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His chimerical notions about angels perhaps overruled his work too long; but was it not in trying to make gold that the alchemists unconsciously created chemistry?
A ball and dance of the inmates in the evening, a furious lunatic dancing with the principal's wife. Thanksgiving in an almshouse might make a better sketch. He was the operative of a scientific person in Boston, the director. There have been other alchemists of old in this town, one who kept his fire burning seven weeks, and then lost the elixir by letting it go out.
"I think, Sir Robert," he said, at last, "that we alchemists do not work solely for the good of mankind, nor give a thought to the consequences that might follow the finding of the philosopher's stone.
The alchemists dreamed and talked of that universal solvent which they so long and vainly endeavored to discover; still, for all this, not only the alchemist of old, but his more immediate successor, the chemist of to-day, has found no solvent so universal as water.
The alchemists of old spent much time and energy trying to find the universal solvent, believing that thereafter it would be easy to discover a method of making base metals noble. But they never found anything better than water.
Alchemists and astrologers taught that the several planets were correlated in some mysterious manner with the several metals. It was, therefore hardly surprising that Tycho should have included a study of the properties of the metals in the programme of his astronomical work. An event, however, occurred in 1572 which stimulated Tycho's astronomical labours, and started him on his life's work.
They are the magic alchemists who extract sweet essences out of bitter herbs, like the old colored woman in the smoky hut, who was "glad of anything to make a smoke with," and, though she had but two teeth, thanked God they were "opposite each other!" Goodness outranks even uprightness, because the good man aims to do good to others.
What human agency could produce an effect so frightful, an illusion so hideous that I could scarcely bear to recall it here in full daylight, without the use of a sight or sound to confuse the brain? Had the girl told the truth in her wild explanation? A truth hinted at by alchemists, Pythagoreans, Rosicrucians, pale students of sorcery and magnificent charlatans, these many centuries?
No one fares so ill in a crowd as the man who is wedged in the middle. A fourth, looking wild and dreamy, as if he had come out of the cave of Trophonius, and who is a mesmerizer and a mystic, thinks Enlightenment is in full career towards the good old days of alchemists and necromancers.
The last patient said "All nature is artificial, man made it all. All the world would disappear, if man lost the power of reproducing. The reproduction of nature by man is founded on faith constant reiteration and association with a thing will produce that thing." Is this not analogous to the working hypothesis of the alchemists? The more sincere among them sought salvation for their souls.
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