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Updated: June 7, 2025
This was the final blow to the phlogiston theory, which, although it had been tottering for some time, had not been completely overthrown. In 1787 Lavoisier, in conjunction with Guyon de Morveau, Berthollet, and Fourcroy, introduced the reform in chemical nomenclature which until then had remained practically unchanged since alchemical days.
There were very few mystics but alchemical mystics, and because, I had little doubt, of the devotion to one god of the greater number and of the limited sense of beauty, which Robartes would hold an inevitable consequence; but I did notice a complete set of facsimiles of the prophetical writings of William Blake, and probably because of the multitudes that thronged his illumination and were 'like the gay fishes on the wave when the moon sucks up the dew. I noted also many poets and prose writers of every age, but only those who were a little weary of life, as indeed the greatest have been everywhere, and who cast their imagination to us, as a something they needed no longer now that they were going up in their fiery chariots.
He never travelled; on the contrary, he married, at what period is unknown, but his tender devotion to his wife is commemorated on the reverse pages of an autograph alchemical MS. now in the British Museum, which belies furthermore, in every line and word, the Luciferian imposture of the Paris-cum-Yankee documents, by its passionate religious aspiration and its adoring love of Christ.
He gives this extraordinary illustration of his meaning: "You see this is the case with lions, which are all born dead, and are first vitalised by the horrible noise of their parents, just as a sleeping person is awakened by a shout." The mortification of metals is represented in alchemical books by various images and allegories.
A cabalistical and alchemical operation which is very dangerous." "Ah!" said she, with a dreamy look, "that's the reason why my mother cried when thinking of the said metamorphosis; but Bertha de Breuilly, who is so thankful for being made a wife, told me it was the easiest thing in the world." "That's according to the age," replied the old lord.
The old drawings of alchemical operations show us men busy calcining, cohobating, distilling, dissolving, digesting, and performing other processes of like character to these. The alchemists could not be accused of laziness or aversion to work in their laboratories. They do not spend their time abroad for recreation, but take delight in their laboratories.
But the alchemical method found it easier to begin by introspection. The alchemist spun his universe from his own ideas of order, symmetry, and simplicity, as the spider spins her web from her own substance. A favourite saying of the alchemists was, "What is above is as what is below."
I have already quoted Boyle's statement that by elements he meant "certain primitive and simple bodies ... not made of any other bodies, or of one another." Boyle was still slightly restrained by the alchemical atmosphere around him; he was still inclined to say, "this must be the way nature works, she must begin with certain substances which are absolutely simple."
In a word, Boyle showed that the alchemical assumption fire simplifies was too simple; and he taught, by precept and example, that the only way of discovering what the action of fire is, on this substance or on that, is to make accurate experiments.
The principle of phlogiston could be recognised by the senses as it was in the act of escaping from a substance; and the other principle of combustible things was scarcely a Principle in the alchemical sense, for, in the case of metals at any rate, it remained when the things which had contained it were burnt, and could be seen, handled, and weighed.
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