Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 1.djvu/499

Rh Apollo, Mercury, Mars, and Venus—was afterwards completed in the cabala by the addition of the moon, typifying the phlegmatic character of northern races, and forms a connecting link between astrology and alchemy, by establishing a double correspondence between planets of the same name and metals. The whole was systematised in the works of Paracelsus and Böhme, and called the theory of signatures. Whether the Greek philosophers taught that the principle of all things was water, like Thales, or air, like Anaximander, or air and water, as Xenophanes, or the four elements, earth, air, fire, and water, as the school of Hippocrates, the tendency of Greek speculation was to establish those profound distinctions which resulted later in the theory of the four elements, the four humours, &c., which the disciples of Aristotle held. Hippocrates, for example, thought that if man was composed of a single element, he would never be ill; but as he is composed of many elements, complex remedies are required. Thus Hippocrates may be called an anti-alchemist; and though the theory of the four elements reigned supreme throughout the middle ages, it easily lent itself to the search for the philosopher's stone and the universal panacea, because the oriental idea of the transmutation of elements, from the time when the various systems of the East were syncretised at Alexandria and received their final development in Arabia in the writings of Geber Rhasis and Ibn Sina (Avicenna), was a universal article of belief. But even in the palmiest days of Greek anthropomorphism there was a gradual infiltration of Asiatic ideas, partly through the mysteries of Eleusis, partly through the doctrines of certain philosophers, who were by nature susceptive of barbaric influences. For, besides Greece proper, there was a second Greece in Asia Minor and a third in Italy, not to mention the Pelasgic tribes who adhered tenaciously to the primitive ideas of the race.

Among the Greek philosophers, then, who appreciably influenced physics, chemistry, and physiology (the three sciences were then one), we may notice in particular 1. Heraclitus of Ephesus, surnamed the "Obscure." Maintaining that fire alone was the principle of all things, he regarded generation as an ascending road, i.e., a volatilisation; and decomposition as a descending road, i.e., a fixation. Here we have the first idea of Jacob's ladder or "Homer's Chain" of the alchemists. 2. Empedocles, who is indeed the first who mentions the four elements; but he subordinates them as complex products to his primordial indestructible atoms, which were animated by love and hatred. 3. Democritus, who, investing these atoms with a movement of their own, proceeds to construct the universe by shocks and harmonies of shocks or vortices. 4. Anaxagoras, who saw "the all-in-all" (Aristotle, Met. 4, 5), the infinitely great universe in the infinitely small atom, and ingeniously applied the principle of analogy to unravel the tangled skein of ancient science. 5. Aristotle, who added to the four elements a fifth, ether, eternal and unchangeable, itself the primum mobile (Arist., De Cœlo, 1, 2). In the 4th century, Nemesius, bishop of Emesa (the modern Homs, on the east bank of the Orontes), is one of the most distinguished representatives of Alexandrian syncretism. A single quotation will suffice to show that the idea of the transmutation of metals, from the time when Platonism, magic, and neo-Christianity were combined in a species of eclectic mysticism, was regarded as an article of orthodox belief:—"To prevent the destruction of elements, or things which are compounded of elements, the Creator has wisely ordained that elements should be capable of transmutation one into the other, or into their component parts, or that their component parts should be resolved again into their original elements. Thus the perpetuity of things is secured by the continual succession of these reciprocal generations." This statement of the pious bishop is all the more weighty, inasmuch as the author of The Nature of Man was only treating of psychology and physiology. The study of gnosticism would carry us too far; and one more quotation from this work, which has long fallen into unmerited oblivion, will prove to what an extent the most scientific theories of this day were tinged and vitiated by mysticism:—"Porphyry, in his treatise on sensation, tells us that vision is produced neither by a cone nor an image, nor any other object, but that the mind, being placed en rapport with visible objects, only sees itself in these objects, which are nothing else than itself, seeing that the mind embraces everything, and that all that exists is nothing but the mind, which contains bodies of all kinds."

