difference of kind between the metals and
other substances such as water, acids, oils, resins, and wood. We are
able to-day to effect a vast number of transformations wherein one
substance is exchanged for another, or made to take the place of
another. We can give fairly satisfactory descriptions of these
changes; and, by comparing them one with another, we are able to
express their essential features in general terms which can be applied
to each particular instance. The alchemists had no searching knowledge
of what may be called the mechanism of such changes; they gave an
explanation of them which we must call incorrect, in the present state
of our knowledge. But, as Hoefer says in his _Histoire de la Chimie_,
"to jeer at [the alchemical] theory is to commit at once an
anachronism and an injustice.... Unless the world should finish
to-morrow, no one can have the pretension to suppose that our
contemporaries have said the last word of science, and nothing will
remain for our descendants to discover, no errors for them to correct,
no theories for them to set straight."
[Illustration: FIG. VI. _See p. 90._]
[Illustration: FIG. VII. _See p. 90._]
[Illustration: FIG. VIII. _See p. 91._]
What kind of experimental evidence could an alchemist furnish in
support of his theory of transmutation? In answering this question, I
cannot do better than give a condensed rendering of certain pages in
Hoefer's _Histoire de la Chimie_.
The reader is supposed to be present at experiments conducted in the
laboratory of a Grand Master of the Sacred Art in the 5th or 6th
century.
_Experiment_.--Ordinary water is boiled in an open vessel; the water
is changed to a vapour which disappears, and a white powdery earth
remains in the vessel.
_Conclusion_.--Water is changed into air and earth.
Did we not know that ordinary water holds certain substances in
solution, and that boiling water acts on the vessel wherein it is
boiled, we should have no objection to urge against this conclusion.
It only remained to transmute fire that the transmutation of the four
elements might be completed.
_Experiment._--A piece of red-hot iron is placed in a bell-jar, filled
with water, held over a basin containing water; the volume of the
water decreases, and the air in the bell-jar takes fire when a lighted
taper is brought into it.
_Conclusion._--Water is changed into fire.
That interpretation was perfectly reasonable at a time when the fact
was unknown that water is composed of two gaseous substances; that one
of these (oxygen) is absorbed by the iron, and the other (hydrogen)
collects in the bell-jar, and ignites when brought into contact with a
flame.
_Experiment_.--Lead, or any other metal except gold or silver, is
calcined in the air; the metal loses its characteristic properties,
and is changed into a powdery substance, a kind of cinder or calx.
When this cinder, which was said to be the result of the _death of the
metal_, is heated in a crucible with some grains of wheat, one sees
the metal revive, and resume its original form and properties.
_Conclusion._--The metal which had been destroyed is revivified by the
grains of wheat and the action of fire.
Is this not to perform the miracle of the resurrection?
No objection can he raised to this interpretation, as long as we are
ignorant of the phenomena of oxidation, and the reduction of oxides by
means of carbon, or organic substances rich in carbon, such as sugar,
flour, seeds, etc. Grains of wheat were the symbol of life, and, by
extension, of the resurrection and eternal life.
[Illustration: FIG. IX. _See p. 91._]
_Experiment_.--Ordinary lead is calcined in a cupel made of cinders or
powdered bones; the lead is changed to a cinder which disappears into
the cupel, and a button of silver remains.
_Conclusion_.--The lead has vanished; what more natural than the
conclusion that it has been transformed into silver? It was not known
then that all specimens of lead contain more or less silver.
[Illustration: FIG. X. _See p. 92._]
_Experiment._-The vapour of arsenic bleaches copper. This fact gave
rise to many allegories and enigmas concerning the means of
transforming copper into silver.
Sulphur, which acts on metals and changes many of them into black
substances, was looked on as a very mysterious thing. It was with
sulphur that the coagulation (solidification) of mercury was effected.
_Experiment_.--Mercury is allowed to fall, in a fine rain, on to
melted sulphur; a black substance is produced; this black substance is
heated in a closed vessel, it is volatilised and transformed into a
beautiful red solid.
One could scarcely suppose that the black and the red substances are
identical, if one did not know that they are composed of the same
quantities of the same elements, sulphur and mercury.
How greatly must this phenomenon have affected the imagination of the
chemists of ancient times, always so ready to be affected by
everything that seemed supernatural!
Black and red were the symbols of darkness and light, of the evil and
the good principle; and the union of these two principles represented
the moral order. At a later time the idea helped to establish the
alchemical doctrine that sulphur and mercury are the Principles of all
things.
_Experiment._--Various organic substances are analysed by heating in a
distillation-apparatus; the products are, in each case, a solid
residue, liquids which distil off, and certain spirits which are
disengaged.
The results supported the ancient theory which asserted that _earth_,
_water_, _air_, and _fire_ are the four Elements of the world. The
solid residue represented _earth_; the liquid products of the
distillation, _water_; and the spirituous substances, _air_. _Fire_
was regarded sometimes as the means of purification, sometimes as the
soul, or invisible part, of all substances.
_Experiment_.-A strong acid is poured on to copper. The metal is
attacked, and at last disappears, giving place to a green liquid, as
transparent as water. A thin sheet of iron is plunged into the liquid;
the copper re-appears, and the iron vanishes.
What more simple than to conclude that the iron has been transformed
into copper?
Had lead, silver, or gold been used in place of copper, one would have
said that the iron was transformed into lead, silver, or gold.
In their search for "the pure and penetrating matter which applied to
any substance exalts and perfects it after its own kind," the
alchemists necessarily made many inventions, laid the foundation of
many arts and manufactures, and discovered many facts of importance in
the science of chemistry.
The practitioners of the _Sacred Art_ of Egypt must have been
acquainted with many operations which we now class as belonging to
applied chemistry; witness, their jewellery, pottery, dyes and
pigments, bleaching, glass-making, working in metals and alloys, and
their use of spices, essential oils, and soda in embalming, and for
other purposes.
During the centuries when alchemy flourished, gunpowder was invented,
the art of printing was established, the compass was brought into use,
the art of painting and staining glass was begun and carried to
perfection, paper was made from rags, practical metallurgy advanced by
leaps and bounds, many new alloys of metals came into use, glass
mirrors were manufactured, and considerable advances were made in
practical medicine and sanitation.
[Illustration: FIG. XI. _See p. 92._]
Basil Valentine, who was one of the greatest alchemists of the 16th
century, discovered many of the properties of the metal antimony, and
prepared and examined many compounds of that metal; he made green
vitriol from pyrites, brandy from fermented grape-juice, fulminating
gold, sulphide of potash, and spirits of salt; he made and used baths
of artificial mineral waters, and he prepared various metals by what
are now called _wet methods_, for instance, copper, by immersing
plates of iron in solutions of bluestone. He examined the air of
mines, and suggested practical methods for determining whether the
air in a mine was respirable. Hoefer draws attention to a remarkable
observation recorded by this alchemist. Speaking of the "spirit of
mercury," Basil Valentine says it is "the origin of all the metals;
that spirit is nothing else than an air flying here and there without
wings; it is a moving wind, which, after it has been chased from its
home of Vulcan (that is, fire), returns to the chaos; then it expands
and passes into the region of the air from whence it had come." As
Hoefer remarks, this is perhaps one of the earliest accounts of the
gas discovered by Priestley and studied by Lavoisier, the gas we now
call oxygen, and recognise as of paramount importance in chemical
reactions.
[Illustration: FIG. XII. _See p. 92._]
Besides discovering and recording many facts which have become part
and parcel of the science of chemistry, the alchemists invented and
used various pieces of apparatus, and conducted many operations, which
are still employed in chemical laboratories. I shall reproduce
illustrations of some of these processes and pieces of apparatus, and
quote a few of the directions, given in a book, published in 1664,
called _The Art of Distillation_, by John French, Dr. in Physick.
The method recommended by French for hermetically sealing the neck of
a glass vessel is shown in Fig. VI. p. 80. The neck of the vessel is
surrounded by a tray containing burning coals; when the glass melts it
is cut off by shears, and then closed by tongs, which are made hot
before use.
Fig. VII. p. 81, represents a method for covering an open vessel,
air-tight, with a receptacle into which a substance may be sublimed
from the lower vessel. The lettering explains the method of using the
apparatus.
French gives very practical directions and much sound advice for
conducting distillations of various kinds. The following are specimens
of his directions and advice:--
"When you put water into a seething Balneum wherein there are
glasses let it be hot, or else thou wilt endanger the breaking of
the glasses.
"When thou takest any earthen, or glass vessel from the fire,
expose it not to the cold aire too suddenly for fear it should
break.
"In all your operations diligently observe the processes which you
read, and vary not a little from them, for sometimes a small
mistake or neglect spoils the whole operation, and frustrates your
expectations.
"Try not at first experiments of great cost, or great difficulty;
for it will be a great discouragement to thee, and thou wilt be
very apt to mistake.
"If any one would enter upon the practices of Chymistry, let him
apply himself to some expert artist for to be instructed in the
manual operation of things; for by this means he will learn more
in two months, than he can by his practice and study in seven
years, as also avoid much pains and cost, and redeem much time
which else of necessity he will lose."
Fig. VIII. p. 82, represents a common cold still, and Fig. IX. p. 84,
is a sketch of an apparatus for distilling by the aid of boiling
water. The bath wherein the vessels are placed in Fig. IX. was called
by the alchemists _balneum Mariae_, from Mary the Jewess, who is
mentioned in the older alchemical writings, and is supposed to have
invented an apparatus of this character. Nothing definite is known of
Mary the Jewess. A writer of the 7th century says she was initiated in
the sacred art in the temple of Memphis; a legend prevailed among some
of the alchemists that she was the sister of Moses.
Fig. X. p. 85, represents methods of distilling with an apparatus for
cooling the volatile products; the lower vessel is an _alembic_, with
a long neck, the upper part of which passes through a vessel
containing cold water.
[Illustration: Fig XIII. _See p. 94._]
Fig. XI. p. 88, shows a _pelican_, that is a vessel wherein a liquid
might be heated for a long time, and the volatile products be
constantly returned to the original vessel.
Fig. XII. p. 89, represents a retort with a receiver.
Some of the pieces of apparatus for distilling, which are described
by French, are shown in the following figures. Besides describing
apparatus for distilling, subliming, and other processes in the
laboratory, French gives directions for making tinctures, essences,
essential oils, spirits of salt, and pure saltpetre, oil of vitriol,
butter of antimony, calces (or as we now say, oxides) of metals, and
many other substances. He describes processes for making fresh water
from salt, artificial mineral water, medicated hot baths for invalids
(one of the figures represents an apparatus very like those advertised
to-day as "Turkish baths at home"), and artificial precious stones; he
tells how to test minerals, and make alloys, and describes the
preparation of many substances made from gold and silver. He also
gives many curious receipts; for instance, "To make Firre-trees appear
in Turpentine," "To make a Plant grow in two or three hours," "To make
the representation of the whole world in a Glass," "To extract a white
Milkie substance from the raies of the Moon."
[Illustration: FIG. XIV. _See p. 94._]
The process of making oil of vitriol, by burning sulphur under a hood
fitted with a side tube for the outflow of the oil of vitriol, is
represented in Fig. XIII. p. 92.
Fig. XIV. p. 93, is interesting; it is an apparatus for rectifying
spirits, by distilling, and liquefying only the most volatile portions
of the distillate. The spirituous liquor was heated, and the vapours
caused to traverse a long zigzag tube, wherein the less volatile
portions condensed to liquid, which flowed back into the vessel; the
vapour then passed into another vessel, and then through a second
zigzag tube, and was finally cooled by water, and the condensed liquid
collected. This apparatus was the forerunner of that used to-day, for
effecting the separation of liquids which boil at different
temperatures, by the process called _fractional distillation_.
We should never forget that the alchemists were patient and laborious
workers, their theories were vitally connected with their practice,
and there was a constant action and reaction between their general
scheme of things and many branches of what we now call chemical
manufactures. We may laugh at many of their theories, and regret that
much useless material was accumulated by them; we may agree with Boyle
(end of 17th century) when he likens the "hermetick philosophers," in
their search for truth, to "the navigators of Solomon's Tarshish
fleet, who brought home from their long and tedious voyages, not only
gold, and silver, and ivory, but apes and peacocks too; for so the
writings of several of your hermetick philosophers present us,
together with divers substantial and noble experiments, theories,
which either like peacocks' feathers make a great show but are neither
solid nor useful; or else like apes, if they have some appearance of
being rational, are blemished with some absurdity or other, that, when
they are attentively considered make them appear ridiculous." But
however we may condemn their method, because it rested on their own
conception of what the order of nature must be, we cannot but praise
their assiduity in conducting experiments and gathering facts.
As Bacon says, in _De Augmentis Scientiarum_:
"Alchemy may be compared to the man who told his sons that he had
left them gold buried somewhere in his vineyard; where they by
digging found no gold, but by turning up the mould about the roots
of the vines, procured a plentiful vintage. So the search and
endeavours to make gold have brought many useful inventions and
instructive experiments to light."
CHAPTER VII.
THE LANGUAGE OF ALCHEMY
The vagueness of the general conceptions of alchemy, and the
attribution of ethical qualities to material things by the alchemists,
necessarily led to the employment of a language which is inexact,
undescriptive, and unsuggestive to modern ears. The same name was
given to different things, and the same thing went under many names.
In Chapter IV. I endeavoured to analyse two terms which were
constantly used by the alchemists to convey ideas of great importance,
the terms _Element_ and _Principle_. That attempt sufficed, at any
rate, to show the vagueness of the ideas which these terms were
intended to express, and to make evident the inconsistencies between
the meanings given to the words by different alchemical writers. The
story quoted in Chapter III., from Michael Sendivogius, illustrates
the difficulty which the alchemists themselves had in understanding
what they meant by the term _Mercury_; yet there is perhaps no word
more often used by them than that. Some of them evidently took it to
mean the substance then, and now, called mercury; the results of this
literal interpretation were disastrous; others thought of mercury as a
substance which could be obtained, or, at any rate, might be obtained,
by repeatedly distilling ordinary mercury, both alone and when mixed
with other substances; others used the word to mean a hypothetical
something which was liquid but did not wet things, limpid yet capable
of becoming solid, volatile yet able to prevent the volatilisation of
other things, and white, yet ready to cause other white things to
change their colour; they thought of this something, this soul of
mercury, as having properties without itself being tangible, as at
once a substance and not a substance, at once a bodily spirit and a
spiritual body.
It was impossible to express the alchemical ideas in any language save
that of far-fetched allegory. The alchemical writings abound in such
allegories. Here are two of them.
The first allegory is taken from _The Twelve Keys_, of Basilius
Valentinus, the Benedictine:--
"The eleventh key to the knowledge of the augmentation of our
Stone I will put before you in the form of a parable.
"There lived in the East a gilded knight, named Orpheus, who was
possessed of immense wealth, and had everything that heart can
wish. He had taken to wife his own sister, Euridice, who did not,
however, bear him any children. This he regarded as the punishment
of his sin in having wedded his own sister, and was instant in
prayer to God both by day and by night, that the curse might be
taken from him. One night when he was buried in a deep sleep,
there came to him a certain winged messenger, named Phoebus, who
touched his feet, which were very hot, and said: 'Thou noble
knight, since thou hast wandered through many cities and kingdoms
and suffered many things at sea, in battle, and in the lists, the
heavenly Father has bidden me make known to thee the following
means of obtaining thy prayer: Take blood from thy right side, and
from the left side of thy spouse. For this blood is the heart's
blood of your parents, and though it may seem to be of two kinds,
yet, in reality, it is only one. Mix the two kinds of blood, and
keep the mixture tightly enclosed in the globe of the seven wise
Masters. Then that which is generated will be nourished with its
own flesh and blood, and will complete its course of development
when the Moon has changed for the eighth time. If thou repeat this
process again and again, thou shalt see children's children, and
the offspring of thy body shall fill the world.' When Phoebus
had thus spoken, he winged his flight heavenward. In the morning
the knight arose and did the bidding of the celestial messenger,
and God gave to him and to his wife many children, who inherited
their father's glory, wealth, and knightly honours from generation
to generation."
In the "Dedicatory Epistle" to his _Triumphal Chariot of Antimony_,
Basil Valentine addresses his brother alchemists as follows:--
"Mercury appeared to me in a dream, and brought me back from my
devious courses to the one way. 'Behold me clad not in the garb of
the vulgar, but in the philosopher's mantle.' So he said, and
straightway began to leap along the road in headlong bounds. Then,
when he was tired, he sat down, and, turning to me, who had
followed him in the spirit, bade me mark that he no longer
possessed that youthful vigour with which he would at the first
have overcome every obstacle, if he had not been allowed a free
course. Encouraged by his friendly salutation, I addressed him in
the following terms: 'Mercury, eloquent scion of Atlas, and father
of all Alchemists, since thou hast guided me hitherto, shew me, I
pray thee, the way to those Blessed Isles, which thou hast
promised to reveal to all thine elect children. 'Dost thou
remember,' he replied, that when I quitted thy laboratory, I left
behind me a garment so thoroughly saturated with my own blood,
that neither the wind could efface it, nor all-devouring time
destroy its indelible essence? Fetch it hither to me, that I may
not catch a chill from the state of perspiration in which I now
am; but let me clothe myself warmly in it, and be closely incited
thereto, so that I may safely reach my bride, who is sick with
love. She has meekly borne many wrongs, being driven through water
and fire, and compelled to ascend and descend times without
number--yet has she been carried through it all by the hope of
entering with me the bridal chamber, wherein we expect to beget a
son adorned from his birth with the royal crown which he may not
share with others. Yet may he bring his friends to the palace,
where sits enthroned the King of Kings, who communicates his
dignity readily and liberally to all that approach him.'
"I brought him the garment, and it fitted him so closely, that it
looked like an iron skin securing him against all the assaults of
Vulcan. 'Let us proceed,' he then said, and straightway sped
across the open field, while I boldly strove to keep up with my
guide.
