Page:Edward Thorpe — History of Chemistry, Volume I (1909).pdf/49

Rh another conception respecting the origin of metals which can be traced to very early times and was prevalent throughout the Middle Ages. It was supposed of old that metals were generated within the earth, as animals and plants were generated on its surface, and that something akin to a seed, or semen, was needed to initiate their formation. The great problem of alchemy was to discover this fecundating substance, as upon it depended the genesis of the perfect metal. This idea of the conception of metals runs through the literature of alchemy. It explains many allusions and much of the terminology of its writers. For example, the furnace in which the alchemist makes his projection is constantly spoken of as the philosophical egg.

It is impossible to say with certainty when and where the art of alchemy originated. There is no evidence that it has the antiquity which certain of its adepts claimed for it. Oleus Borrichius referred it to the time of Tubal-cain. The earliest writers on alchemy were probably Byzantine ecclesiastics, some of whom professed to ascribe the art to Egypt, and eventually to the mythological deity Hermes, whose association with chemistry in such terms as “the hermetic art,” “hermetically sealed,” etc., is thus explained.

This much is established—that at some period prior to the tenth century there arose a