CHAPTER XVII.THE DELUSIONS OF ALCHEMY.
Origin of Alchemy—Argument for Transmutation—Golden Age of Alchemy—Alchemists in the 13th century—Medals metaphorically described—Jargon of Dr. Dee—The Green Lion—Roger Bacon—Invention of Gunpowder—Imprisonment of Alchemists—Edict of Henry VI.—Pope John XXII.—Pope Sixtus V.—Alchemy applied to Medicine—Paracelsus—Evelyn’s hesitation about Alchemy—Narrative of Helvetius—Philadept on Alchemy—Rosicrucians—A Vision—Hayden’s description of Rosicrucians—Dr. Price—Mr. Woulfe—Mr. Kellerman.
Thesubject of Alchemy occupies so large a space in the humiliating history of the misapplication of talent, as to justify a particular inquiry into the causes of its origin, the grounds of its success, and the reason of its gradual decline. So much mysticism and fondness for ambiguity exist in the writings of the hermetic philosophers, as they were called, that it will not be surprising to find accounts of the origin of the science wrapped in equally extraordinary language.
To begin with Adam: he is said to have foreseen the deluge, and, for the purpose of providing against that catastrophe, to have erected two tables of stone, which contained the foundation of this wisdom. One of them, after the flood, was found on Mount Ararat. Alchemy has as frequently been called the hermetic art, as it is more generally supposed to have been invented by Hermes, King of Egypt, and master of this science, when Egypt was the garden of God. According to chronologers, his erawas before that of Moses. This was the true philosopher’s stone, which so enriched that kingdom, and by means of which all the arts flourished; but in quest of which so many persons of all nations and ages have since fruitlessly consumed both their fortunes and lives. Unlike their baffled successors, the Egyptians increased their wealth to that immense degree, that they studied means how to expend their exuberant stores in the erection of pyramids, obelisks, colossuses, monuments, pensile gardens, cities, and the labyrinth, and in forming the immense lake Mœris, and the like stupendous works, which cost so many millions of talents. “All these (say the believers in the science) are sufficient arguments of their skill in alchemy, whence they received so vast a supply of riches; for, since no authors mention any gold mines in the time of Osiris, or Hermes, whence could they have acquired such exceeding great wealth, but from the chemical art of transmuting metals?”
The Egyptian priests, under a promise of secrecy, communicated the knowledge they possessed to the Alexandrian Greeks. The actual possession of much lucrative knowledge, and the reputation of still more valuable secrets, would attract the notice of the credulous and ignorant. With many the extent of the science was confined to the refining of metals, and preparations of chemical compounds; but the theoretical alchemist having in view a certain mysterious and unattainable object, despised the occupation of the mere chemist, and from policy, or want of clear ideas on the subject, the language of his art became more and more obscure. Knaves and impostors crept in, and, by impositions on the unwary and credulous, indemnified themselves for the ill success of their experiments.
Those chemists who assumed the pompous title of alchemists, were persuaded that all metals were no other than nature’s rude unfinished essays towards the making of gold; which, by means of due coction in the bowelsof the earth, advanced gradually towards maturity, till at last they were perfected into that beautiful metal. Their endeavours, therefore, were to finish what nature had begun, by procuring for the imperfect metals this much-desired coction; and upon this grand principle all their processes were dependent.
The golden age of alchemy commenced, properly speaking, with the conquests of Arabian fanaticism in Asia and Africa, about the time of the destruction of the Alexandrian Library, and the subjection of Europe to the basest superstition. The Saracens, lively, subtle, and credulous, intimate with the fables of talismans and celestial influences, admitted, with eager faith, the wonders of alchemy. The rage of making gold spread through the whole Mahometan world; and in the splendid courts of Almansor and Haroun Al Raschid, the professors of the hermetic art found patronage, disciples, and emolument.
About the thirteenth century, Albertus Magnus, Roger Bacon, and Raymond Lully, appeared as the revivers of this science, which had been nearly lost in the interval from the tenth century; their writings again raised alchemy to a very high degree of credit, and their adventures as well as those of their disciples partake more of the character of oriental romance than the results of philosophic study. The most celebrated of the alchemic philosophers were not only the companions of princes, but many of them were even kings themselves, who chose this royal road to wealth and magnificence.