"Thus we reached his bride, whose virtue and constancy were equal
to his own. There I beheld their marvellous conjugal union and
nuptial consummation, whence was born the son crowned with the
royal diadem. When I was about to salute him as King of Kings and
Lord of Lords, my Genius stood by me and warned me not to be
deceived, since this was only the King's forerunner, but not the
King himself whom I sought.
"When I heard the admonition, I did not know whether to be sad or
joyful. 'Depart,' then said Mercury, 'with this bridal gift, and
when you come to those disciples who have seen the Lord himself,
show them this sign.' And therewith he gave me a gold ring from
his son's finger. 'They know the golden branch which must be
consecrated to Proserpina before you can enter the palace of
Pluto. When he sees this ring, perhaps one will open to you with a
word the door of that chamber, where sits enthroned in his
magnificence the Desire of all Nations, who is known only to the
Sages.'
"When he had thus spoken, the vision vanished, but the bridal gift
which I still held in my hand shewed me that it had not been a
mere dream. It was of gold, but to me more precious than the most
prized of all metals. Unto you I will shew it when I am permitted
to see your faces, and to converse with you freely. Till that
earnestly wished-for time, I bid you farewell."
One result of the alchemical modes of expression was, that he who
tried to follow the directions given in alchemical books got into
dire confusion. He did not know what substances to use in his
operations; for when he was told to employ "the homogeneous water of
gold," for example, the expression might mean anything, and in despair
he distilled, and calcined, and cohobated, and tried to decompose
everything he could lay hands on. Those who pretended to know abused
and vilified those who differed from them.
In _A Demonstration of Nature_, by John A. Mehung (17th century),
Nature addresses the alchemical worker in the following words:--
"You break vials, and consume coals, only to soften your brains
still more with the vapours. You also digest alum, salt, orpiment,
and altrament; you melt metals, build small and large furnaces,
and use many vessels; nevertheless I am sick of your folly, and
you suffocate me with your sulphurous smoke.... You would do
better to mind your own business, than to dissolve and distil so
many absurd substances, and then to pass them through alembics,
cucurbits, stills, and pelicans."
Henry Madathanas, writing in 1622, says:--
"Then I understood that their purgations, sublimations,
cementations, distillations, rectifications, circulations,
putrefactions, conjunctions, calcinations, incinerations,
mortifications, revivifications, as also their tripods, athanors,
reverberatory alembics, excrements of horses, ashes, sand, stills,
pelican-viols, retorts, fixations, etc., are mere plausible
impostures and frauds."
The author of _The Only Way_ (1677) says:
"Surely every true Artist must look on this elaborate tissue of
baseless operations as the merest folly, and can only wonder that
the eyes of those silly dupes are not at last opened, that they
may see something besides such absurd sophisms, and read something
besides those stupid and deceitful books.... I can speak from
bitter experience, for I, too, toiled for many years ... and
endeavoured to reach the coveted goal by sublimation,
distillation, calcination, circulation, and so forth, and to
fashion the Stone out of substances such as urine, salt, atrament,
alum, etc. I have tried hard to evolve it out of hairs, wine,
eggs, bones, and all manner of herbs; out of arsenic, mercury, and
sulphur, and all the minerals and metals.... I have spent nights
and days in dissolving, coagulating, amalgamating, and
precipitating. Yet from all these things I derived neither profit
nor joy."
Another writer speaks of many would-be alchemists as "floundering
about in a sea of specious book-learning."
If alchemists could speak of their own processes and materials as
those authors spoke whom I have quoted, we must expect that the
alchemical language would appear mere jargon to the uninitiated. In
Ben Jonson's play _The Alchemist_, _Surley_, who is the sceptic of the
piece, says to Subtle, who is the alchemist--
... Alchemy is a pretty kind of game,
Somewhat like tricks o' the cards, to cheat a man
With charming ...
What else are all your terms,
Whereon no one of your writers 'grees with other?
Of your elixir, your _lac virginis_,
Your stone, your med'cine, and your chrysosperme,
Your sal, your sulphur, and your mercury,
Your oil of height, your tree of life, your blood,
Your marchesite, your tutie, your magnesia,
Your toad, your crow, your dragon, and your panther;
Your sun, your moon, your firmament, your adrop,
Your lato, azoch, zernich, chibrit, heutarit,
And then your red man, and your white woman,
With all your broths, your menstrues, and materials,
Of lye and egg-shells, women's terms, man's blood,
Hair o' the head, burnt clout, chalk, merds, and clay,
Powder of bones, scalings of iron, glass,
And moulds of other strange ingredients,
Would burst a man to name?
To which _Subtle_ answers,
And all these named
Intending but one thing; which art our writers
Used to obscure their art.
Was not all the knowledge
Of the Egyptians writ in mystic symbols?
Speak not the Scriptures oft in parables?
Are not the choicest fables of the poets,
That were the fountains and first springs of wisdom,
Wrapp'd in perplexed allegories?
The alchemists were very fond of using the names of animals as symbols
of certain mineral substances, and of representing operations in the
laboratory by what may be called animal allegories. The _yellow lion_
was the alchemical symbol of yellow sulphides, the _red lion_ was
synonymous with cinnabar, and the _green lion_ meant salts of iron and
of copper. Black sulphides were called _eagles_, and sometimes
_crows_. When black sulphide of mercury is strongly heated, a red
sublimate is obtained, which has the same composition as the black
compound; if the temperature is not kept very high, but little of the
red sulphide is produced; the alchemists directed to urge the fire,
"else the black crows will go back to the nest."
[Illustration: A salamander lives in the fire, which imparts to it a
most glorious hue.
This is the reiteration, gradation, and amelioration
of the Tincture, or Philosopher's Stone; and the whole
is called its Augmentation.
FIG. XV.]
The salamander was called the king of animals, because it was supposed
that he lived and delighted in fire; keeping a strong fire alight
under a salamander was sometimes compared to the purification of gold
by heating it.
Fig. XV., reduced from _The Book of Lambspring_ represents this
process.
The alchemists employed many signs, or shorthand expressions, in place
of writing the names of substances. The following are a few of the
signs which were used frequently.
[Symbol: Saturn] Saturn, also lead; [Symbol: Jupiter] Jupiter, also
tin; [Symbol: Mars-1] and [Symbol: Mars-2] Mars, also iron; [Symbol:
Sun] Sol, also gold; [Symbol: Venus] Venus, also copper; [Symbol:
Mercury-1], [Symbol: Mercury-2] and [Symbol: Mercury-3] Mercury;
[Symbol: Moon] Luna, also silver; [Symbol: Sulphur] Sulphur; [Symbol:
Vitriol] Vitriol; [Symbol: Fire] fire; [Symbol: Air] air; [Symbol:
Water] and [Symbol: Aquarius] water; [Symbol: Earth] earth; [Symbol:
Aqua Fortis] aqua fortis; [Symbol: Aqua Regis] aqua regis; [Symbol:
Aqua Vitæ] aqua vitæ; [Symbol: Day] day; [Symbol: Night] night;
[Symbol: Amalgam] Amalgam; [Symbol: Alembic] Alembic.
CHAPTER VIII.
THE DEGENERACY OF ALCHEMY.
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 object of their search was to satisfy their material needs, their
intellectual capacities, and their spiritual yearnings. The alchemists
of the nobler sort always made the first of these objects subsidiary
to the other two; they gave as their reason for desiring to make gold,
the hope that gold might become so common that it would cease to be
sought after by mankind. The author of _An Open Substance_ says:
"Would to God ... all men might become adepts in our art, for then
gold, the common idol of mankind, would lose its value, and we should
prize it only for its scientific teaching."
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. Such a man
rapidly degenerated into a charlatan; he used the language of alchemy
to cover his frauds, and with the hope of deluding his dupes by
high-sounding phrases. And, it must be admitted, alchemy lent itself
admirably to imposture. It promised unlimited wealth; it encouraged
the wildest dreams of the seeker after pleasure; and over these dreams
it cast the glamour of great ideas, the idea of the unity of nature,
and the idea of communion with other spheres of life, of calling in
the help of 'inheritors of unfulfilled renown,' and so it seemed to
touch to fine issues the sordidness of unblushing avarice.
Moreover, the working with strange ingredients and odd-fashioned
instruments, and the employment of mouth-filling phrases, and scraps
of occult learning which seemed to imply unutterable things, gave just
that pleasing dash of would-be wickedness to the process of consulting
the alchemist which acts as a fascination to many people. The earnest
person felt that by using the skill and knowledge of the alchemists,
for what he deemed a good purpose, he was compelling the powers of
evil to work for him and his objects.
It was impossible that such a system as alchemy should appear to the
plain man of the middle ages, when the whole scheme of life and the
universe rested on a magical basis, to be more than a kind of magic
which hovered between the black magic of the Sorcerer and the white
magic of the Church. Nor is it to be wondered at that a system which
lends itself to imposture so easily as alchemy did, should be thought
of by the plain man of modern times as having been nothing but a
machinery of fraud.
It is evident from the _Canon's Yeoman's Tale_ in Chaucer, that many
of those who professed to turn the base metals into gold were held in
bad repute as early as the 14th century. The "false chanoun" persuaded
the priest, who was his dupe, to send his servant for quicksilver,
which he promised to make into "as good silver and as fyn, As ther is
any in youre purse or myn"; he then gave the priest a "crosselet," and
bid him put it on the fire, and blow the coals. While the priest was
busy with the fire,
This false chanoun--the foulè feend hym fecche!--
Out of his bosom took a bechen cole,
In which ful subtilly was maad an hole,
And therinne put was of silver lemaille
An ounce, and stoppéd was withouten faille
The hole with wex, to kepe the lemaille in.
The "false chanoun" pretended to be sorry for the priest, who was so
busily blowing the fire:--
Ye been right hoot, I se wel how ye swete;
Have heer a clooth, and wipe awey the we't.
And whylès that the preest wipèd his face,
This chanoun took his cole with hardè grace,
And leyde it above, upon the middèward
Of the crosselet, and blew wel afterward.
Til that the colès gonnè fastè brenne.
As the coal burned the silver fell into the "crosselet." Then the
canon said they would both go together and fetch chalk, and a pail of
water, for he would pour out the silver he had made in the form of an
ingot. They locked the door, and took the key with them. On returning,
the canon formed the chalk into a mould, and poured the contents of
the crucible into it. Then he bade the priest,
Look what ther is, put in thin hand and grope,
Thow fyndè shalt ther silver, as I hope.
What, devel of hellè! Sholde it ellis be?
Shavyng of silver silver is, _parde!_
He putte his hand in, and took up a teyne
Of silver fyn, and glad in every veyne
Was this preest, when he saugh that it was so.
The conclusion of the _Canon's Yeoman's Tale_ shows that, in the 14th
century, there was a general belief in the possibility of finding the
philosopher's stone, and effecting the transmutation, although the
common practitioners of the art were regarded as deceivers. A disciple
of Plato is supposed to ask his master to tell him the "namè of the
privee stoon." Plato gives him certain directions, and tells him he
must use _magnasia_; the disciple asks--
'What is Magnasia, good sire, I yow preye?'
'It is a water that is maad, I seye,
Of elementés fourè,' quod Plato.
'Telle me the rootè, good sire,' quod he tho,
Of that water, if it be yourè wille.'
'Nay, nay,' quod Plato, 'certein that I nylle;
The philosophres sworn were everychoon
That they sholden discovers it unto noon,
Ne in no book it write in no manere,
For unto Crist it is so lief and deere,
That he wol nat that it discovered bee,
But where it liketh to his deitee
Man for tenspire, and eek for to deffende
Whom that hym liketh; lo, this is the ende.'
The belief in the possibility of alchemy seems to have been general
sometime before Chaucer wrote; but that belief was accompanied by the
conviction that alchemy was an impious pursuit, because the
transmutation of baser metals into gold was regarded as trenching on
the prerogative of the Creator, to whom alone this power rightfully
belonged. In his _Inferno_ (which was probably written about the year
1300), Dante places the alchemists in the eighth circle of hell, not
apparently because they were fraudulent impostors, but because, as one
of them says, "I aped creative nature by my subtle art."
In later times, some of those who pretended to have the secret and to
perform great wonders by the use of it, became rich and celebrated,
and were much sought after. The most distinguished of these
pseudo-alchemists was he who passed under the name of Cagliostro. His
life bears witness to the eagerness of human beings to be deceived.
Joseph Balsamo was born in 1743 at Palermo, where his parents were
tradespeople in a good way of business.[5] In the memoir of himself,
which he wrote in prison, Balsamo seeks to surround his birth and
parentage with mystery; he says, "I am ignorant, not only of my
birthplace, but even of the parents who bore me.... My earliest
infancy was passed in the town of Medina, in Arabia, where I was
brought up under the name of Acharat."
[5] The account of the life of Cagliostro is much condensed
from Mr A.E. Waite's _Lives of the Alchemystical Philosophers_.
When he was thirteen years of age, Balsamo's parents determined he
should be trained for the priesthood, but he ran away from his school.
He was then confined in a Benedictine monastery. He showed a
remarkable taste for natural history, and acquired considerable
knowledge of the use of drugs; but he soon tired of the discipline and
escaped. For some years he wandered about in different parts of Italy,
living by his wits and by cheating. A goldsmith consulted him about a
hidden treasure; he pretended to invoke the aid of spirits, frightened
the goldsmith, got sixty ounces of gold from him to carry on his
incantations, left him in the lurch, and fled to Messina. In that
town he discovered an aged aunt who was sick; the aunt died, and left
her money to the Church. Balsamo assumed her family name, added a
title of nobility, and was known henceforward as the Count Alessandro
Cagliostro.
In Messina he met a mysterious person whom he calls Altotas, and from
whom, he says in his Memoir, he learnt much. The following account of
the meeting of Balsamo and the stranger is taken from Waite's book:
"As he was promenading one day near the jetty at the extremity of the
port he encountered an individual singularly habited and possessed of
a most remarkable countenance. This person, aged apparently about
fifty years, seemed to be an Armenian, though, according to other
accounts, he was a Spaniard or Greek. He wore a species of caftan, a
silk bonnet, and the extremities of his breeches were concealed in a
pair of wide boots. In his left hand he held a parasol, and in his
right the end of a cord, to which was attached a graceful Albanian
greyhound.... Cagliostro saluted this grotesque being, who bowed
slightly, but with satisfied dignity. 'You do not reside in Messina,
signor?' he said in Sicilian, but with a marked foreign accent.
Cagliostro replied that he was tarrying for a few days, and they began
to converse on the beauty of the town and on its advantageous
situation, a kind of Oriental imagery individualising the eloquence of
the stranger, whose remarks were, moreover, adroitly adorned with a
few appropriate compliments."
Although the stranger said he received no one at his house he allowed
Cagliostro to visit him. After various mysterious doings the two went
off to Egypt, and afterwards to Malta, where they performed many
wonderful deeds before the Grand Master, who was much impressed. At
Malta Altotas died, or, at anyrate, vanished. Cagliostro then
travelled for some time, and was well received by noblemen,
ambassadors, and others in high position. At Rome he fell in love with
a young and beautiful lady, Lorenza Feliciani, and married her.
Cagliostro used his young wife as a decoy to attract rich and foolish
men. He and his wife thrived for a time, and accumulated money and
jewels; but a confederate betrayed them, and they fled to Venice, and
then wandered for several years in Italy, France, and England. They
seem to have made a living by the sale of lotions for the skin, and by
practising skilful deceptions.
About the year 1770 Cagliostro began to pose as an alchemist. After
another period of wandering he paid a second visit to London and
founded a secret society, based on (supposed) Egyptian rites, mingled
with those of freemasonry. The suggestion of this society is said to
have come from a curious book he picked up on a second-hand stall in
London. The society attracted people by the strangeness of its
initiatory rites, and the promises of happiness and wellbeing made by
its founder to those who joined it. Lodges were established in many
countries, many disciples were obtained, great riches were amassed,
and Cagliostro flourished exceedingly.
In his _Histoire du Merveilleux dans les Temps modernes_, Figuier,
speaking of Cagliostro about this period of his career, says:
"He proclaimed himself the bearer of the mysteries of Isis and Anubis
from the far East.... He obtained numerous and distinguished
followers, who on one occasion assembled in great force to hear Joseph
Balsamo expound to them the doctrines of Egyptian freemasonry. At this
solemn convention he is said to have spoken with overpowering
eloquence;... his audience departed in amazement and completely
converted to the regenerated and purified masonry. None doubted that
he was an initiate of the arcana of nature, as preserved in the temple
of Apis at the era when Cambyses belaboured that capricious divinity.
From this moment the initiations into the new masonry were numerous,
albeit they were limited to the aristocracy of society. There are
reasons to believe that the grandees who were deemed worthy of
admission paid exceedingly extravagantly for the honour."
Cagliostro posed as a physician, and claimed the power of curing
diseases simply by the laying on of hands. He went so far as to assert
he had restored to life the dead child of a nobleman in Paris; the
discovery that the miracle was effected by substituting a living child
for the dead one caused him to flee, laden with spoil, to Warsaw, and
then to Strassburg.
Cagliostro entered Strassburg in state, amid an admiring crowd, who
regarded him as more than human. Rumour said he had amassed vast
riches by the transmutation of base metals into gold. Some people in
the crowd said he was the wandering Jew, others that he had been
present at the marriage feast of Cana, some asserted he was born
before the deluge, and one supposed he might be the devil. The
goldsmith whom he had cheated of sixty ounces of gold many years
before was in the crowd, and, recognising him, tried to stop the
carriage, shouting: "Joseph Balsamo! It is Joseph! Rogue, where are my
sixty ounces of gold?" "Cagliostro scarcely deigned to glance at the
furious goldsmith; but in the middle of the profound silence which the
incident occasioned among the crowd, a voice, apparently in the
clouds, uttered with great distinctness the following words: 'Remove
this lunatic, who is possessed by infernal spirits.' Some of the
spectators fell on their knees, others seized the unfortunate
goldsmith, and the brilliant cortege passed on" (Waite).
