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Thus, whether this theory be true or false, all lovers of natural science should acknowledge a deep debt of gratitude to Messrs. Darwin and Wallace, on account of its practical utility. But the utility of a theory by no means implies its truth. What do we not owe, for example, to the labours of the Alchemists?
But the ignorant alchemist was not always thanked for his treatment. Sometimes the patient rebelled. "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.
The author of The Only Way 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.
I could not help thinking that we three bespectacled figures lacked only the flowing robes to be taken for a group of medieval alchemists set down a few centuries out of our time in the murky light of Prescott's sanctum.
They were dealing with something that did not exist could not exist. Their attempted descriptions became, therefore, the language of romance rather than the language of science. But if the alchemists themselves were usually silent as to the appearance of the actual substance of the philosopher's stone, there were numberless other writers who were less reticent.
Neither would it have been discovered if there had been a similar creation or development of new matter. All that can be asserted concerning such events is, that they have not been discovered with our means of observation. The alchemists sought to transform one element into another, as lead into gold. They did not succeed.
Accordingly the ancients have called them the seven liberal arts, for whoever desires to learn thoroughly and well must enjoy a certain freedom.” Very frequently one finds in the alchemists images of death: grave, coffin, skeleton, etc. Thus in Michael Maier’s, Atalanta Fugiens, the Emblema XLIV shows how the king lies with his crown in the coffin which is just opened.
But it has only been discovered within the last few hundred years that all three were needed. Before that gunpowder was a mere imagination, a phantasy of the alchemists. How easy it is to make gunpowder, now the secret of its manufacture is known! But take a simpler illustration, one which lies even within the memory of some that read these pages.
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.
No doubt the corner is marked out as a part of the "sphere of influence" of anthropology, but there is not the slightest indication of an effective occupation among these raiding considerations and uncertain facts. Until anthropology produces her Daltons and Davys we must fumble in this corner, just as the old alchemists fumbled for centuries before the dawn of chemistry.
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