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He had not advanced more than two miles when he saw before him the superb city of Alcina. It was surrounded with a wall of gold, which seemed to reach the skies. I know that some think that this wall was not of real gold, but only the work of alchemy; it matters not; I prefer to think it gold, for it certainly shone like gold.
"When alchemy or chemistry, which had its cradle in Egypt, and derived its name from Khami, an old title for this country, passed to the hands of the Greeks, and later of the Arabs, this sign passed with it. It was also adopted to some extent by the Gnostics of the early Christian church in Egypt.
"In every one of us," said I, "there is an element which, when it meets its fellow in another, unites with it, turning instantly to fire and burning to the very soul." "How wise have you become in alchemy and metaphysics!" she exclaimed in mock admiration. "Oh, I am not wise in anything, and you know it, Lana." "I don't know it. You've been wise enough to keep clear of me, if that be truly wisdom.
"The last time," said Clarence to himself, "that I travelled this road, on exactly the same errand that I travel now, I do remember that I was honoured by the company of one in all respects the opposite to mine honest host; for, whereas in the latter there is a luxuriant and wild eccentricity, an open and blunt simplicity, and a shrewd sense, which looks not after pence, but peace; so, in the mind of the friend of the late Lady Waddilove there was a flat and hedged-in primness and narrowness of thought; an enclosure of bargains and profits of all species, mustard-pots, rings, monkeys, chains, jars, and plum- coloured velvet inexpressibles; his ideas, with the true alchemy of trade, turned them all into gold: yet was he also as shrewd and acute as he with whose character he contrasts, equally with him seeking comfort and gladness, and an asylum for his old age.
Thus the same implement which had served to give a certain philosophical warrant to the fading dreams of alchemy banished those dreams peremptorily from the domain of present science.
The troubling alchemy of the night, that before his eyes slowly mingled the earth with the sea and the sea with the sky, seemed less mysterious than this woman whose body was as immobile as the stillness in her soul.
It was the misfortune to science in those days, not only that all books and mathematical instruments were enormously dear, but that the students, still struggling into light, through the glorious delusions of alchemy and mysticism, imagined that, even in simple practical operations, there were peculiar virtues in virgin gold and certain precious stones.
Herbert Spencer once remarked that by no political alchemy is it possible to get golden conduct out of leaden instincts, and it is equally true that by no political alchemy is it possible to make a golden society out of leaden individuals.
"You seem to take it very lightly," she remarked. "Why not? Do you imagine I sit in chambers all day long, pining for the impossible which no alchemy of fate can apparently ever alter? I'm also a journalist. That's why I've come to see you." He spoke utterly at random. "To see me?" "Yes." The waitress was standing impatiently by the table, tapping her tray with her fingers.
It is far from my purpose to desire in the least to minimize the services that a Chevreul or a Kopp has performed for the history of chemistry; what I should like to draw attention to is merely that the honored fathers of the history of chemistry saw only the lower—“inferius”—and not the higher—“superius”—phase of alchemy, for example, in the Smaragdine tablet; and that they used it as the type of universal judgment in such a way that it needed a special faculty for discovery to reopen a fountain that had been choked up.
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