From Strassburg Cagliostro* went to Paris, where he lived in great
splendour, curing diseases, making gold and diamonds, mystifying and
duping people of all ranks by the splendid ritual and gorgeous
feasting of his secret society, and amassing riches. He got entangled
in the affair of the Diamond Necklace, and left Paris. Trying to
advance his society in Italy he was arrested by the agents of the
Inquisition, and imprisoned, then tried, and condemned to death. The
sentence was commuted to perpetual imprisonment. After two years in
the prison of San Angelo he died at the age of fifty.
*Transcriber's Note: Original "Cagliosto".
CHAPTER IX.
PARACELSUS AND SOME OTHER ALCHEMISTS.
The accounts which have come to us of the men who followed the pursuit
of the _One Thing_ are vague, scrappy, and confusing.
Alchemical books abound in quotations from the writings of _Geber_.
Five hundred treatises were attributed to this man during the middle
ages, yet we have no certain knowledge of his name, or of the time or
place of his birth. Hoefer says he probably lived in the middle of the
8th century, was a native of Mesopotamia, and was named _Djabar
Al-Konfi_. Waite calls him _Abou Moussah Djafar al-Sofi_. Some of the
mediæval adepts spoke of him as the King of India, others called him a
Prince of Persia. Most of the Arabian writers on alchemy and medicine,
after the 9th century, refer to Geber as their master.
All the MSS. of writings attributed to Geber which have been examined
are in Latin, but the library of Leyden is said to possess some works
by him written in Arabic. These MSS. contain directions for preparing
many metals, salts, acids, oils, etc., and for performing such
operations as distillation, cupellation, dissolution, calcination, and
the like.
Of the other Arabian alchemists, the most celebrated in the middle
ages were _Rhasis_, _Alfarabi_, and _Avicenna_, who are supposed to
have lived in the 9th and 10th centuries.
The following story of Alfarabi's powers is taken from Waite's _Lives
of the Alchemystical Philosophers_:--
"Alfarabi was returning from a pilgrimage to Mecca, when, passing
through Syria, he stopped at the Court of the Sultan, and entered
his presence, while he was surrounded by numerous sage persons,
who were discoursing with the monarch on the sciences. Alfarabi
... presented himself in his travelling attire, and when the
Sultan desired he should be seated, with astonishing philosophical
freedom he planted himself at the end of the royal sofa. The
Prince, aghast at his boldness, called one of his officers, and in
a tongue generally unknown commanded him to eject the intruder.
The philosopher, however, promptly made answer in the same tongue:
'Oh, Lord, he who acts hastily is liable to hasty repentance.' The
Prince was equally astounded to find himself understood by the
stranger as by the manner in which the reply was given. Anxious to
know more of his guest he began to question him, and soon
discovered that he was acquainted with seventy languages. Problems
for discussion were then propounded to the philosophers, who had
witnessed the discourteous intrusion with considerable indignation
and disgust, but Alfarabi disputed with so much eloquence and
vivacity that he reduced all the doctors to silence, and they
began writing down his discourse. The Sultan then ordered his
musicians to perform for the diversion of the company. When they
struck up, the philosopher accompanied them on a lute with such
infinite grace and tenderness that he elicited the unmeasured
admiration of the whole distinguished assembly. At the request of
the Sultan he produced a piece of his own composing, sang it, and
accompanied it with great force and spirit to the delight of all
his hearers. The air was so sprightly that even the gravest
philosopher could not resist dancing, but by another tune he as
easily melted them to tears, and then by a soft unobtrusive melody
he lulled the whole company to sleep."
The most remarkable of the alchemists was he who is generally known as
_Paracelsus_. He was born about 1493, and died about 1540. It is
probable that the place of his birth was Einsiedeln, near Zurich. He
claimed relationship with the noble family of Bombast von Hohenheim;
but some of his biographers doubt whether he really was connected with
that family. His name, or at any rate the name by which he was known,
was Aureolus Philippus Theophrastus Bombast von Hohenheim. His father
in alchemy, Trimethius, Abbot of Spannheim and then of Wurzburg, who
was a theologian, a poet, an astronomer, and a necromancer, named him
_Paracelsus_; this name is taken by some to be a kind of Græco-Latin
paraphrase of von Hohenheim (of high lineage), and to mean "belonging
to a lofty place"; others say it signifies "greater than Celsus," who
was a celebrated Latin writer on medicine of the 1st century.
Paracelsus studied at the University of Basle; but, getting into
trouble with the authorities, he left the university, and for some
years wandered over Europe, supporting himself, according to one
account, by "psalm-singing, astrological productions, chiromantic
soothsaying, and, it has been said, by necromantic practices." He may
have got as far as Constantinople; as a rumour floated about that he
received the Stone of Wisdom from an adept in that city. He returned
to Basle, and in 1527 delivered lectures with the sanction of the
Rector of the university. He made enemies of the physicians by abusing
their custom of seeking knowledge only from ancient writers and not
from nature; he annoyed the apothecaries by calling their tinctures,
decoctions, and extracts, mere _soup-messes_; and he roused the ire of
all learned people by delivering his lectures in German. He was
attacked publicly and also anonymously. Of the pamphlets published
against him he said, "These vile ribaldries would raise the ire of a
turtle-dove." And Paracelsus was no turtle-dove. The following extract
from (a translation of) the preface to _The Book concerning the
Tinctures of the Philosophers written against those Sophists born
since the Deluge_, shews that his style of writing was abusive, and
his opinion of himself, to say the least, not very humble:--
"From the middle of this age the Monarchy of all the Arts has been
at length derived and conferred on me, Theophrastus Paracelsus,
Prince of Philosophy and Medicine. For this purpose I have been
chosen by God to extinguish and blot out all the phantasies of
elaborate and false works, of delusive and presumptuous words, be
they the words of Aristotle, Galen, Avicenna, Mesva, or the
dogmas of any among their followers. My theory, proceeding as it
does from the light of Nature, can never, through its consistency,
pass away or be changed; but in the fifty-eighth year after its
millennium and a half it will then begin to flourish. The practice
at the same time following upon the theory will be proved by
wonderful and incredible signs, so as to be open to mechanics and
common people, and they will thoroughly understand how firm and
immovable is that Paracelsic Art against the triflings of the
Sophists; though meanwhile that sophistical science has to have
its ineptitude propped up and fortified by papal and imperial
privileges.... So then, you wormy and lousy Sophist, since you
deem the monarch of Arcana a mere ignorant, fatuous, and prodigal
quack, now, in this mid age, I determine in my present treatise to
disclose the honourable course of procedure in these matters, the
virtues and preparation of the celebrated Tincture of the
Philosophers for the use and honour of all who love the truth, and
in order that all who despise the true arts may be reduced to
poverty."
The turbulent and restless spirit of Paracelsus brought him into open
conflict with the authorities of Basle. He fled from that town in
1528, and after many wanderings, he found rest at Salzburg, under the
protection of the archbishop. He died at Salzburg in 1541, in his
forty-eighth year.
The character and abilities of Paracelsus have been vastly praised by
some, and inordinately abused by others. One author says of him: "He
lived like a pig, looked like a drover, found his greatest enjoyment
in the company of the most dissolute and lowest rabble, and throughout
his glorious life he was generally drunk." Another author says:
"Probably no physician has grasped his life's task with a purer
enthusiasm, or devoted himself more faithfully to it, or more fully
maintained the moral worthiness of his calling than did the reformer
of Einsiedeln." He certainly seems to have been loved and respected by
his pupils and followers, for he is referred to by them as "the noble
and beloved monarch," "the German Hemes," and "our dear Preceptor and
King of Arts."
There seems no doubt that Paracelsus discovered many facts which
became of great importance in chemistry: he prepared the inflammable
gas we now call hydrogen, by the reaction between iron filings and oil
of vitriol; he distinguished metals from substances which had been
classed with metals but lacked the essential metalline character of
ductility; he made medicinal preparations of mercury, lead and iron,
and introduced many new and powerful drugs, notably laudanum.
Paracelsus insisted that medicine is a branch of chemistry, and that
the restoration of the body of a patient to a condition of chemical
equilibrium is the restoration to health.
Paracelsus trusted in his method; he was endeavouring to substitute
direct appeal to nature for appeal to the authority of writers about
nature. "After me," he cries, "you Avicenna, Galen, Rhasis, Montagnana
and the others. You after me, not I after you. You of Paris, you of
Montpellier, you of Swabia, of Meissen and Vienna; you who come from
the countries along the Danube and the Rhine; and you, too, from the
Islands of the Ocean. Follow me. It is not for me to follow you, for
mine is the monarchy." But the work was too arduous, the struggle too
unequal. "With few appliances, with no accurate knowledge, with no
help from the work of others, without polished and sharpened weapons,
and without the skill that comes from long handling of instruments of
precision, what could Paracelsus effect in his struggle to wrest her
secrets from nature? Of necessity, he grew weary of the task, and
tried to construct a universe which should be simpler than that most
complex order which refused to yield to his analysis." And so he came
back to the universe which man constructs for himself, and exclaimed--
"Each man has ... all the wisdom and power of the world in
himself; he possesses one kind of knowledge as much as another,
and he who does not find that which is in him cannot truly say
that he does not possess it, but only that he was not capable of
successfully seeking for it."
We leave a great genius, with his own words in our ears: "Have no care
of my misery, reader; let me bear my burden myself. I have two
failings: my poverty and my piety. My poverty was thrown in my face by
a Burgomaster who had perhaps only seen doctors attired in silken
robes, never basking in tattered rags in the sunshine. So it was
decreed I was not a doctor. For my piety I am arraigned by the
parsons, for ... I do not at all love those who teach what they do not
themselves practise."
CHAPTER X.
SUMMARY OF THE ALCHEMICAL DOCTRINE.--THE REPLACEMENT OF THE THREE
PRINCIPLES OF THE ALCHEMISTS BY THE SINGLE PRINCIPLE OF PHLOGISTON.
The _Sacred Art_, which had its origin and home in Egypt, was very
definitely associated with the religious rites, and the theological
teaching, recognised by the state. The Egyptian priests were initiated
into the mysteries of the divine art: and as the initiated claimed to
imitate the work of the deity, the priest was regarded by the ordinary
people as something more than a representative, as a mirror, of the
divinity. The sacred art of Egypt was transmuted into alchemy by
contact with European thought and handicrafts, and the tenets and
mysticism of the Catholic Church; and the conception of nature, which
was the result of this blending, prevailed from about the 9th until
towards the end of the 18th century.
Like its predecessor, alchemy postulated an orderly universe; but
alchemy was richer in fantastic details, more picturesquely
embroidered, more prodigal of strange fancies, than the sacred art of
Egypt.
The alchemist constructed his ordered scheme of nature on the basis of
the supposed universality of life. For him, everything lived, and the
life of things was threefold. The alchemist thought he recognised the
manifestation of life in the form, or body, of a thing, in its soul,
and in its spirit. Things might differ much in appearance, in size,
taste, smell, and other outward properties, and yet be intimately
related, because, according to the alchemist, they were produced from
the same principles, they were animated by the same soul. Things might
resemble one another closely in their outward properties and yet
differ widely in essential features, because, according to the
alchemist, they were formed from different elements, in their
spiritual properties they were unlike. The alchemists taught that the
true transformation, in alchemical language the transmutation, of one
thing into another could be effected only by spiritual means acting on
the spirit of the thing, because the transmutation consisted
essentially in raising the substance to the highest perfection whereof
it was capable; the result of this spiritual action might become
apparent in the material form of the substance. In attempting to apply
such vague conceptions as these, alchemy was obliged to use the
language which had been developed for the expression of human emotions
and desires, not only for the explanation of the facts it observed,
but also for the bare recital of these facts.
The outlook of alchemy on the world outside human beings was
essentially anthropomorphic. In the image of man, the alchemist
created his universe.
In the times when alchemy was dominant, the divine scheme of creation,
and the place given to man in that scheme, were supposed to be
thoroughly understood. Everything had its place, designed for it from
the beginning, and in that place it remained unless it were forced
from it by violent means. A great part of the business of experimental
alchemy was to discover the natural position, or condition, of each
substance; and the discovery was to be made by interpreting the facts
brought to light by observation and experiment by the aid of
hypotheses deduced from the general scheme of things which had been
formed independently of observation or experiment. Alchemy was a part
of magic; for magic interprets and corrects the knowledge gained by
the senses by the touchstone of generalisations which have been
supplied, partly by the emotions, and partly by extra-human authority,
and accepted as necessarily true.
The conception of natural order which regulates the life of the savage
is closely related to that which guided the alchemists. The essential
features of both are the notion that everything is alive, and the
persuasion that things can be radically acted on only by using life as
a factor. There is also an intimate connexion between alchemy and
witchcraft. Witches were people who were supposed to make an unlawful
use of the powers of life; alchemists were often thought to pass
beyond what is permitted to the creature, and to encroach on the
prerogative of the Creator.
The long duration of alchemy shows that it appealed to some
deep-seated want of human beings. Was not that want the necessity for
the realisation of order in the universe? Men were unwilling to wait
until patient examination of the facts of their own nature, and the
facts of nature outside themselves, might lead them to the realisation
of the interdependence of all things. They found it easier to evolve a
scheme of things from a superficial glance at themselves and their
surroundings; naturally they adopted the easier plan. Alchemy was a
part of the plan of nature produced by this method. The extraordinary
dominancy of such a scheme is testified to by the continued belief in
alchemy, although the one experiment, which seems to us to be the
crucial experiment of the system, was never accomplished. But it is
also to be remembered that the alchemists were acquainted with, and
practised, many processes which we should now describe as operations
of manufacturing and technical chemistry; and the practical usefulness
of these processes bore testimony, of the kind which convinces the
plain man, to the justness of their theories.
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. Both of these schemes were formed by the same method, by
introspection preceding observation; both were overthrown by the same
method, by observation and experiment proceeding hand in hand with
reasoning. In each case, the humility of science vanquished the
conceit of ignorance.
The change from alchemy to chemistry is an admirable example of the
change from a theory formed by looking inwards, and then projected on
to external facts, to a theory formed by studying facts, and then
thinking about them. This change proceeded slowly; it is not possible
to name a time when it may be said, here alchemy finishes and
chemistry begins. To adapt a saying of one of the alchemists, quoted
in a former chapter; alchemy would not easily give up its nature, and
fought for its life; but an agent was found strong enough to overcome
and kill it, and then that agent also had the power to change the
lifeless remains into a new and pure body. The agent was the accurate
and imaginative investigation of facts.
The first great step taken in the path which led from alchemy to
chemistry was the substitution of one Principle, the Principle of
Phlogiston, for the three Principles of salt, sulphur, and mercury.
This step was taken by concentrating attention and investigation, by
replacing the superficial examination of many diverse phenomena by the
more searching study of one class of occurrences. That the field of
study should be widened, it was necessary that it should first be
narrowed.
Lead, tin, iron, or copper is calcined. The prominent and striking
feature of these events is the disappearance of the metal, and the
formation of something very unlike it. But the original metal is
restored by a second process, which is like the first because it also
is a calcination, but seems to differ from the first operation in that
the burnt metal is calcined with another substance, with grains of
wheat or powdered charcoal. Led thereto by their theory that
destruction must precede re-vivification, death must come before
resurrection, the alchemists confined their attention to one feature
common to all calcinations of metals, and gave a superficial
description of these occurrences by classing them together as
processes of mortification. Sulphur, wood, wax, oil, and many other
things are easily burned: the alchemists said, these things also
undergo mortification, they too are killed; but, as "man can restore
that which man has destroyed," it must be possible to restore to life
the thing which has been mortified. The burnt sulphur, wood, wax, or
oil, is not really dead, the alchemists argued; to use the allegory of
Paracelsus, they are like young lions which are born dead, and are
brought to life by the roaring of their parents: if we make a
sufficiently loud noise, if we use the proper means, we shall bring
life into what seems to be dead material. As it is the roaring of the
parents of the young lions which alone can cause the still-born cubs
to live, so it is only by the spiritual agency of life, proceeded the
alchemical argument, that life can be brought into the mortified
sulphur, wood, wax, and oil.
The alchemical explanation was superficial, theoretical, in the wrong
meaning of that word, and unworkable. It was superficial because it
overlooked the fact that the primary calcination, the mortification,
of the metals, and the other substances, was effected in the air, that
is to say, in contact with something different from the thing which
was calcined; the explanation was of the kind which people call
theoretical, when they wish to condemn an explanation and put it out
of court, because it was merely a re-statement of the facts in the
language of a theory which had not been deduced from the facts
themselves, or from facts like those to be explained, but from what
were supposed to be facts without proper investigation, and, if facts,
were of a totally different kind from those to which the explanation
applied; and lastly, the explanation was unworkable, because it
suggested no method whereby its accuracy could be tested, no definite
line of investigation which might be pursued.
That great naturalist, the Honourable Robert Boyle (born in 1626, died
in 1691), very perseveringly besought those who examined processes of
calcination to pay heed to the action of everything which might take
part in the processes. He was especially desirous they should consider
what part the air might play in calcinations; he spoke of the air as a
"menstruum or additament," and said that, in such operations as
calcination, "We may well take the freedom to examine ... whether
there intervene not a coalition of the parts of the body wrought upon
with those of the menstruum, whereby the produced concrete may be
judged to result from the union of both."
It was by examining the part played by the air in processes of
calcination and burning that men at last became able to give
approximately complete descriptions of these processes.
Boyle recognised that the air is not a simple or elementary substance;
he spoke of it as "a confused aggregate of effluviums from such
differing bodies, that, though they all agree in constituting by their
minuteness and various motions one great mass of fluid matter, yet
perhaps there is scarce a more heterogeneous body in the world."