Another step, and we are landed in realism. It is not surprising, then, to find that the alchemists, while working in the laboratory, aspired at the same time to find the moral quintessence and verify the doctrines of revealed religion. For mysticism in theory is nothing but a reaction against the positivism of reason and science: the mystic, dissatisfied with these, seeks in nature a reflection of his inner feelings. And in practice mysticism rests on confusions or exaggerations, like those of Porphyry, or some such dictum as the one which Nemesius quotes with the following uncritical comment:—"Now, since Porphyry asserts that there is but one reasoning soul for all things, he is right in saying that the soul sees itself in everything."

Such visionaries, though they may to a certain extent have observed, were not likely to experiment. Thus, at Babylon, where similar theories prevailed, the college of philosophers was divided into three classes, the "Hhartumim," or soothsayers; the "Asaphim," who were more agriculturists than zoologists, more zoologists than physicists, more physicists than chemists; the "Mechasphim," or doctors, who were consulted by the great, as often to rid them of their enemies as to cure their families and dependants; lastly, the "Chasedim" or Chaldeans, properly so called; i.e., the astronomers or astrologers. In this classification of sciences as pursued at Babylon by a peculiar caste, chemistry was little regarded. Science was the monopoly of a privileged class before it became the common property of the human race. A class is sure to cling to a monopoly; an individual is obliged by his feebleness to impart his knowledge to others.

In Egypt the doctrine of the Palingenesis was symbolised by the Scarabæus, which suggested to St Augustine the following strange comparison:—"Jesus Christus bonus ille scarabæus meus, non ea tantum de causa quod unigenitus, quod ipsemet sui auctor mortalium speciem induxerit, sed quod in hac fæce nostra sese volutarit et ex ipsa nasci homo voluerit."

These ideas, which St Augustine borrowed from the religious beliefs of Egypt, were adopted by certain alchemists; and Egypt, which saw in the Scarabæus "the Father, Man, a world of trial, a ladder whereby fallen souls may rise," justly claimed to be the birthplace of ancient chemistry, to which it assigned a peculiar rank, calling it the "sacred art." But although certain Egyptian priests may have spread the report that they owed their enormous fortunes to their knowledge of chemical secrets, this veneration produced but few practical results. It was, however, this report which made the emperors Severus and Diocletian issue an edict that all their magical books should be burned.

Paganism, at the time when it was engaged in its last struggle with Christianity, had long ceased to be exclusively Greek or Roman. It had assimilated Mithratic, Chaldean, and Egyptian mysteries, and even allied itself to a certain extent with the Helleno-Hebraism of the Cabala. It was not likely, then, to reject what purer times would have regarded as an utter profanation. The narrow ground on which the battle was fought, the intellectual affinities between such men as St Basil and the emperor Julian rendered the struggle as desperate and sanguinary as any struggle can be when the combatants are only rival creeds. The sacred and divine art, the sacred science , was one of the mysteries which paganism derived from the dim religious light of the temple. But we may presume that the sacred art of the Alexandrians was no longer the same as that of the ancient Egyptians, that their Hermes was not the Hermes of Egypt, that the pseudo-Democritus is not the true Democritus, that Pythagoras, as retouched by Iamblicus, is not the original Pythagoras. No epoch was so full of forgeries as the 3d and 4th centuries ; and these forgeries were in one sense fabricated in good, faith. An age of eclecticism is as eager for original documents as a parvenu is for a coat of arms or a genealogical tree. These forgeries were no obstacle to human progress; but in an age when the learning of Egypt was the fashion, it was natural that Persian, Jewish, and Platonic doctrines should be tricked out in an Egyptian dress. One of the masters of the sacred art, Alexander of Aphrodisias, invented the term chyics (, from, to pour, to fuse or melt), to describe the operations of the laboratory. Hence the word chemics, a word unknown in the 4th century, and only popular some centuries later. The reason is, that the