Page:The Works of William Harvey (part 1 of 2).djvu/612

 also extremely impatient of the earth ; if you essayed to cover it, it forthwith and of itself burst forth with violence, and mounted on high. No man could by any art contain or in- close it in any confined place; on the contrary, it appears to delight in free and spacious places. It is of the highest purity, of the greatest brightness, and is without stain or blemish. It has no certain shape, but a shape uncertain and changing every moment. Of the most consummate beauty, it suffers no one to touch it ; and if you persist too long or obstinately, it will do you injury, as I have observed it repeatedly to do in no trifling measure. If anything be by chance taken from it by persevering efforts, it is (strange to say) made nothing less thereby. Its custodier adds farther, that its virtues and powers are useful in a great variety of ways, and even espe- cially to kings indispensably necessary; but these he declines to reveal without being first paid a large reward." The author might have added of this stone that it was neither hard nor soft, and exhibited a variety of forms and colours, and had a singular trick of trembling and palpitating, and like an ani- mal although itself inanimate consumed a large quantity of food every day for its nutrition or sustenance. Farther, that he had heard from men worthy of credit, that this stone had formerly fallen from heaven to earth ; that it was the frequent cause of thunder and lightning, and was still occasionally en- gendered from the solar beams refracted through water.

Who would not admire so remarkable a stone, or believe that it acted with a force superior to the forces of the elements, that it participated in the nature of another body, and possessed an ethereal spirit ? especially when he found that it responded in its proportions to the essence of the sun. But with Fernelius 1 for (Edipus, we find the whole enigma resolving itself into "Flame."

In the same way, did I paint the blood under the garb of a fable, and gave it the title of the philosopher's stone, and propose all its wonderful faculties and operations in enigma- tical language, many would doubtless think a great deal of it ; they would readily believe that it could act with powers supe- rior to those of the elements, and they would not unwillingly allow it to be possessed of another and more divine body.

1 De Abdit. rer. caus. lib. ii, cap. 27.