Clement of Alexandria who lived in the end of the 2nd, and the early
part of the 3rd, century A.D., seems to have regarded the air as
playing a very important part in combustions; he said--"Airs are
divided into two categories; an air for the divine flame, which is the
soul; and a material air which is the nourisher of sensible fire, and
the basis of combustible matter." Sentences like that I have just
quoted are found here and there in the writings of the earlier and
later alchemists; now and again we also find statements which may be
interpreted, in the light of the fuller knowledge we now have, as
indicating at least suspicions that the atmosphere is a mixture of
different kinds of air, and that only some of these take part in
calcining and burning operations. Those suspicions were confirmed by
experiments on the calcination of metals and other substances,
conducted in the 17th century by Jean Rey a French physician, and by
John Mayow of Oxford. But these observations and the conclusions
founded on them, did not bear much fruit until the time of Lavoisier,
that is, towards the close of the 18th century. They were overshadowed
and put aside by the work of Stahl (1660-1724). Some of the alchemists
of the 14th, 15th and 16th centuries taught that combustion and
calcination are processes wherein _the igneous principle_ is
destroyed, using the word "destroyed" in its alchemical meaning. This
description of processes of burning was much more in keeping with the
ideas of the time than that given by Boyle, Rey and Mayow. It was
adopted by Stahl, and made the basis of a general theory of those
changes wherein one substance disappears and another, or others, very
unlike it, are produced.
That he might bring into one point of view, and compare the various
changes effected by the agency of fire, Stahl invented a new
Principle, which he named _Phlogiston_, and constructed an hypothesis
which is generally known as the phlogistic theory. He explained, and
applied, this hypothesis in various books, especially in one published
at Halle in 1717.
Stahl observed that many substances which differed much from one
another in various respects were alike in one respect; they were all
combustible. All the combustible substances, he argued, must contain a
common principle; he named this supposed principle, _phlogiston_ (from
the Greek word _phlogistos_ = burnt, or set on fire). Stahl said that
the phlogiston of a combustible thing escapes as the substance burns,
and, becoming apparent to the senses, is named fire or flame. The
phlogiston in a combustible substance was supposed to be so
intimately associated with something else that our senses cannot
perceive it; nevertheless, the theory said, it is there; we can see
only the escaping phlogiston, we can perceive only the phlogiston
which is set free from its combination with other things. The theory
thought of phlogiston as imprisoned in the thing which can be burnt,
and as itself forming part of the prison; that the prisoner should be
set free, the walls of the prison had to be removed; the freeing of
the prisoner destroyed the prison. As escaping, or free, phlogiston
was called fire, or flame, so the phlogiston in a combustible
substance was sometimes called combined fire, or flame in the state of
combination. A peculiarity of the strange thing called phlogiston was
that it preferred to be concealed in something, hidden, imprisoned,
combined; free phlogiston* was supposed to be always ready to become
combined phlogiston.
*Transcriber's Note: Original "phlogstion".
The phlogistic theory said that what remains when a substance has been
burnt is the original substance deprived of phlogiston; and,
therefore, to restore the phlogiston to the product of burning is to
re-form the combustible substance. But how is such a restoration of
phlogiston to be accomplished? Evidently by heating the burnt thing
with something which is very ready to burn. Because, according to the
theory, everything which can be burnt contains phlogiston, the more
ready a substance is to burn the richer it is in phlogiston; burning
is the outrush of phlogiston, phlogiston prefers to be combined with
something; therefore, if you mix what remains after burning, with
something which is very combustible, and heat the mixture, you are
bringing the burnt matter under conditions which are very favourable
for the reception of phlogiston by it, for you are bringing it into
intimate contact with something from which freedom-hating phlogiston
is being forced to escape.
Charcoal, sulphur, phosphorus, oils and fats are easily burnt; these
substances were, therefore, chosen for the purpose of changing things
which had been burnt into things which could again be burnt; these,
and a few other substances like these, were classed together, and
called _phlogisticating agents_.
Very many of the substances which were dealt with by the experimenters
of the last quarter of the 17th, and the first half of the 18th,
century, were either substances which could be burned, or those which
had been produced by burning; hence the phlogistic theory brought into
one point of view, compared, and emphasised the similarities between,
a great many things which had not been thought of as connected before
that theory was promulgated. Moreover, the theory asserted that all
combustible, or incinerable, things are composed of phlogiston, and
another principle, or, as was often said, another element, which is
different in different kinds of combustible substances. The metals,
for instance, were said to be composed of phlogiston and an earthy
principle or element, which was somewhat different in different
metals. The phlogisteans taught that the earthy principle of a metal
remains in the form of ash, cinders, or calx, when the metal is
calcined, or, as they expressed it, when the metal is deprived of its
phlogiston.
The phlogistic theory savoured of alchemy; it postulated an undefined,
undefinable, intangible Principle; it said that all combustible
substances are formed by the union of this Principle with another,
which is sometimes of an earthy character, sometimes of a fatty
nature, sometimes highly volatile in habit. Nevertheless, the theory
of Stahl was a step away from purely alchemical conceptions towards
the accurate description of a very important class of changes. The
principle of phlogiston could be recognised by the senses as it was in
the act of escaping from a substance; and the other principle of
combustible things was scarcely a Principle in the alchemical sense,
for, in the case of metals at any rate, it remained when the things
which had contained it were burnt, and could be seen, handled, and
weighed. To say that metals are composed of phlogiston and an earthy
substance, was to express facts in such a language that the expression
might be made the basis of experimental inquiry; it was very different
from the assertion that metals are produced by the spiritual actions
of the three Principles, salt, mercury and sulphur, the first of which
is not salt, the second is not mercury, and the third is not sulphur.
The followers of Stahl often spoke of metals as composed of phlogiston
and an _element_ of an earthy character; this expression also was an
advance, from the hazy notion of _Element_ in purely alchemical
writings, towards accuracy and fulness of description. An element was
now something which could he seen and experimented with; it was no
longer a semi-spiritual existence which could not be grasped by the
senses.
The phlogistic theory regarded the calcination of a metal as the
separation of it into two things, unlike the metal, and unlike each
other; one of these things was phlogiston, the other was an earth-like
residue. The theory thought of the re-formation of a metal from its
calx, that is, the earthy substance which remains after combustion, as
the combination of two things to produce one, apparently homogeneous,
substance. Metals appeared to the phlogisteans, as they appeared to
the alchemists, to be composite substances. Processes of burning were
regarded by alchemists and phlogisteans alike, as processes of
simplification.
The fact had been noticed and recorded, during the middle ages, that
the earth-like matter which remains when a metal is calcined is
heavier than the metal itself. From this fact, modern investigators of
natural phenomena would draw the conclusion, that calcination of a
metal is an addition of something to the metal, not a separation of
the metal into different things. It seems impossible to us that a
substance should be separated into portions, and one of these parts
should weigh as much as, or more than, the whole.
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.
But in the 17th century, and throughout most of the 18th, only a few
of those who examined changes in the properties of substances paid
heed to changes of weight; they had not realised the importance of the
property of mass, as measured by weight. The convinced upholder of the
phlogistic theory had two answers to the argument, that, because the
earth-like product of the calcination of a metal weighs more than the
metal itself, therefore the metal cannot have lost something in the
process; for, if one portion of what is taken away weighs more than
the metal from which it has been separated, it is evident that the
weight of the two portions into which the metal is said to have been
divided must be considerably greater than the weight of the undivided
metal. The upholders of the theory sometimes met the argument by
saying, "Of course the calx weighs more than the metal, because
phlogiston tends to lighten a body which contains it; and therefore
the body weighs more after it has lost phlogiston than it did when the
phlogiston formed part of it;" sometimes, and more often, their answer
was--"loss or gain of weight is an accident, the essential thing is
change of qualities."
If the argument against the separation of a metal into two
constituents, by calcination, were answered to-day as it was answered
by the upholders of the phlogistic theory, in the middle of the 18th
century, the answers would justly be considered inconsequent and
ridiculous. But it does not follow that the statements were either
far-fetched or absurd at the time they were made. They were expressed
in the phraseology of the time; a phraseology, it is true, sadly
lacking in consistency, clearness, and appropriateness, but the only
language then available for the description of such changes as those
which happen when metals are calcined. One might suppose that it must
always have sounded ridiculous to say that the weight of a thing can
be decreased by adding something to it, that part of a thing weighs
more than the whole of it. But the absurdity disappears if it can be
admitted that mass, which is measured by weight, may be a property
like colour, or taste, or smell; for the colour, taste, or smell of a
thing may certainly be made less by adding something else, and the
colour, taste, or smell of a thing may also be increased by adding
something else. If we did not know that what we call _quantity of
substance_ is measured by the property named _mass_, we might very
well accept the proposition that the entrance of phlogiston into a
substance decreases the quantity, hence the mass, and, therefore, the
weight, of the substance.
Although Stahl and his followers were emerging from the trammels of
alchemy, they were still bound by many of the conceptions of that
scheme of nature. 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.
Looking back, we cannot think of phlogiston as a substance, or as a
thing, in the modern meanings of these terms as they are used in
natural science. Nowadays we think, we are obliged to think, of the
sum of the quantities of all the things in the universe as unchanging,
and unchangeable by any agency whereof we have definite knowledge. The
meaning we give to the word _thing_ rests upon the acceptance of this
hypothesis. But the terms _substance_, _thing_, _properties_ were used
very vaguely a couple of centuries ago; and it would be truly absurd
to carry back to that time the meanings which we give to these terms
to-day, and then to brand as ridiculous the attempts of the men who
studied, then, the same problems which we study now, to express the
results of their study in generalisations which employed the terms in
question, in what seems to us a loose, vague, and inexact manner.
By asserting, and to some extent experimentally proving, the existence
of one principle in many apparently very different substances (or, as
would be said to-day, one property common to many substances), the
phlogistic theory acted as a very useful means for collecting, and
placing in a favourable position for closer inspection, many
substances which would probably have remained scattered and detached
from one another had this theory not been constructed. A single
assumption was made, that all combustible substances are alike in one
respect, namely, in containing combined fire, or phlogiston; by the
help of this assumption, the theory of phlogiston emphasised the
fundamental similarity between all processes of combustion. The theory
of phlogiston was extraordinarily simple, compared with the alchemical
vagaries which preceded it. Hoefer says, in his _Histoire de la
Chimie_, "If it is true that simplicity is the distinctive character
of verity, never was a theory so true as that of Stahl."
The phlogistic theory did more than serve as a means for bringing
together many apparently disconnected facts. By concentrating the
attention of the students of material changes on one class of events,
and giving descriptions of these events without using either of the
four alchemical Elements, or the three Principles, Stahl, and those
who followed him, did an immense service to the advancement of clear
thinking about natural occurrences. The principle of phlogiston was
more tangible, and more readily used, than the Salt, Sulphur, and
Mercury of the alchemists; and to accustom people to speak of the
material substance which remained when a metal, or other combustible
substance, was calcined or burnt, as one of the _elements_ of the
thing which had been changed, prepared the way for the chemical
conception of an element as a definite substance with certain definite
properties.
In addition to these advantages, the phlogistic theory was based on
experiments, and led to experiments, the results of which proved that
the capacity to undergo combustion might be conveyed to an
incombustible substance, by causing it to react with some other
substance, itself combustible, under definite conditions. The theory
thus prepared the way for the representation of a chemical change as
an interaction between definite kinds of substances, marked by precise
alterations both of properties and composition.
The great fault of the theory of phlogiston, considered as a general
conception which brings many facts into one point of view, and leads
the way to new and exact knowledge, was its looseness, its
flexibility. It was very easy to make use of the theory in a broad and
general way; by stretching it here, and modifying it there, it seemed
to cover all the facts concerning combustion and calcination which
were discovered during two generations after the publication of
Stahl's books. But many of the subsidiary hypotheses which were
required to make the theory cover the new facts were contradictory, or
at any rate seemed to be contradictory, of the primary assumptions of
the theory. The addition of this ancillary machinery burdened the
mechanism of the theory, threw it out of order, and finally made it
unworkable. The phlogistic theory was destroyed by its own
cumbersomeness.
A scientific theory never lasts long if its fundamental assumptions
are stated so loosely that they may be easily modified, expanded,
contracted, and adjusted to meet the requirements of newly discovered
facts. It is true that the theories which have been of the greatest
service in science, as summaries of the relations between established
facts, and suggestions of lines of investigation, have been stated in
terms whose full meaning has gradually unfolded itself. But the
foundations of these theories have been at once so rigidly defined and
clearly stated as to be incapable of essential modification, and so
full of meaning and widely applicable as to cover large classes of
facts which were unknown when the theories were constructed. Of the
founders of the lasting and expansible theories of natural science, it
may be said, that "thoughts beyond their thoughts to those high bards
were given."
CHAPTER XI.
THE EXAMINATION OF THE PHENOMENA OF COMBUSTION.
The alchemists thought that the most effectual method of separating a
complex substance into more simple substances was to subject it to the
action of heat. They were constantly distilling, incinerating,
subliming, heating, in order that the spirit, or inner kernel of
things, might be obtained. They took for granted that the action of
fire was to simplify, and that simplification proceeded whatever might
be the nature of the substance which was subjected to this action.
Boyle insisted that the effect of heating one substance may be, and
often is, essentially different from the effect of heating another
substance; and that the behaviour of the same substance when heated,
sometimes varies when the conditions are changed. He takes the example
of heating sulphur or brimstone: "Exposed to a moderate fire in
subliming pots, it rises all into dry, and almost tasteless, flowers;
whereas being exposed to a naked fire, it affords store of a saline
and fretting liquor." Boyle thought that the action of fire was not
necessarily to separate a thing into its principles or elements, but,
in most cases, was either to rearrange the parts of the thing, so that
new, and it might be, more complex things, were produced, or to form
less simple things by the union of the substance with what he called,
"the matter of fire." When the product of heating a substance, for
example, tin or lead, weighed more than the substance itself, Boyle
supposed that the gain in weight was often caused by the "matter of
fire" adding itself to the substance which was heated. He commended to
the investigation of philosophers this "subtil fluid," which is "able
to pierce into the compact and solid bodies of metals, and add
something to them that has no despicable weight upon the balance, and
is able for a considerable time to continue fixed in the fire." Boyle
also drew attention to the possibility of action taking place between
a substance which is heated and some other substance, wherewith the
original thing may have been mixed. In a word, Boyle showed that the
alchemical assumption--fire simplifies--was too simple; and he taught,
by precept and example, that the only way of discovering what the
action of fire is, on this substance or on that, is to make accurate
experiments. "I consider," he says, "that, generally speaking, to
render a reason of an effect or phenomenon, is to deduce it from
something else in nature more known than itself; and that consequently
there may be divers kinds of degrees of explication of the same
thing."
Boyle published his experiments and opinions concerning the action of
fire on different substances in the seventies of the 17th century;
Stahl's books, which laid the foundation of the phlogistic theory, and
confirmed the alchemical opinion that the action of fire is
essentially a simplifying action, were published about forty years
later. But fifty years before Boyle, a French physician, named Jean
Rey, had noticed that the calcination of a metal is the production of
a more complex, from a less complex substance; and had assigned the
increase in weight which accompanies that operation to the attachment
of particles of the air to the metal. A few years before the
publication of Boyle's work, from which I have quoted, John Mayow,
student of Oxford, recounted experiments which led to the conclusion
that the air contains two substances, one of which supports combustion
and the breathing of animals, while the other extinguishes fire. Mayow
called the active component of the atmosphere _fiery air_; but he was
unable to say definitely what becomes of this fiery air when a
substance is burnt, although he thought that, in some cases, it
probably attaches itself to the burning substances, by which,
therefore, it may be said to be fixed. Mayow proved that the air
wherein a substance is burnt, or an animal breathes, diminishes in
volume during the burning, or the breathing. He tried, without much
success, to restore to air that part of it which disappears when
combustion, or respiration, proceeds in it.
What happens when a substance is burnt in the air? The alchemists
answered this question by asserting that the substance is separated or
analysed into things simpler than itself. Boyle said: the process is
not necessarily a simplification; it may be, and certainly sometimes
is, the formation of something more complicated than the original
substance, and when this happens, the process often consists in the
fixation of "the matter of fire" by the burning substance. Rey said:
calcination, of a metal at anyrate, probably consists in the fixation
of particles of air by the substance which is calcined. Mayow answered
the question by asserting, on the ground of the results of his
experiments, that the substance which is being calcined lays hold of a
particular constituent of the air, not the air as a whole.
Now, it is evident that if Mayow's answer was a true description of
the process of calcination, or combustion, it should be possible to
separate the calcined substance into two different things, one of
which would be the thing which was calcined, and the other would be
that constituent of the air which had united with the burning, or
calcining, substance. It seems clear to us that the one method of
proving the accuracy of Mayow's supposition must be, to weigh a
definite, combustible, substance--say, a metal; to calcine this in a
measured quantity of air; to weigh the product, and to measure the
quantity of air which remains; to separate the product of calcination
into the original metal, and a kind of air or gas; to prove that the
metal thus obtained is the same, and has the same weight, as the metal
which was calcined; and to prove that the air or gas obtained from the
calcined metal is the same, both in quality and quantity, as the air
which disappeared in the process of calcination.
This proof was not forthcoming until about a century after the
publication of Mayow's work. The experiments which furnished the proof
were rendered possible by a notable discovery made on the 1st of
August 1774, by the celebrated Joseph Priestley.
Priestley prepared many "airs" of different kinds: by the actions of
acids on metals, by allowing vegetables to decay, by heating beef,
mutton, and other animal substances, and by other methods. He says:
"Having procured a lens of twelve inches diameter and twenty inches
focal distance, I proceeded with great alacrity to examine, by the
help of it, what kind of air a great variety of substances, natural
and factitious, would yield.... With this apparatus, after a variety
of other experiments.... on the 1st of August, 1774, I endeavoured to
extract air from _mercurius calcinatus per se_; and I presently found
that, by means of this lens, air was expelled from it very readily.
Having got about three or four times as much as the bulk of my
materials, I admitted water to it, and found that it was not imbibed
by it. But what surprised me more than I can well express was, that a
candle burned in this air with a remarkably vigorous flame.... I was
utterly at a loss how to account for it."
