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- 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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