Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 1.djvu/501

Rh art, science, and literature; we must think of that foolish ness of which St Paul speaks, by which he sought to save those that believe, because of the insufficiency of human reason. The seekers for the philosopher's stone were in the same case. In the absence of clear facts and just notions, reason for them was not sufficient. Thus it was that they and the masters of the sacred art, and after them the Arabs, and in later times the alchemists, one and all listened eagerly to the "foolishness" of Trismegistus's doctrine, which, in a modern form, would run thus: "We go further than the Zohar—the sacred book of the cabala—which says that as soon as man appeared, the world above and the world beneath were consummated, seeing that man is the crown of creation and unites all forms. We go further than the Zohar, which says in another place that the lower world was created after the similitude of the upper world. We perfect the doctrine of a microcosm and a macrocosm, and declare that there is no such thing as high or low—as heaven or earth, for the earth is a planet, and the planets are earths; we affirm that the chemical processes of our alembics are similar to those of the sidereal laboratories. All is in all. Everywhere analogy infers the same laws." From analogy to identity was an easy step for the theorists; and in the full light of the 19th century we find Hegel a devoted admirer of the mystic Böhme falling into this pitfall. If the spectrum analysis had been known, the Alexandrians, the Arabs, and the alchemists would have been able to verify and limit the sweeping generalisation by which they established a vast system of correspondencies between the three worlds, the physical or material, the rational or intermediary, and the psychical or spiritual. Between the heavens and earth and man's nature they were ever seeking to discover affinities, and ignoring differences which would have been fatal to their system. Thus, according to them, even heaven—the abode of spirits—was partly physical; and even in the mineral world there was a spiritual element—viz., colour, brightness, or, in their language, tincture. Neither Linnæus, Berzelius, nor Cuvier had yet classified living beings and things. The distinction between the animal, the vegetable, and the inorganic world was unknown, and indeed it was impossible that it should be known. The alchemists sought for physical conditions in the invisible and spiritual world, and for a spirit even in stocks and stones. This explains the magic which they found in nature, and which they tried to imitate by their art. But to establish this harmony between heaven, man, and nature, they required some fixed standard or scale, for in their eclectic system they were bound to find room for Pythagoras. Where was this scale to be found? In the heavens; for there must be the sphere of true music. Hence arose chemical, medical, and physionomical astrology. (See .) Hence the sun, which vivifies all nature, the most active heavenly energy, or rather being—for with them everything had life—in the, or marriage between heaven and earth, represented the male principle, ita ut cœlum agat et terra patiatur; and appearing in all terrestrial objects, since everything is penetrated by heat, fire, or sulphur, presided principally over the generation of gold—his image or antitype—in the bowels of the earth. Hence, too, the moon represented silver, Venus copper, Mercury (the planet and the god) the metal of the same name, Mars iron, Jupiter tin; while to Saturn, the most distant and coldest of the planets, lead, the most unsightly of metals, was dedicated. It was an old belief that there was a time when gods and men dwelt together on earth, a belief, moreover, for which they could quote chapter and verse. Was it not written ? Further, seeing that there were three worlds, it followed that there were three heavens, three suns, and three golds. For spirits still engrossed with matter the philosopher's stone meant the search for riches—the gold of the third world. For other spirits which belonged to the first world it signified the healing art—the preservation of humanity by means of the universal panacea and a universal theory of morals. Hence two rival systems, the first of which culminated in the great doctor Paracelsus, the second in the great Illuminato Postel. Did not Dante, the bitter foe, not of the science of alchemy, but of that miserable search for gold for the riches of this world—which, with keen irony, he calls Peltro (tin whitened by mercury)—did not Dante himself write his great poem in order to bring back humanity to the right road from which it had strayed (svia), misled by those who should have been its true guides, the pope and the emperor? For the symbolism of those ancient masters included an alchemy of morals as well as an alchemy of medicine and metallurgy, though the first was even less known and less appreciated.

Recurring to our former illustration, it was this "foolishness" of St Paul—this divine madness—which inspired the Alexandrians, the Arabs, Roger Bacon, Albertus Magnus, and the host of anonymous alchemists of the middle ages: such was the madness which cast a ray of genius over the daring spirit of even a second-rate author like Raymond Lully, which sustained Robert Fludd, Paracelsus, and Postel, who tried to find the universal panacea in universal peace. The fundamental axiom, the stronghold from which these terribly logical madmen were never wholly dislodged, may perhaps be summarised in a single sentence. The saying of Galen, in natura nihil planè sincerum, was adopted by his implacable adversaries:—Nature, they said, is in appearance an illegible scrawl, but when deciphered there will be found a single element, a single force, to separate and reunite, to produce decay and growth—knowledge is power. To know the process of generation in this triple universe, wherein one world resembles another; to know by its signatures this universe, which is a living organism in the eyes of all alchemists (save indeed Jacob Böhme, who, anticipating Hegel, regarded it as a mighty tree); this is the first step towards counterfeiting nature. Monstrosities are the production of diseased metals (really alloys), which, if properly treated, may be cured, and will turn to gold, or at least silver. The second stage in this imitation of nature is to obtain by tincture or projection solid or liquid gold—the cure of all evils. Finally, to surpass material and rational nature, this is the crowning end. For God delegates his power to the sage.

Alchemy in Arabia.—How the sacred art passed into Moslem lands it is hard, from dearth of evidence, to say. Modern criticism now does more justice to the part which Arabia took in the accumulation of scientific facts, and in the scientific theories which we find in the books of Rhazès and Geber. It is certain that in their treaties with the European Greeks of Constantinople the Arabs always stipulated for the delivery of a fixed number of manuscripts. Their enthusiasm for Aristotle is equally notorious; but it would be unjust to imagine that, in adopting the Aristotelian method, together with the astrology and alchemy of Persia, and of the Jews of Mesopotamia and Arabia, they were wholly devoid of originality. On the other hand, we must not understand Arabia in the ethnological sense of the word, but as signifying an agglomeration of various races united by a common religion. Thus Djafar (who lived in the middle of the 8th century), better known to us as Geber, was a Sabæan. Avicenna, born in 978, was a native of Shiraz. The remarkable geographer and geologist Kazwyny (geology was then a part of alchemy), derived his name from his birthplace, Casbin, in