[Illustration: FIG. XVI.]
The apparatus used by Priestley, in his experiments on different kinds
of air, is represented in Fig. XVI., which is reduced from an
illustration in Priestley's book on _Airs_.
Priestley had made a discovery which was destined to change Alchemy
into Chemistry. But he did not know what his discovery meant. It was
reserved for the greatest of all chemists, Antoine Lavoisier, to use
the fact stumbled on by Priestley.
After some months Priestley began to think it possible that the new
"air" he had obtained from calcined mercury might be fit for
respiration. To his surprise he found that a mouse lived in this air
much longer than in common air; the new air was evidently better, or
purer, than ordinary air. Priestley measured what he called the
"goodness" of the new air, by a process of his own devising, and
concluded that it was "between four and five times as good as common
air."
Priestley was a thorough-going phlogistean. He seems to have been able
to describe the results of his experiments only in the language of the
phlogistic theory; just as the results of most of the experiments made
to-day on the changes of compounds of the element carbon cannot be
described by chemists except by making use of the conceptions and the
language of the atomic and molecular theory.[6]
[6] I have given numerous illustrations of the truth of this
statement in the book, in this series, entitled _The Story of
the Wanderings of Atoms_.
The upholder of the phlogistic theory could not think of burning as
possible unless there was a suitable receptacle for the phlogiston of
the burning substance: when burning occurred in the air, the part
played by the air, according to the phlogistic chemist, was to receive
the expelled phlogiston; in this sense the air acted as the _pabulum_,
or nourishment, of the burning substance. Inasmuch as substances
burned more vigorously and brilliantly in the new air than in common
air, Priestley argued that the new air was more ready, more eager,
than ordinary air, to receive phlogiston; and, therefore, that the new
air contained less phlogiston than ordinary air, or, perhaps, no
phlogiston. Arguing thus, Priestley, of course, named the new aeriform
substance _dephlogisticated air_, and thought of it as ordinary air
deprived of some, or it might be all, of its phlogiston.
The breathing of animals and the burning of substances were supposed
to load the atmosphere with phlogiston. Priestley spoke of the
atmosphere as being constantly "vitiated," "rendered noxious,"
"depraved," or "corrupted" by processes of respiration and combustion;
he called those processes whereby the atmosphere is restored to its
original condition (or "depurated," as he said), "dephlogisticating
processes." As he had obtained his _dephlogisticated air_ by heating
the calx of mercury, that is the powder produced by calcining mercury
in the air, Priestley was forced to suppose that the calcination of
mercury in the air must be a more complex occurrence than merely the
expulsion of phlogiston from the mercury: for, if the process
consisted only in the expulsion of phlogiston, how could heating what
remained produce exceedingly pure ordinary air? It seemed necessary
to suppose that not only was phlogiston expelled from mercury during
calcination, but that the mercury also imbibed some portion, and that
the purest portion, of the surrounding air. Priestley did not,
however, go so far as this; he was content to suppose that in some
way, which he did not explain, the process of calcination resulted in
the loss of phlogiston by the mercury, and the gain, by the
dephlogisticated mercury, of the property of yielding exceedingly pure
or dephlogisticated air when it was heated very strongly.
Priestley thought of properties in much the same way as the alchemists
thought of them, as wrappings, or coverings of an essential something,
from which they can be removed and around which they can again be
placed. The protean principle of phlogiston was always at hand, and,
by skilful management, was ready to adapt itself to any facts. Before
the phenomena of combustion could be described accurately, it was
necessary to do two things; to ignore the theory of phlogiston, and to
weigh and measure all the substances which take part in some selected
processes of burning.
Looking back at the attempts made in the past to describe natural
events, we are often inclined to exclaim, "Why did investigators bind
themselves with the cords of absurd theories; why did they always wear
blinkers; why did they look at nature through the distorting mists
rising from their own imaginations?" We are too ready to forget the
tremendous difficulties which beset the path of him who is seeking
accurate knowledge.
"To climb steep hills requires slow pace at first."
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. Moreover, as naturalists have not been
obliged, in recent times, to make a complete renunciation of any
comprehensive theory wherein they had lived and moved for many years,
we forget the difficulties of breaking loose from a way of looking at
natural events which has become almost as real as the events
themselves, of abandoning a language which has expressed the most
vividly realised conceptions of generations of investigators, of
forming a completely new mental picture of natural occurrences, and
developing a completely new language for the expression of those
conceptions and these occurrences.
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.
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.
Antoine Laurent Lavoisier was born in Paris in 1743. His father, who
was a merchant in a good position, gave his son the best education
which was then possible, in physical, astronomical, botanical, and
chemical science. At the age of twenty-one, Lavoisier gained the prize
offered by the Government for devising an effective and economical
method of lighting the public streets. From that time until, on the
8th of May 1794, the Government of the Revolution declared, "The
Republic has no need of men of science," and the guillotine ended his
life, Lavoisier continued his researches in chemistry, geology,
physics, and other branches of natural science, and his investigations
into the most suitable methods of using the knowledge gained by
naturalists for advancing the welfare of the community.
In Chapter VI., I said that when an alchemist boiled water in an open
vessel, and obtained a white earthy solid, in place of the water which
disappeared, he was producing some sort of experimental proof of the
justness of his assertion that water can be changed into earth.
Lavoisier began his work on the transformations of matter by
demonstrating that this alleged transmutation does not happen; and he
did this by weighing the water, the vessel, and the earthy solid.
Lavoisier had constructed for him a pelican of white glass (see Fig.
XI., p. 88), with a stopper of glass. He cleaned, dried, and weighed
this vessel; then he put into it rain-water which he had distilled
eight times; he heated the vessel, removing the stopper from time to
time to allow the expanding air to escape, then put in the stopper,
allowed the vessel to cool, and weighed very carefully. The difference
between the second and the first weighing was the weight of water in
the vessel. He then fastened the stopper securely with cement, and
kept the apparatus at a temperature about 30° or 40° below that of
boiling water, for a hundred and one days. At the end of that time a
fine white solid had collected on the bottom of the vessel. Lavoisier
removed the cement from the stopper, and weighed the apparatus; the
weight was the same as it had been before the heating began. He
removed the stopper; air rushed in, with a hissing noise. Lavoisier
concluded that air had not penetrated through the apparatus during the
process of heating. He then poured out the water, and the solid which
had formed in the vessel, set them aside, dried, and weighed the
pelican; it had lost 17-4/10 grains. Lavoisier concluded that the
solid which had formed in the water was produced by the solvent action
of the water on the glass vessel. He argued that if this conclusion
was correct, the weight of the solid must be equal to the loss of
weight suffered by the vessel; he therefore separated the solid from
the water in which it was suspended, dried, and weighed it. The solid
weighed 4-9/10 grains. Lavoisier's conclusion seemed to be incorrect;
the weight of the solid, which was supposed to be produced by the
action of the water on the vessel, was 12-1/2 grains less than the weight
of the material removed from the vessel. But some of the material
which was removed from the vessel might have remained dissolved in the
water: Lavoisier distilled the water, which he had separated from the
solid, in a glass vessel, until only a very little remained in the
distilling apparatus; he poured this small quantity into a glass
basin, and boiled until the whole of the water had disappeared as
steam. There remained a white, earthy solid, the weight of which was
15-1/2 grains. Lavoisier had obtained 4-9/10 + 15-1/2 = 20-2/5 grains
of solid; the pelican had lost 17-2/5 grains. The difference between
these weights, namely, 3 grains, was accounted for by Lavoisier as due
to the solvent action of the water on the glass apparatus wherein it
had been distilled, and on the glass basin wherein it had been
evaporated to dryness.
Lavoisier's experiments proved that when distilled water is heated in
a glass vessel, it dissolves some of the material of the vessel, and
the white, earthy solid which is obtained by boiling down the water is
merely the material which has been removed from the glass vessel. His
experiments also proved that the water does not undergo any change
during the process; that at the end of the operation it is what it was
at the beginning--water, and nothing but water.
By this investigation Lavoisier destroyed part of the experimental
basis of alchemy, and established the one and only method by which
chemical changes can be investigated; the method wherein constant use
is made of the balance.
Lavoisier now turned his attention to the calcination of metals, and
particularly the calcination of tin. Boyle supposed that the increase
in weight which accompanies the calcination of a metal is due to the
fixation of "matter of fire" by the calcining metal; Rey regarded the
increase in weight as the result of the combination of the air with
the metal; Mayow thought that the atmosphere contains two different
kinds of "airs," and one of these unites with the heated metal.
Lavoisier proposed to test these suppositions by calcining a weighed
quantity of tin in a closed glass vessel, which had been weighed
before, and should be weighed after, the calcination. If Boyle's view
was correct, the weight of the vessel and the tin would be greater at
the end than it was at the beginning of the operation; for "matter of
fire" would pass through the vessel and unite with the metal. If there
was no change in the total weight of the apparatus and its contents,
and if air rushed in when the vessel was opened after the calcination,
and the total weight was then greater than at the beginning of the
process, it would be necessary to adopt either the supposition of Rey
or that of Mayow.
Lavoisier made a series of experiments. The results were these: there
was no change in the total weight of the apparatus and its contents;
when the vessel was opened after the calcination was finished, air
rushed in, and the whole apparatus now weighed more than it did before
the vessel was opened; the weight of the air which rushed in was
exactly equal to the increase in the weight of the tin produced by the
calcination, in other words, the weight of the inrushing air was
exactly equal to the difference between the weights of the tin and the
calx formed by calcining the tin. Lavoisier concluded that to calcine
tin is to cause it to combine with a portion of the air wherein it is
calcined. The weighings he made showed that about one-fifth of the
whole weight of air in the closed flask wherein he calcined tin had
disappeared during the operation.
Other experiments led Lavoisier to suspect that the portion of the air
which had united with the tin was different from the portion which had
not combined with that metal. He, therefore, set himself to discover
whether there are different kinds of "airs" in the atmosphere, and, if
there is more than one kind of "air," what is the nature of that "air"
which combines with a metal in the process of calcination. He proposed
to cause a metallic calx (that is, the substance formed by calcining
a metal in the air) to give up the "air" which had been absorbed in
its formation, and to compare this "air" with atmospheric air.
About this time Priestley visited Paris, saw Lavoisier, and told him
of the new "air" he had obtained by heating calcined mercury.
Lavoisier saw the great importance of Priestley's discovery; he
repeated Priestley's experiment, and concluded that the air, or gas,
which he refers to in his Laboratory Journal as "l'air dephlogistique
de M. Priestley" was nothing else than the purest portion of the air
we breathe. He prepared this "air" and burned various substances in
it. Finding that very many of the products of these combustions had
the properties of acids, he gave to the new "air" the name _oxygen_,
which means _the acid-producer_.
At a later time, Lavoisier devised and conducted an experiment which
laid bare the change of composition that happens when mercury is
calcined in the air. He calcined a weighed quantity of mercury for
many days in a measured volume of air, in an apparatus arranged so
that he was able to determine how much of the air disappeared during
the process; he collected and weighed the red solid which formed on
the surface of the heated mercury; finally he heated this red solid to
a high temperature, collected and measured the gas which was given
off, and weighed the mercury which was produced. The sum of the
weights of the mercury and the gas which were produced by heating the
calcined mercury was equal to the weight of the calcined mercury; and
the weight of the gas produced by heating the calcined mercury was
equal to the weight of the portion of the air which had disappeared
during the formation of the calcined mercury. This experiment proved
that the calcination of mercury in the air consists in the combination
of a constituent of the air with the mercury. Fig. XVII. (reduced from
an illustration in Lavoisier's Memoir) represents the apparatus used
by Lavoisier. Mayow's supposition was confirmed.
[Illustration: FIG. XVII.]
Lavoisier made many more experiments on combustion, and proved that in
every case the component of the atmosphere which he had named oxygen
combined with the substance, or with some part of the substance, which
was burned. By these experiments the theory of Phlogiston was
destroyed; and with its destruction, the whole alchemical apparatus of
Principles and Elements, Essences and Qualities, Souls and Spirits,
disappeared.
CHAPTER XII.
THE RECOGNITION OF CHEMICAL CHANGES AS THE INTERACTIONS OF DEFINITE
SUBSTANCES.
The experimental study of combustion made by Lavoisier proved the
correctness of that part of Stahl's phlogistic theory which asserted
that all processes of combustion are very similar, but also proved
that this likeness consists in the combination of a distinct gaseous
substance with the material undergoing combustion, and not in the
escape therefrom of the _Principle of fire_, as asserted by the theory
of Stahl. After about the year 1790, it was necessary to think of
combustions in the air as combinations of a particular gas, or _air_,
with the burning substances, or some portions of them.
This description of processes of burning necessarily led to a
comparison of the gaseous constituent of the atmosphere which played
so important a part in these processes, with the substances which were
burned; it led to the examination of the compositions of many
substances, and made it necessary to devise a language whereby these
compositions could be stated clearly and consistently.
We have seen, in former chapters, the extreme haziness of the
alchemical views of composition, and the connexions between
composition and properties. Although Boyle[7] had stated very lucidly
what he meant by the composition of a definite substance, about a
century before Lavoisier's work on combustion, nevertheless the views
of chemists concerning composition remained very vague and incapable
of definite expression, until the experimental investigations of
Lavoisier enabled him to form a clear mental picture of chemical
changes as interactions between definite quantities of distinct
substances.
[7] Boyle said, in 1689, "I mean by elements ... certain
primitive and simple, or perfectly unmixed bodies; which not
being made of any other bodies, or of one another, are the
ingredients of which all those called perfectly mixt bodies are
immediately compounded, and into which they are ultimately
resolved."
Let us consider some of the work of Lavoisier in this direction. I
select his experimental examination of the interactions of metals and
acids.
Many experimenters had noticed that gases (or airs, as they were
called up till near the end of the 18th century) are generally
produced when metals are dissolving in acids. Most of those who
noticed this said that the gases came from the dissolving metals;
Lavoisier said they were produced by the decomposition of the acids.
In order to study the interaction of nitric acid and mercury,
Lavoisier caused a weighed quantity of the metal to react with a
weighed quantity of the acid, and collected the gas which was
produced; when all the metal had dissolved, he evaporated the liquid
until a white solid was obtained; he heated this solid until it was
changed to the red substance called, at that time, _red precipitate_,
and collected the gas produced. Finally, Lavoisier strongly heated the
red precipitate; it changed to a gas, which he collected, and mercury,
which he weighed.
The weight of the mercury obtained by Lavoisier at the end of this
series of changes was the same, less a few grains, as the weight of
the mercury which he had caused to react with the nitric acid. The gas
obtained during the solution of the metal in the acid, and during the
decomposition of the white solid by heat, was the same as a gas which
had been prepared by Priestley and called by him _nitrous air_; and
the gas obtained by heating the red precipitate was found to be
oxygen. Lavoisier then mixed measured volumes of oxygen and "nitrous
air," standing over water; a red gas was formed, and dissolved in the
water, and Lavoisier proved that the water now contained nitric acid.
The conclusions regarding the composition of nitric acid drawn by
Lavoisier from these experiments was, that "nitric acid is nothing
else than _nitrous air_, combined with almost its own volume of the
purest part of atmospheric air, and a considerable quantity of water."
Lavoisier supposed that the stages in the complete reaction between
mercury and nitric acid were these: the withdrawal of oxygen from the
acid by the mercury, and the union of the compound of mercury and
oxygen thus formed with the constituents of the acid which remained
when part of its oxygen was taken away. The removal of oxygen from
nitric acid by the mercury produced _nitrous air_; when the product of
the union of the oxide of mercury and the nitric acid deprived of part
of its oxygen was heated, more nitrous air was given off, and oxide of
mercury remained, and was decomposed, at a higher temperature, into
mercury and oxygen.
Lavoisier thought of these reactions as the tearing asunder, by
mercury, of nitric acid into definite quantities of its three
components, themselves distinct substances, nitrous air, water, and
oxygen; and the combination of the mercury with a certain measurable
quantity of one of these components, namely, oxygen, followed by the
union of this compound of mercury and oxygen with what remained of the
components of nitric acid.
Lavoisier had formed a clear, consistent, and suggestive mental
picture of chemical changes. He thought of a chemical reaction as
always the same under the same conditions, as an action between a
fixed and measurable quantity of one substance, having definite and
definable properties, with fixed and measurable quantities of other
substances, the properties of each of which were definite and
definable.
Lavoisier also recognised that certain definite substances could be
divided into things simpler than themselves, but that other substances
refused to undergo simplification by division into two or more unlike
portions. He spoke of the object of chemistry as follows:--[8] "In
submitting to experiments the different substances found in nature,
chemistry seeks to decompose these substances, and to get them into
such conditions that their various components may be examined
separately. Chemistry advances to its end by dividing, sub-dividing,
and again sub-dividing, and we do not know what will be the limits of
such operations. We cannot be certain that what we regard as simple
to-day is indeed simple; all we can say is, that such a substance is
the actual term whereat chemical analysis has arrived, and that with
our present knowledge we cannot sub-divide it."
[8] I have given a free rendering of Lavoisier's words.
In these words Lavoisier defines the chemical conception of
_elements_; since his time an element is "the actual term whereat
chemical analysis has arrived," it is that which "with our present
knowledge we cannot sub-divide"; and, as a working hypothesis, the
notion of _element_ has no wider meaning than this. I have already
quoted Boyle's statement that by _elements_ he meant "certain
primitive and simple bodies ... not made of any other bodies, or of
one another." Boyle was still slightly restrained by the alchemical
atmosphere around him; he was still inclined to say, "this _must_ be
the way nature works, she _must_ begin with certain substances which
are absolutely simple." Lavoisier had thrown off all the trammels
which hindered the alchemists from making rigorous experimental
investigations. If one may judge from his writings, he had not
struggled to free himself from these trammels, he had not slowly
emerged from the quagmires of alchemy, and painfully gained firmer
ground; the extraordinary clearness and directness of his mental
vision had led him straight to the very heart of the problems of
chemistry, and enabled him not only calmly to ignore all the machinery
of Elements, Principles, Essences, and the like, which the alchemists
had constructed so laboriously, but also to construct, in place of
that mechanism which hindered inquiry, genuine scientific hypotheses
which directed inquiry, and were themselves altered by the results of
the experiments they had suggested.
Lavoisier made these great advances by applying himself to the minute
and exhaustive examination of a few cases of chemical change, and
endeavouring to account for everything which took part in the
processes he studied, by weighing or measuring each distinct substance
which was present when the change began, and each which was present
when the change was finished. He did not make haphazard experiments;
he had a method, a system; he used hypotheses, and he used them
rightly. "Systems in physics," Lavoisier writes, "are but the proper
instruments for helping the feebleness of our senses. Properly
speaking, they are methods of approximation which put us on the track
of solving problems; they are the hypotheses which, successively
modified, corrected, and changed, by experience, ought to conduct us,
some day, by the method of exclusions and eliminations, to the
knowledge of the true laws of nature."
In a memoir wherein he is considering the production of carbonic acid
and alcohol by the fermentation of fruit-juice, Lavoisier says, "It is
evident that we must know the nature and composition of the
substances which can be fermented and the products of fermentation;
for nothing is created, either in the operations of art or in those of
nature; and it may be laid down that the quantity of material present
at the beginning of every operation is the same as the quantity
present at the end, that the quality and quantity of the principles[9]
are the same, and that nothing happens save certain changes, certain
modifications. On this principle is based the whole art of
experimenting in chemistry; in all chemical experiments we must
suppose that there is a true equality between the principles[10] of
the substances which are examined and those which are obtained from
them by analysis."
[9, 10] Lavoisier uses the word _principle_, here and
elsewhere, to mean a definite homogeneous substance; he uses it
as synonymous with the more modern terms element and compound.
If Lavoisier's memoirs are examined closely, it is seen that at the
very beginning of his chemical inquiries he assumed the accuracy, and
the universal application, of the generalisation "nothing is created,
either in the operations of art or in those of nature." Naturalists
had been feeling their way for centuries towards such a generalisation
as this; it had been in the air for many generations; sometimes it was
almost realised by this or that investigator, then it escaped for long
periods. Lavoisier seems to have realised, by what we call intuition,
that however great and astonishing may be the changes in the
properties of the substances which mutually react, there is no change
in the total quantity of material.
Not only did Lavoisier realise and act on this principle, he also
measured quantities of substances by the one practical method, namely,
by weighing; and by doing this he showed chemists the only road along
which they could advance towards a genuine knowledge of material
changes.
The generalisation expressed by Lavoisier in the words I have quoted
is now known as the _law of the conservation of mass_; it is generally
stated in some such form as this:--the sum of the masses of all the
homogeneous substances which take part in a chemical (or physical)
change does not itself change. The science of chemistry rests on this
law; every quantitative analysis assumes the accuracy, and is a proof
of the validity, of it.[11]
[11] I have considered the law of the conservation of mass in some
detail in Chapter IV. of _The Story of the Chemical Elements_.
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.
CHAPTER XIII.
THE CHEMICAL ELEMENTS CONTRASTED WITH THE ALCHEMICAL PRINCIPLES.
It was known to many observers in the later years of the 17th century
that the product of the calcination of a metal weighs more than the
metal; but it was still possible, at that time, to assert that this
fact is of no importance to one who is seeking to give an accurate
description of the process of calcination. Weight, which measures mass
or quantity of substance, was thought of, in these days, as a property
like colour, taste, or smell, a property which was sometimes
decreased, and sometimes increased, by adding one substance to
another. Students of natural occurrences were, however, feeling their
way towards the recognition of some property of substances which did
not change in the haphazard way wherein most properties seemed to
alter. Lavoisier reached this property at one bound. By his
experimental investigations, he taught that, however greatly the
properties of one substance may be masked, or altered, by adding
another substance to it, yet the property we call mass, and measure by
weight, is not affected by these changes; for Lavoisier showed, that
the mass of the product of the union of two substances is always
exactly the sum of the masses of these two substances, and the sum of
the masses of the substances whereinto one substance is divided is
always exactly equal to that mass of the substance which is divided.
For the undefined, ever-changing, protean essence, or soul, of a thing
which the alchemists thought of as hidden by wrappings of properties,
the exact investigations of Lavoisier, and those of others who worked
on the same lines as he, substituted this definite, fixed,
unmodifiable property of mass. Lavoisier, and those who followed in
his footsteps, also did away with the alchemical notion of the
existence of an essential substratum, independent of changes in those
properties of a substance which can be observed by the senses. For the
experimental researches of these men obliged naturalists to recognise,
that a change in the properties of a definite, homogeneous substance,
such as pure water, pure chalk, or pure sulphur, is accompanied (or,
as we generally say, is caused) by the formation of a new substance or
substances; and this formation, this apparent creation, of new
material, is effected, either by the addition of something to the
original substance, or by the separation of it into portions which are
unlike it, and unlike one another. If the change is a combination, or
coalescence, of two things into one, then the mass, and hence the
weight, of the product is equal to the sum of those masses, and hence
those weights, of the things which have united to form it; if the
change is a separation of one distinct substance into several
substances, then the sum of the masses, and hence the weights, of the
products is equal to that mass, and hence that weight, of the
substance which has been separated.
Consider the word _water_, and the substance represented by this word.
In Chapter IV., I gave illustrations of the different meanings which
have been given to this word; it is sometimes used to represent a
material substance, sometimes a quality more or less characteristic of
that substance, and sometimes a process to which that substance, and
many others like it, may be subjected. But when the word _water_ is
used with a definite and exact meaning, it is a succinct expression
for a certain group, or collocation, of measurable properties which
are always found together, and is, therefore, thought of as a distinct
substance. This substance can be separated into two other substances
very unlike it, and can be formed by causing these to unite. One
hundred parts, by weight, of pure water are always formed by the union
of 11.11 parts of hydrogen, and 88.89 parts of oxygen, and can be
separated into these quantities of those substances. When water is
formed by the union of hydrogen and oxygen, in the ratio of 11.11
parts by weight of the former to 88.89 of the latter, the properties
of the two substances which coalesce to form it disappear, except
their masses. It is customary to say that water _contains_ hydrogen
and oxygen; but this expression is scarcely an accurate description of
the facts. What we call _substances_ are known to us only by their
properties, that is, the ways wherein they act on our senses. Hydrogen
has certain definite properties, oxygen has other definite properties,
and the properties of water are perfectly distinct from those of
either of the substances which it is said to contain. It is,
therefore, somewhat misleading to say that water _contains_
substances the properties whereof, except their masses, disappeared at
the moment when they united and water was produced. Nevertheless we
are forced to think of water as, in a sense, containing hydrogen and
oxygen. For, one of the properties of hydrogen is its power to
coalesce, or combine, with oxygen to form water, and one of the
properties of oxygen is its ability to unite with hydrogen to form
water; and these properties of those substances cannot be recognised,
or even suspected, unless certain definite quantities of the two
substances are brought together under certain definite conditions. The
properties which characterise hydrogen, and those which characterise
oxygen, when these things are separated from all other substances, can
be determined and measured in terms of the similar properties of some
other substance taken as a standard. These two distinct substances
disappear when they are brought into contact, under the proper
conditions, and something (water) is obtained whose properties are
very unlike those of hydrogen or oxygen; this new thing can be caused
to disappear, and hydrogen and oxygen are again produced. This cycle
of changes can be repeated as often as we please; the quantities of
hydrogen and oxygen which are obtained when we choose to stop the
process are exactly the same as the quantities of those substances
which disappeared in the first operation whereby water was produced.
Hence, water is an intimate union of hydrogen and oxygen; and, in this
sense, water may be said to contain hydrogen and oxygen.
The alchemist would have said, the properties of hydrogen and oxygen
are destroyed when these things unite to form water, but the essence,
or substratum, of each remains. The chemist says, you cannot discover
all the properties of hydrogen and oxygen by examining these
substances apart from one another, for one of the most important
properties of either is manifested only when the two mutually react:
the formation of water is not the destruction of the properties of
hydrogen and oxygen and the revelation of their essential substrata,
it is rather the manifestation of a property of each which cannot be
discovered except by causing the union of both.
There was, then, a certain degree of accuracy in the alchemical
description of the processes we now call chemical changes, as being
the removal of the outer properties of the things which react, and the
manifestation of their essential substance. But there is a vast
difference between this description and the chemical presentment of
these processes as reactions between definite and measurable
quantities of elements, or compounds, or both, resulting in the
re-distribution, of the elements, or the separation of the compounds
into their elements, and the formation of new compounds by the
re-combination of these elements.
Let us contrast the two descriptions somewhat more fully.
The alchemist wished to effect the transmutation of one substance into
another; he despaired of the possibility of separating the Elements
whereof the substance might be formed, but he thought he could
manipulate what he called the _virtues_ of the Elements by a judicious
use of some or all of the three Principles, which he named Sulphur,
Salt, and Mercury. He could not state in definite language what he
meant by these Principles; they were states, conditions, or qualities,
of classes of substances, which could not be defined. The directions
the alchemist was able to give to those who sought to effect the
change of one thing into another were these. Firstly, to remove those
properties which characterised the thing to be changed, and leave only
the properties which it shared with other things like it; secondly, to
destroy the properties which the thing to be changed possessed in
common with certain other things; thirdly, to commingle the Essence of
the thing with the Essence of something else, in due proportion and
under proper conditions; and, finally, to hope for the best, keep a
clear head, and maintain a sense of virtue.
If he who was about to attempt the transmutation inquired how he was
to destroy the specific properties, and the class properties, of the
thing he proposed to change, and by what methods he was to obtain its
Essence, and cause that Essence to produce the new thing, he would be
told to travel along "the road which was followed by the Great
Architect of the Universe in the creation of the world." And if he
demanded more detailed directions, he would be informed that the
substance wherewith his experiments began must first be mortified,
then dissolved, then conjoined, then putrefied, then congealed, then
cibated, then sublimed, and fermented, and, finally, exalted. He
would, moreover, be warned that in all these operations he must use,
not things which he could touch, handle, and weigh, but the _virtues_,
the _lives_, the _souls_, of such things.
When the student of chemistry desires to effect the transformation of
one definite substance into another, he is told to determine, by
quantitative experiments, what are the elements, and what the
quantities of these elements, which compose the compound which he
proposes to change, and the compound into which he proposes to change
it; and he is given working definitions of the words _element_ and
_compound_. If the compound he desires to produce is found to be
composed of elements different from those which form the compound
wherewith his operations begin, he is directed to bring about a
reaction, or a series of reactions, between the compound which is to
be changed, and some other collocation of elements the composition of
which is known to be such that it can supply the new elements which
are needed for the production of the new compound.
Since Lavoisier realised, for himself, and those who were to come
after him, the meaning of the terms _element_ and _compound_, we may
say that chemists have been able to form a mental picture of the
change from one definite substance to another, which is clear,
suggestive, and consistent, because it is an approximately accurate
description of the facts discovered by careful and penetrative
investigations. This presentment of the change has been substituted
for the alchemical conception, which was an attempt to express what
introspection and reasoning on the results of superficial
investigations, guided by specious analogies, suggested ought to be
the facts.
Lavoisier was the man who made possible the more accurate, and more
far-reaching, description of the changes which result in the
production of substances very unlike those which are changed; and he
did this by experimentally analysing the conceptions of the element
and the compound, giving definite and workable meanings to these
conceptions, and establishing, on an experimental foundation, the
generalisation that the sum of the quantities of the substances which
take part in any change is itself unchanged.
A chemical element was thought of by Lavoisier as "the actual term
whereat analysis has arrived," a definite substance "which we cannot
subdivide with our present knowledge," but not necessarily a substance
which will never be divided. A compound was thought of by him as a
definite substance which is always produced by the union of the same
quantities of the same elements, and can be separated into the same
quantities of the same elements.
These conceptions were amplified and made more full of meaning by the
work of many who came after Lavoisier, notably by John Dalton, who was
born in 1766 and died in 1844.
In Chapter I., I gave a sketch of the atomic theory of the Greek
thinkers. 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.
The supposition that changes in the properties of substances are
connected with changes in the numbers, movements, and arrangements of
different kinds of minute particles, was used in a general way by many
naturalists of the 17th and 18th centuries; but Dalton was the first
to show that the data obtained by the analyses of compounds make it
possible to determine the relative weights of the atoms of the
elements.
Dalton used the word _atom_ to denote the smallest particle of an
element, or a compound, which exhibits the properties characteristic
of that element or compound. He supposed that the atoms of an element
are never divided in any of the reactions of that element, but the
atoms of a compound are often separated into the atoms of the elements
whereof the compound is composed. Apparently without knowing that the
supposition had been made more than two thousand years before his
time, Dalton was led by his study of the composition and properties of
the atmosphere to assume that the atoms of different substances,
whether elements or compounds, are of different sizes and have
different weights. He assumed that when two elements unite to form
only one compound, the atom of that compound has the simplest
possible composition, is formed by the union of a single atom of each
element. Dalton knew only one compound of hydrogen and nitrogen,
namely, ammonia. Analyses of this compound show that it is composed of
one part by weight of hydrogen and 4.66 parts by weight of nitrogen.
Dalton said one atom of hydrogen combines with one atom of nitrogen to
form an atom of ammonia; hence an atom of nitrogen is 4.66 times
heavier than an atom of hydrogen; in other words, if the _atomic
weight_ of hydrogen is taken as unity, the _atomic weight_ of nitrogen
is expressed by the number 4.66. Dalton referred the atomic weights of
the elements to the atomic weight of hydrogen as unity, because
hydrogen is lighter than any other substance; hence the numbers which
tell how much heavier the atoms of the elements are than an atom of
hydrogen are always greater than one, are always positive numbers.
When two elements unite in different proportions, by weight, to form
more than one compound, Dalton supposed that (in most cases at any
rate) one of the compounds is formed by the union of a single atom of
each element; the next compound is formed by the union of one atom of
the element which is present in smaller quantity with two, three, or
more, atoms of the other element, and the next compound is formed by
the union of one atom of the first element with a larger number
(always, necessarily, a whole number) of atoms of the other element
than is contained in the second compound; and so on. From this
assumption, and the Daltonian conception of the atom, it follows that
the quantities by weight of one element which are found to unite with
one and the same weight of another element must always be expressible
as whole multiples of one number. For if two elements, A and B, form a
compound, that compound is formed, by supposition, of one atom of A
and one atom of B; if more of B is added, at least one atom of B must
be added; however much of B is added the quantity must be a whole
number of atoms; and as every atom of B is the same in all respects as
every other atom of B, the weights of B added to a constant weight of
A must be whole multiples of the atomic weight of B.
The facts which were available in Dalton's time confirmed this
deduction from the atomic theory within the limits of experimental
errors; and the facts which have been established since Dalton's time
are completely in keeping with the deduction. Take, for instance,
three compounds of the elements nitrogen and oxygen. That one of the
three which contains least oxygen is composed of 63.64 _per cent._ of
nitrogen, and 36.36 _per cent._ of oxygen; if the atomic weight of
nitrogen is taken to be 4.66, which is the weight of nitrogen that
combines with one part by weight of hydrogen, then the weight of
oxygen combined with 4.66 of nitrogen is 2.66 (63.64:36.36 =
4.66:2.66). The weights of oxygen which combine with 4.66 parts by
weight of nitrogen to form the second and third compounds,
respectively, must be whole multiples of 2.66; these weights are 5.32
and 10.64. Now 5.32 = 2.66 x 2, and 10.64 = 2.66 x 4. Hence, the
quantities by weight of oxygen which combine with one and the same
weight of nitrogen are such that two of these quantities are whole
multiples of the third quantity.
Dalton's application of the Greek atomic theory to the facts
established by the analyses of compounds enabled him to attach to each
element a number which he called the atomic weight of the element, and
to summarise all the facts concerning the compositions of compounds in
the statement, that the elements combine in the ratios of their atomic
weights, or in the ratios of whole multiples of their atomic weights.
All the investigations which have been made into the compositions of
compounds, since Dalton's time, have confirmed the generalisation
which followed from Dalton's application of the atomic theory.
Even if the theory of atoms were abandoned, the generalisation would
remain, as an accurate and exact statement of facts which hold good in
every chemical change, that a number can be attached to each element,
and the weights of the elements which combine are in the ratios of
these numbers, or whole multiples of these numbers.
Since chemists realised the meaning of Dalton's book, published in
1808, and entitled, _A New System of Chemical Philosophy_, elements
have been regarded as distinct and definite substances, which have not
been divided into parts different from themselves, and unite with each
other in definite quantities by weight which can be accurately
expressed as whole multiples of certain fixed quantities; and
compounds have been regarded as distinct and definite substances
which are formed by the union of, and can be separated into,
quantities of various elements which are expressible by certain fixed
numbers or whole multiples thereof. These descriptions of elements and
compounds are expressions of actual facts. They enable chemists to
state the compositions of all the compounds which are, or can be,
formed by the union of any elements. For example, let A, B, C, and D
represent four elements, and also certain definite weights of these
elements, then the compositions of all the compounds which can be
formed by the union of these elements are expressed by the scheme
A_{_n_} B_{_m_} C_{_p_} D_{_q_}, where _m_ _n_ _p_ and _q_ are whole
numbers.
These descriptions of elements and compounds also enable chemists to
form a clear picture to themselves of any chemical change. They think
of a chemical change as being; (1) a union of those weights of two, or
more, elements which are expressed by the numbers attached to these
elements, or by whole multiples of these numbers; or (2) a union of
such weights of two, or more, compounds as can be expressed by certain
numbers or by whole multiples of these numbers; or (3) a reaction
between elements and compounds, or between compounds and compounds,
resulting in the redistribution of the elements concerned, in such a
way that the complete change of composition can be expressed by using
the numbers, or whole multiples of the numbers, attached to the
elements.
How different is this conception of a change wherein substances are
formed, entirely unlike those things which react to form them, from
the alchemical presentment of such a process! The alchemist spoke of
stripping off the outer properties of the thing to be changed, and, by
operating spiritually on the soul which was thus laid bare, inducing
the essential virtue of the substance to exhibit its powers of
transmutation. But he was unable to give definite meanings to the
expressions which he used, he was unable to think clearly about the
transformations which he tried to accomplish. The chemist discards the
machinery of virtues, souls, and powers. It is true that he
substitutes a machinery of minute particles; but this machinery is
merely a means of thinking clearly and consistently about the changes
which he studies. The alchemist thought, vaguely, of substance as
something underlying, and independent of, properties; the chemist uses
the expression, this or that substance, as a convenient way of
presenting and reasoning about certain groups of properties. It seems
to me that if we think of _matter_ as something more than properties
recognised by the senses, we are going back on the road which leads to
the confusion of the alchemical times.
The alchemists expressed their conceptions in what seems to us a
crude, inconsistent, and very undescriptive language. Chemists use a
language which is certainly symbolical, but also intelligible, and on
the whole fairly descriptive of the facts.
A name is given to each elementary substance, that is, each substance
which has not been decomposed; the name generally expresses some
characteristic property of the substance, or tells something about
its origin or the place of its discovery. The names of compounds are
formed by putting together the names of the elements which combine to
produce them; and the relative quantities of these elements are
indicated either by the use of Latin or Greek prefixes, or by
variations in the terminal syllables of the names of the elements.
CHAPTER XIV.
THE MODERN FORM OF THE ALCHEMICAL QUEST OF THE ONE THING.
The study of the properties of the elements shows that these
substances fall into groups, the members of each of which are like one
another, and form compounds which are similar. The examination of the
properties and compositions of compounds has shown that similarity of
properties is always accompanied by similarity of composition. Hence,
the fact that certain elements are very closely allied in their
properties suggests that these elements may also be allied in their
composition. Now, to speak of the composition of an element is to
think of the element as formed by the union of at least two different
substances; it implies the supposition that some elements at any rate
are really compounds.
The fact that there is a very definite connexion between the values of
the atomic weights, and the properties, of the elements, lends some
support to the hypothesis that the substances we call, and are obliged
at present to call, elements, may have been formed from one, or a few,
distinct substances, by some process of progressive change. If the
elements are considered in the order of increasing atomic weights,
from hydrogen, whose atomic weight is taken as unity because it is the
lightest substance known, to uranium, an atom of which is 240 times
heavier than an atom of hydrogen, it is found that the elements fall
into periods, and the properties of those in one period vary from
element to element, in a way which is, broadly and on the whole, like
the variation of the properties of those in other periods. This fact
suggests the supposition--it might be more accurate to say the
speculation--that the elements mark the stable points in a process of
change, which has not proceeded continuously from a very simple
substance to a very complex one, but has repeated itself, with certain
variations, again and again. If such a process has occurred, we might
reasonably expect to find substances exhibiting only minute
differences in their properties, differences so slight as to make it
impossible to assign the substances, definitely and certainly, either
to the class of elements or to that of compounds. We find exactly such
substances among what are called the _rare earths_. There are
earth-like substances which exhibit no differences of chemical
properties, and yet show minute differences in the characters of the
light which they emit when they are raised to a very high
temperature.
The results of analysis by the spectroscope of the light emitted by
certain elements at different temperatures may be reasonably
interpreted by supposing that these elements are separated into
simpler substances by the action on them of very large quantities of
thermal energy. The spectrum of the light emitted by glowing iron
heated by a Bunsen flame (say, at 1200° C. = about 2200° F.) shows a
few lines and flutings; when iron is heated in an electric arc (say,
to 3500° C. = about 6300° F.) the spectrum shows some two thousand
lines; at the higher temperature produced by the electric
spark-discharge, the spectrum shows only a few lines. As a guide to
further investigation, we may provisionally infer from these facts
that iron is changed at very high temperatures into substances simpler
than itself.
Sir Norman Lockyer's study of the spectra of the light from stars has
shown that the light from those stars which are presumably the
hottest, judging by the general character of their spectra, reveals
the presence of a very small number of chemical elements; and that the
number of spectral lines, and, therefore, the number of elements,
increases as we pass from the hottest to cooler stars. At each stage
of the change from the hottest to cooler stars certain substances
disappear and certain other substances take their places. It may be
supposed, as a suggestive hypothesis, that the lowering of stellar
temperature is accompanied by the formation, from simpler forms of
matter, of such elements as iron, calcium, manganese, and other
metals.
In the year 1896, the French chemist Becquerel discovered the fact
that salts of the metal uranium, the atomic weight of which is 240,
and is greater than that of any other element, emit rays which cause
electrified bodies to lose their electric charges, and act on
photographic plates that are wrapped in sheets of black paper, or in
thin sheets of other substances which stop rays of light. The
_radio-activity_ of salts of uranium was proved not to be increased or
diminished when these salts had been shielded for five years from the
action of light by keeping them in leaden boxes. Shortly after
Becquerel's discovery, experiments proved that salts of the rare metal
thorium are radio-active. This discovery was followed by Madame
Curie's demonstration of the fact that certain specimens of
_pitchblende_, a mineral which contains compounds of uranium and of
many other metals, are extremely radio-active, and by the separation
from pitchblende, by Monsieur and Madame Curie, of new substances much
more radio-active than compounds of uranium or of thorium. The new
substances were proved to be compounds chemically very similar to
salts of barium. Their compositions were determined on the supposition
that they were salts of an unknown metal closely allied to barium.
Because of the great radio-activity of the compounds, the hypothetical
metal of them was named _Radium_. At a later time, radium was isolated
by Madame Curie. It is described by her as a white, hard, metal-like
solid, which reacts with water at the ordinary temperature, as barium
does.
Since the discovery of radium compounds, many radio-active substances
have been isolated. Only exceedingly minute quantities of any of them
have been obtained. The quantities of substances used in experiments
on radio-activity are so small that they escape the ordinary methods
of measurement, and are scarcely amenable to the ordinary processes of
the chemical laboratory. Fortunately, radio-activity can be detected
and measured by electrical methods of extraordinary fineness, methods
the delicacy of which very much more exceeds that of spectroscopic
methods than the sensitiveness of these surpasses that of ordinary
chemical analysis.
At the time of the discovery of radio-activity, about seventy-five
substances were called elements; in other words, about seventy-five
different substances were known to chemists, none of which had been
separated into unlike parts, none of which had been made by the
coalescence of unlike substances. Compounds of only two of these
substances, uranium and thorium, are radio-active. Radio-activity is a
very remarkable phenomenon. So far as we know at present,
radio-activity is not a property of the substances which form almost
the whole of the rocks, the waters, and the atmosphere of the earth;
it is not a property of the materials which constitute living
organisms. It is a property of some thirty substances--of course, the
number may be increased--a few of which are found widely distributed
in rocks and waters, but none of which is found anywhere except in
extraordinarily minute quantity. Radium is the most abundant of these
substances; but only a very few grains of radium chloride can be
obtained from a couple of tons of pitchblende.
In Chapter X. of _The Story of the Chemical Elements_ I have given a
short account of the outstanding phenomena of radio-activity; for the
present purpose it will suffice to state a few facts of fundamental
importance.
Radio-active substances are stores of energy, some of which is
constantly escaping from them; they are constantly changing without
external compulsion, and are constantly radiating energy: all
explosives are storehouses of energy which, or part of which, can be
obtained from them; but the liberation of their energy must be started
by some kind of external shock. When an explosive substance has
exploded, its existence as an explosive is finished; the products of
the explosion are substances from which energy cannot be obtained:
when a radio-active substance has exploded, it explodes again, and
again, and again; a time comes, sooner or later, when it has changed
into substances that are useless as sources of energy. The
disintegration of an explosive, started by an external force, is
generally completed in a fraction of a second; change of condition
changes the rate of explosion: the "half-life period" of each
radio-active substance is a constant characteristic of it; if a gram
of radium were kept for about 1800 years, half of it would have
changed into radio-inactive substances. Conditions may be arranged so
that an explosive remains unchanged--wet gun-cotton is not exploded by
a shock which would start the explosion of dry gun-cotton--in other
words, the explosion of an explosive can be regulated: the explosive
changes of a radio-active substance, which are accompanied by the
radiation of energy, cannot be regulated; they proceed spontaneously
in a regular and definable manner which is not influenced by any
external conditions--such as great change of temperature, presence or
absence of other substances--so far as these conditions have been made
the subject of experiment: the amount of activity of a radio-active
substance has not been increased or diminished by any process to which
the substance has been subjected. Explosives are manufactured
articles; explosiveness is a property of certain arrangements of
certain quantities of certain elements: so far as experiments have
gone, it has not been found possible to add the property of
radio-activity to an inactive substance, or to remove the property of
radio-activity from an active substance; the cessation of the
radio-activity of an active substance is accompanied by the
disappearance of the substance, and the production of inactive bodies
altogether unlike the original active body.
Radio-active substances are constantly giving off energy in the form
of heat, sending forth _rays_ which have definite and remarkable
properties, and producing gaseous _emanations_ which are very
unstable, and change, some very rapidly, some less rapidly, into other
substances, and emit _rays_ which are generally the same as the rays
emitted by the parent substance. In briefly considering these three
phenomena, I shall choose radium compounds as representative of the
class of radio-active substances.
Radium compounds spontaneously give off energy in the form of heat. A
quantity of radium chloride which contains 1 gram of radium
continuously gives out, per hour, a quantity of heat sufficient to
raise the temperature of 1 gram of water through 100° C., or 100 grams
of water through 1° C. The heat given out by 1 gram of radium during
twenty-four hours would raise the temperature of 2400 grams of water
through 1° C.; in one year the temperature of 876,000 grams of water
would be raised through 1° C.; and in 1800 years, which is
approximately the half-life period of radium, the temperature of
1,576,800 _kilograms_ of water would be raised through 1° C. These
results may be expressed by saying that if 1 gram (about 15 grains) of
radium were kept until half of it had changed into inactive
substances, and if the heat spontaneously produced during the changes
which occurred were caused to act on water, that quantity of heat
would raise the temperature of about 15½ tons of water from its
freezing- to its boiling-point.
Radium compounds send forth three kinds of rays, distinguished as
_alpha_, _beta_, and _gamma_ rays. Experiments have made it extremely
probable that the [alpha]-rays are streams of very minute particles,
somewhat heavier than atoms of hydrogen, moving at the rate of about
18,000 miles per second; and that the [beta]-rays are streams of much
more minute particles, the mass of each of which is about one
one-thousandth of the mass of an atom of hydrogen, moving about ten
times more rapidly than the [alpha]-particles, that is, moving at the
rate of about 180,000 miles per second. The [gamma]-rays are probably
pulsations of the ether, the medium supposed to fill space. The
emission of [alpha]-rays by radium is accompanied by the production of
the inert elementary gas, helium; therefore, the [alpha]-rays are, or
quickly change into, rapidly moving particles of helium. The particles
which constitute the [beta]-rays carry electric charges; these
electrified particles, each approximately a thousand times lighter
than an atom of hydrogen, moving nearly as rapidly as the pulsations
of the ether which we call light, are named _electrons_. The rays from
radium compounds discharge electrified bodies, ionise gases, that is,
cause them to conduct electricity, act on photographic plates, and
produce profound changes in living organisms.
The radium emanation is a gas about 111 times heavier than hydrogen;
to this gas Sir William Ramsay has given the name _niton_. The gas has
been condensed to a colourless liquid, and frozen to an opaque solid
which glows like a minute arc-light. Radium emanation gives off
[alpha]-particles, that is, very rapidly moving atoms of helium, and
deposits exceedingly minute quantities of a solid, radio-active
substance known as radium A. The change of the emanation into helium
and radium A proceeds fairly rapidly: the half-life period of the
emanation is a little less than four days. This change is attended by
the liberation of much energy.
The only satisfactory mental picture which the facts allow us to form,
at present, of the emission of [beta]-rays from radium compounds is
that which represents these rays as streams of electrons, that is,
particles, each about a thousand times lighter than an atom of
hydrogen, each carrying an electric charge, and moving at the rate of
about 180,000 miles per second, that is, nearly as rapidly as light.
When an electric discharge is passed from a plate of metal, arranged
as the kathode, to a metallic wire arranged as the anode, both sealed
through the walls of a glass tube or bulb from which almost the whole
of the air has been extracted, rays proceed from the kathode, in a
direction at right angles thereto, and, striking the glass in the
neighbourhood of the anode, produce a green phosphorescence. Facts
have been gradually accumulated which force us to think of these
_kathode rays_ as streams of very rapidly moving electrons, that is,
as streams of extraordinarily minute electrically charged particles
identical with the particles which form the [beta]-rays emitted by
compounds of radium.
The phenomena of radio-activity, and also the phenomena of the kathode
rays, have obliged us to refine our machinery of minute particles by
including therein particles at least a thousand times lighter than
atoms of hydrogen. The term _electron_ was suggested, a good many
years ago, by Dr Johnstone Stoney, for the unit charge of electricity
which is carried by an atom of hydrogen when hydrogen atoms move in a
liquid or gas under the directing influence of the electric current.
Some chemists speak of the electrons, which are the [beta]-rays from
radium, and the kathode rays produced in almost vacuous tubes, as
non-material particles of electricity. Non-material means devoid of
mass. The method by which approximate determinations have been made of
the charges on electrons consists in measuring the ratio between the
charges and the masses of these particles. If the results of the
determinations are accepted, electrons are not devoid of mass.
Electrons must be thought of as material particles differing from
other minute material particles in the extraordinary smallness of
their masses, in the identity of their properties, including their
mass, in their always carrying electric charges, and in the vast
velocity of their motion. We must think of an electron either as a
unit charge of electricity one property of which is its minute mass,
or as a material particle having an extremely small mass and carrying
a unit charge of electricity: the two mental pictures are almost, if
not quite, identical.
Electrons are produced by sending an electric discharge through a
glass bulb containing a minute quantity of air or other gas, using
metallic plates or wires as kathode and anode. Experiments have shown
that the electrons are identical in all their properties, whatever
metal is used to form the kathode and anode, and of whatever gas there
is a minute quantity in the bulb. The conclusion must be drawn that
identical electrons are constituents of, or are produced from, very
different kinds of chemical elements. As the facts about kathode rays,
and the facts of radio-activity are (at present) inexplicable except
on the supposition that these phenomena are exhibited by particles of
extraordinary minuteness, and as the smallest particles with which
chemists are concerned in their everyday work are the atoms of the
elements, we seem obliged to think of many kinds of atoms as
structures, not as homogeneous bodies. We seem obliged to think of
atoms as very minute material particles, which either normally are, or
under definite conditions may be, associated with electrically charged
particles very much lighter than themselves, all of which are
identical, whatever be the atoms with which they are associated or
from which they are produced.
In their study of different kinds of matter, chemists have found it
very helpful to place in one class those substances which they have
not been able to separate into unlike parts. They have distinguished
this class of substances from other substances, and have named them
_elements_. The expression _chemical elements_ is merely a summary of
certain observed facts. For many centuries chemists have worked with a
conceptual machinery based on the notion that matter has a grained
structure. For more than a hundred years they have been accustomed to
think of atoms as the ultimate particles with which they have had to
deal. Working with this order-producing instrument, they have regarded
the properties of elements as properties of the atoms, or of groups of
a few of the atoms, of these substances. That they might think clearly
and suggestively about the properties of elements, and connect these
with other chemical facts, they have translated the language of
sense-perceptions into the language of thought, and, for _properties
of those substances which have not been decomposed_, have used the
more fertile expression _atomic properties_. When a chemist thinks of
an atom, he thinks of the minutest particle of one of the substances
which have the class-mark _have-not-been-decomposed_, and the
class-name _element_. The chemist does not call these substances
elements because he has been forced to regard the minute particles of
them as undivided, much less because he thinks of these particles as
indivisible; his mental picture of their structure as an atomic
structure formed itself from the fact that they had not been
decomposed. The formation of the class _element_ followed necessarily
from observed facts, and has been justified by the usefulness of it as
an instrument for forwarding accurate knowledge. The conception of the
elementary atom as a particle which had not been decomposed followed
from many observed facts besides those concerning elements, and has
been justified by the usefulness of it as an instrument for forwarding
accurate knowledge. Investigations proved radio-activity to be a
property of the very minute particles of certain substances, and each
radio-active substance to have characteristic properties, among which
were certain of those that belong to elements, and to some extent are
characteristic of elements. Evidently, the simplest way for a chemist
to think about radio-activity was to think of it as an atomic
property; hence, as atomic properties had always been regarded, in the
last analysis, as properties of elements, it was natural to place the
radio-active substances in the class _elements_, provided that one
forgot for the time that these substances have not the class-mark
_have-not-been-decomposed_.
As the facts of radio-activity led to the conclusion that some of the
minute particles of radio-active substances are constantly
disintegrating, and as these substances had been labelled _elements_,
it seemed probable, or at least possible, that the other bodies which
chemists have long called elements are not true elements, but are
merely more stable collocations of particles than the substances which
are classed as compounds. As compounds can be changed into certain
other compounds, although not into any other compounds, a way seemed
to be opening which might lead to the transformation of some elements
into some other elements.
The probability that one element might be changed into another was
increased by the demonstration of the connexions between uranium and
radium. The metal uranium has been classed with the elements since it
was isolated in 1840. In 1896, Becquerel found that compounds of
uranium, and also the metal itself, are radio-active. In the light of
what is now known about radio-activity, it is necessary to suppose
that some of the minute particles of uranium emit particles lighter
than themselves, and change into some substance, or substances,
different from uranium; in other words, it is necessary to suppose
that some particles of uranium are spontaneously disintegrating.
This supposition is confirmed by the fact, experimentally proved,
that uranium emits [alpha]-rays, that is, atoms of helium, and
produces a substance known as uranium X. Uranium X is itself
radio-active; it emits [beta]-rays, that is, it gives off electrons.
Inasmuch as all minerals which contain compounds of uranium contain
compounds of radium also, it is probable that radium is one of the
disintegration-products of uranium. The rate of decay of radium may be
roughly expressed by saying that, if a quantity of radium were kept
for ten thousand years, only about one per cent. of the original
quantity would then remain unchanged. Even if it were assumed that at
a remote time the earth's crust contained considerable quantities of
radium compounds, it is certain that they would have completely
disappeared long ago, had not compounds of radium been reproduced from
other materials. Again, the most likely hypothesis is that compounds
of radium are being produced from compounds of uranium.
Uranium is a substance which, after being rightly classed with the
elements for more than half a century, because it had not been
separated into unlike parts, must now be classed with the radium-like
substances which disintegrate spontaneously, although it differs from
other radio-active substances in that its rate of change is almost
infinitively slower than that of any of them, except thorium.[12]
Thorium, a very rare metal, is the second of the seventy-five or
eighty elements known when radio-activity was discovered, which has
been found to undergo spontaneous disintegration with the emission of
rays. The rate of change of thorium is considerably slower than that
of uranium.[13] None of the other substances placed in the class of
elements is radio-active.
[12] The life-period of uranium is probably about eight
thousand million years.
[13] The life-period of thorium is possibly about forty
thousand million years.
On p. 192 I said, that when the radio-active substances had been
labelled _elements_, the facts of radio-activity led some chemists to
the conclusion that the other bodies which had for long been called by
this class-name, or at any rate some of these bodies, are perhaps not
true elements, but are merely more stable collocations of particles
than the substances called compounds. It seems to me that this
reasoning rests on an unscientific use of the term _element_; it rests
on giving to that class-name the meaning, _substances asserted to be
undecomposable_. A line of demarcation is drawn between _elements_,
meaning thereby forms of matter said to be undecomposable but probably
capable of separation into unlike parts, and _true elements_, meaning
thereby groups of identical undecomposable particles. If one names the
radio-active substances _elements_, one is placing in this class
substances which are specially characterised by a property the direct
opposite of that the possession of which by other substances was the
reason for the formation of the class. To do this may be ingenious; it
is certainly not scientific.
Since the time of Lavoisier, since the last decade of the eighteenth
century, careful chemists have meant by an element a substance which
has not been separated into unlike parts, and they have not meant
more than that. The term _element_ has been used by accurate thinkers
as a useful class-mark which connotes a property--the property of not
having been decomposed--common to all substances placed in the class,
and differentiating them from all other substances. Whenever chemists
have thought of elements as the ultimate kinds of matter with which
the physical world is constructed--and they have occasionally so
thought and written--they have fallen into quagmires of confusion.
Of course, the elements may, some day, be separated into unlike parts.
The facts of radio-activity certainly suggest some kind of inorganic
evolution. Whether the elements are decomposed is to be determined by
experimental inquiry, remembering always that no number of failures to
simplify them will justify the assertion that they cannot be
simplified. Chemistry neither asserts or denies the decomposability of
the elements. At present, we have to recognise the existence of
extremely small quantities, widely distributed in rocks and waters, of
some thirty substances, the minute particles of which are constantly
emitting streams of more minute, identical particles that carry with
them very large quantities of energy, all of which thirty substances
are characterised, and are differentiated from all other classes of
substances wherewith chemistry is concerned, by their spontaneous
mutability, and each is characterised by its special rate of change
and by the nature of the products of its mutations. We have now to
think of the minute particles of two of the seventy-five or eighty
substances which until the other day had not been decomposed, and were
therefore justly called elements, as very slowly emitting streams of
minuter particles and producing characteristic products of their
disintegration. And we have to think of some eighty substances as
particular kinds of matter, at present properly called elements,
because they are characterised, and differentiated from all other
substances, by the fact that none of them has been separated into
unlike parts.
The study of radio-activity has introduced into chemistry and physics
a new order of minute particles. Dalton made the atom a beacon-light
which revealed to chemists paths that led them to wider and more
accurate knowledge. Avogadro illuminated chemical, and also physical,
ways by his conception of the molecule as a stable, although
separable, group of atoms with particular properties different from
those of the atoms which constituted it. The work of many
investigators has made the old paths clearer, and has shown to
chemists and physicists ways they had not seen before, by forcing them
to think of, and to make use of, a third kind of material particles
that are endowed with the extraordinary property of radio-activity.
Dalton often said: "Thou knowest thou canst not cut an atom"; but the
fact that he applied the term _atom_ to the small particles of
compounds proves that he had escaped the danger of logically defining
the atom, the danger of thinking of it as a particle which never can
be cut. The molecule of Avogadro has always been a decomposable
particle. The peculiarity of the new kind of particles, the particles
of radio-active bodies, is, not that they can be separated into unlike
parts by the action of external forces, but that they are constantly
separating of their own accord into unlike parts, and that their
spontaneous disintegration is accompanied by the production of energy,
the quantity of which is enormous in comparison with the minuteness of
the material specks which are the carriers of it.
The continued study of the properties of the minute particles of
radio-active substances--a new name is needed for those most mutable
of material grains--must lead to discoveries of great moment for
chemistry and physics. That study has already thrown much light on the
phenomena of electric conductivity; it has given us the electron, a
particle at least a thousand times lighter than an atom of hydrogen;
it has shown us that identical electrons are given off by, or are
separated from, different kinds of elementary atoms, under definable
conditions; it has revealed unlooked-for sources of energy; it has
opened, and begun the elucidation of, a new department of physical
science; it has suggested a new way of attacking the old problem of
the alchemists, the problem of the transmutation of the elements.
The minute particles of two of the substances for many years classed
as elements give off electrons; uranium and thorium are radio-active.
Electrons are produced by sending an electric discharge through very
small traces of different gases, using electrodes of different metals.
Electrons are also produced by exposing various metals to the action
of ultra-violet light, and by raising the temperature of various
metals to incandescence. Electrons are always identical, whatever be
their source. Three questions suggest themselves. Can the atoms of all
the elements be caused to give off electrons? Are electrons normal
constituents of all elementary atoms? Are elementary atoms
collocations of electrons? These questions are included in the
demand--Is it possible "to imagine a model which has in it the
potentiality of explaining" radio-activity and other allied phenomena,
as well as all other chemical and physical properties of elements and
compounds? These questions are answerable by experimental
investigation, and only by experimental investigation. If experimental
inquiry leads to affirmative answers to the questions, we shall have
to think of atoms as structures of particles much lighter than
themselves; we shall have to think of the atoms of all kinds of
substances, however much the substances differ chemically and
physically, as collocations of identical particles; we shall have to
think of the properties of atoms as conditioned, in our final
analysis, by the number and the arrangement of their constitutive
electrons. Now, if a large probability were established in favour of
the view that different atoms are collocations of different numbers of
identical particles, or of equal numbers of differently arranged
identical particles, we should have a guide which might lead to
methods whereby one collocation of particles could be formed from
another collocation of the same particles, a guide which might lead
to methods whereby one element could be transformed into another
element.
To attempt "to imagine a model which has in it the potentiality of
explaining" radio-activity, the production of kathode rays, and the
other chemical and physical properties of elements and compounds,
might indeed seem to be a hopeless undertaking. A beginning has been
made in the mental construction of such a model by Professor Sir J.J.
Thomson. To attempt a description of his reasoning and his results is
beyond the scope of this book.[14]
[14] The subject is discussed in Sir J.J. Thomson's
_Electricity and Matter_.
The facts that the emanation from radium compounds spontaneously gives
off very large quantities of energy, and that the emanation can easily
be brought into contact with substances on which it is desired to do
work, suggested to Sir William Ramsay that the transformation of
compounds of one element into compounds of another element might
possibly be effected by enclosing a solution of a compound along with
radium emanation in a sealed tube, and leaving the arrangement to
itself. Under these conditions, the molecules of the compound would be
constantly bombarded by a vast number of electrons shot forth at
enormous velocities from the emanation. The notion was that the
molecules of the compound would break down under the bombardment, and
that the atoms so produced might be knocked into simpler groups of
particles--in other words, changed into other atoms--by the terrific,
silent shocks of the electrons fired at them incessantly by the
disintegrating emanation. Sir William Ramsay regards his experimental
results as establishing a large probability in favour of the assertion
that compounds of copper were transformed into compounds of lithium
and sodium, and compounds of thorium, of cerium, and of certain other
rare metals, into compounds of carbon. The experimental evidence in
favour of this statement has not been accepted by chemists as
conclusive. A way has, however, been opened which may lead to
discoveries of great moment.
Let us suppose that the transformation of one element into another
element or into other elements has been accomplished. Let us suppose
that the conception of elementary atoms as very stable arrangements of
many identical particles, from about a thousand to about a quarter of
a million times lighter than the atoms, has been justified by crucial
experiments. Let us suppose that the conception of the minute grains
of radio-active substances as particular but constantly changing
arrangements of the same identical particles, stable groups of which
are the atoms of the elements, has been firmly established. One result
of the establishment of the electronic conception of atomic structure
would be an increase of our wonder at the complexity of nature's ways,
and an increase of our wonder that it should be possible to substitute
a simple, almost rigid, mechanical machinery for the ever-changing
flow of experience, and, by the use of that mental mechanism, not
only to explain very many phenomena of vast complexity, but also to
predict occurrences of similar entanglement and to verify these
predictions.
The results which have been obtained in the examination of
radio-activity, of kathode rays, of spectra at different temperatures,
and of phenomena allied to these, bring again into prominence the
ancient problem of the structure of what we call matter. Is matter
fundamentally homogeneous or heterogeneous? Chemistry studies the
relations between the changes of composition and the changes of
properties which happen simultaneously in material systems. The
burning fire of wood, coal, or gas; the preparation of food to excite
and to satisfy the appetite; the change of minerals into the iron,
steel, copper, brass, lead, tin, lighting burning and lubricating
oils, dye-stuffs and drugs of commerce; the change of the skins, wool,
and hair of animals, and of the seeds and fibres of plants, into
clothing for human beings; the manufacture from rags, grass, or wood
of a material fitted to receive and to preserve the symbols of human
hopes, fears, aspirations, love and hate, pity and aversion; the
strange and most delicate processes which, happening without
cessation, in plants and animals and men, maintain that balanced
equilibrium which we call life; and, when the silver cord is being
loosed and the bowl broken at the cistern, the awful changes which
herald the approach of death; not only the growing grass in midsummer
meadows, not only the coming of autumn "in dyed garments, travelling
in the glory of his apparel," but also the opening buds, the pleasant
scents, the tender colours which stir our hearts in "the spring time,
the only pretty ring time, when birds do sing, ding-a--dong-ding":
these, and a thousand other changes have all their aspects which it is
the business of the chemist to investigate. Confronted with so vast a
multitude of never-ceasing changes, and bidden to find order there, if
he can--bidden, rather compelled by that imperious command which
forces the human mind to seek unity in variety, and, if need be, to
create a cosmos from a chaos; no wonder that the early chemists jumped
at the notion that there must be, that there is, some _One Thing_,
some _Universal Essence_, which binds into an orderly whole the
perplexing phenomena of nature, some _Water of Paradise_ which is for
the healing of all disorder, some "Well at the World's End," a draught
whereof shall bring peace and calm security.
The alchemists set forth on the quest. Their quest was barren. They
made the great mistake of fashioning _The One Thing, The Essence, The
Water of Paradise_, from their own imaginings of what nature ought to
be. In their own likeness they created their goal, and the road to it.
If we are to understand nature, they cried, her ways must be simple;
therefore, her ways are simple. Chemists are people of a humbler
heart. Their reward has been greater than the alchemists dreamed. By
selecting a few instances of material changes, and studying these with
painful care, they have gradually elaborated a general conception of
all those transformations wherein substances are produced unlike those
by the interaction of which they are formed. That general conception
is now both widening and becoming more definite. To-day, chemists see
a way opening before them which they reasonably hope will lead them to
a finer, a more far-reaching, a more suggestive, at once a more
complex and a simpler conception of material changes than any of those
which have guided them in the past.
INDEX
Air, ancient views regarding, 129.
---- views of Mayow and Rey regarding, 129.
Alchemical account of changes contrasted with chemical account, 169.
---- agent, the, 64.
---- allegories, examples of, 41, 97.
---- classification, 59.
---- doctrine of body, soul, and spirit of things, 48.
---- doctrine of transmutation, 47, 74, 123, 170.
---- language, 36, 96, 101, 102.
---- quest of the One Thing, modern form of, 179.
---- signs, 105.
---- theory, general sketch of, 26.
Alchemists, character of, according to Paracelsus, 25.
---- made many discoveries, 87.
---- sketches of lives of some, 115.
---- their use of fanciful analogies, 31.
Alchemy, beginnings of, 23.
---- change of, to chemistry, 126.
---- contrasted with chemistry, 202.
---- general remarks on, 123.
---- lent itself to imposture, 106.
---- object of, 9, 26, 32, 105.
---- probable origin of word, 25.
---- quotations to illustrate aims and methods of, 11-14.
Alembic, 92.
Apparatus and operations of alchemists, 90.
Art, the sacred, 122.
Atom, meaning given to word by Dalton, 173.
Atomic theory of Greeks, 16.
---- additions made to, by Dalton, 21.
---- as described by Lucretius, 19.
Atomic weight, 174.
Atoms and electrons, 190, 198.
Bacon's remarks on alchemy, 95.
Balsamo, Joseph, 110.
Basil Valentine, his description of the three principles, 51.
---- his description of the four elements, 49.
---- some of his discoveries, 88.
Becquerel, his discovery of radiation of uranium, 181.
Body, soul, and spirit of things, alchemical doctrine of, 48.
Boyle, on calcination, 128.
---- on combustion, 141.
---- on elements, 161.
---- on the "hermetick philosophers," 95.
---- on the language of the alchemists, 55.
---- on the natural state of bodies, 43.
Cagliostro, 110.
Calcination, 129, 132, 135, 140, 142, 151, 155.
Chaucer's _Canon's Yeoman's Tale_, 107.
Chemical conception of material changes, 177.
Chemistry, aim of, 9, 26, 160.
---- change from alchemy to, 126.
---- methods of, 10.
---- probable origin of word, 24.
Classification, alchemical methods of, 59.
Colours, Lucretius' explanation of differences between, 18.
Combustion, 141.
Compounds, chemical conception of, 171.
Conservation of mass, 164.
Curie, her discovery of radium, 182.
Dalton's additions to the Greek atomic theory, 21, 172.
Democritus, his saying about atoms, 15.
Dephlogisticated air, 147.
Destruction, thought by alchemists to precede restoration, 65, 127.
Electrons, 187-189, 197, 198.
Elements, alchemical, contrasted with chemical, 165;
radio-active substances contrasted with, 190-192.
---- the alchemical, 49, 54, 60.
---- the chemical, 61, 62, 161.
---- use of word, by phlogisteans, 133.
Essence, the alchemical, 32, 35, 49, 58, 72.
Fire, different meanings of the word, 53.
Gates, the alchemical, 69.
Gold, considered by alchemists to be the most perfect metal, 40, 45.
Greek thinkers, their atomic theory, 15.
Hermes Trismegistus, 37.
Kathode rays, 188.
Language of alchemy, 96.
---- purposely made misleading, 36.
Lavoisier on calcination, 153, 155.
---- his use of word _element_, 194.
---- his use of word _principle_, 163, _note_.
---- on object of chemistry, 160.
---- on oxygen, 155.
---- on systems in science, 163.
---- on the principle of acidity, 59, 155.
---- on the reactions of metals with acids, 158.
---- on the transmutation of water to earth, 152.
Lockyer, on spectra of elements, 181.
Lucretius, his theory of nature, 16.
Magic, characteristics of, 23, 24.
Material changes, Greek theory of, 15.
Metals, alchemical connexion between, and plants, 34.
---- compared by alchemists with vegetables, 33.
---- mortification of, 65.
---- seed of, 34.
---- their desire to become gold, 40.
---- transmutation of, 33, 39, 46.
Natural state of bodies, 39, 43.
Oxygen, 144, 145.
Paracelsus, his description of alchemists, 25.
---- his distinction between natural and artificial mortification, 65.
---- sketch of life of, 117.
Pelican, 92.
Perfection, alchemical teaching regarding, 27, 40.
Phlogistic theory, 133, 139.
Phlogiston, 126, 130, 137.
Priestley, his discovery of oxygen, 144.
Principles, the alchemical, 49, 51, 54, 60, 133.
---- Lavoisier's use of the word, 163, _note_.
Radio-active substances, are they elements? 191, 194, 195;
properties of, 185-187.
Radio-activity, characteristics of, 183, 184;
of radium, 186;
of thorium, 193;
of uranium, 193.
Radium, emanation of, 187;
heat from, 186;
rays from, 186.
Ramsay, on transmutation of elements, 199.
Regimens, the alchemical, 72.
Sacred art, the, 122.
Scientific theories, general characters of, 21, 150.
Seed, alchemical doctrine of, 56.
Seeds of metals, 34.
Simplicity, asserted by alchemists to be the mark of nature, 28, 38.
---- is not necessarily the mark of verity, 138.
Solids, liquids, and gases, atomic explanation of, 19.
Stahl, his phlogistic theory, 130.
Stone, the philosopher's, 32, 35, 49, 58, 72.
Thorium, radio-activity of, 183, 193.
Transmutation, alchemical doctrine of, 47, 74, 123.
---- character of him who would attempt, 63.
---- of metals, 33, 39, 46, 74.
---- of metals into gold, alchemical account of, 75.
---- of water to earth, 151.
Transmutations, apparent examples of, 82.
Uranium, radio-activity of, 183, 192;
relation of, to radium, 192, 193.
Vegetables compared with metals by alchemists, 33.
Water contains hydrogen and oxygen, examination of this phrase, 167.
Water, different meanings of the word, 53, 167.
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