No delusion in the world ever excited so extensive and long-continued an interest, or rather it might be called madness; though it now seems wonderful how the fallacy of it should have escaped detection during a period of seven or eight hundred years, when so many causes for suspicion and disappointment must have occurred amongst its professors; but the fond idea seems to havebeen strengthened by this want of success, which was attributed to any cause rather than the proper one.
An alchemist, in his writings, complains of the difficulties attending the search after the Immortal Dissolvent, as the grand agent in the operations was sometimes called; and very feelingly asserts, that the principal one is the want of subsistence or money, as without a supply of the latter to buy glasses, build furnaces, etc., the operations cannot go on.
The several metals were described metaphorically, as plants, animals, &c., and mystical allusions were made to the sacred Scriptures, in confirmation of the truth of the science, by the most forced interpretations of certain passages: as for instance—“He struck the stone and water poured out, and he poured oil out of the flinty rock;” and the whole composition of the philosopher’s stone was thought to be contained in the four verses, beginning, “He stretched forth the heavens as a curtain, the waters stood above the mountains.”
The descriptions of the several necessary processes partook of such figurative language, as none but the adepts could possibly understand. Dr. Dee, in the fulness of his wisdom, thus instructs his disciples: “The contemplative order of the Rosie-cross have presented to the world angels, spirits, plants, and metals, with the times in astromancy and geomancy to prepare and unite them telesmatically. This is the substance which at present in our study is the child of the sun and moon, placed between two fires, and in the darkest night receives a light from the stars and retains it. The angels and intelligences are attracted by a horrible emptiness, and attend the astrolasms for ever. He hath in him a thick fire, by which he captivates the thin genii. That you may know the Rosicrusian philosophy, endeavour to know God himself, the worker of all things; now I will demonstrate in what thing, of what thing, and by what thing, is the medicine or multiplier of metals to be madeIt is even in the nature, of the nature, and by the nature, of metals; for it is a principle of all philosophy that Nature cannot be bettered but in her own nature. Common gold and silver are dead, and except they be renewed by art, that is, except their seeds, which are naturally included in them, be projected into their natural earth, by which means they are mortified and revived, like as the grain of wheat that is dead.” This is somewhat worse than what Mr. Burke denominated a gipsy jargon.
The powder of transmutation, the grand means of projection, was to be got at by the following process, in which it was typified as the Green Lion: “In the Green Lion’s bed the sun and moon are born, they are married, and beget a king; the king feeds on the lion’s blood, which is the king’s father and mother, who are, at the same time, his brother and sister. I fear I betray the secret, which I promised my master to conceal in dark speech from every one who does not know how to rule the philosopher’s fire.” One would imagine, in the present day, that there was very little fear of being accused of too rashly divulging the important secret by such explanations. Our ancestors must have had a much greater talent than we have for finding out enigmas, if they were able to elicit a meaning from these mystical, or rather nonsensical, sentences.
Roger Bacon was the first English alchemist. He was born in 1214. Popular belief attributed to him the contrivance of a machine to rise in the air, and convey a chariot more speedily than by horses; and also the art of putting statues in motion, and drawing articulate sounds from brazen heads. From this it appears that he had made considerable progress in the formation of automata. There can be no doubt that he discovered the mode of making gunpowder; in his works the secret may be found, veiled under an anagram. The discovery has, however, on doubtful authority, been ascribed to Berthold Schwartz, a German Benedictine friar, who lived aboutthe middle of the fourteenth century. In an old print, themeritof the invention is ascribed to the devil, who is represented as prompting the friar’s operations, and enjoying their success.
Can we be surprised, that in an age of ignorance, the wonderful doings of Bacon obtained for him the name of a magician, and the friars of his own order refused to admit his works into their library, as though he was a man who ought to be proscribed by society? His persecution increased till 1278, when he was imprisoned, and obliged to own that he repented of the pains he had taken in the arts and sciences; and he was at last constrained to abandon the house of his order.
The credulity and avarice of princes often caused them to arrest alchemists, and, by means of the torture, endeavour to force them to multiply gold, or furnish the powder of projection, that it might be ready for use at any time; but it was generally found that, like poetical composition, perfect freedom of thought and action were necessary to so desirable an end.
There is an edict of Henry VI. king of England, in letters patent to lords, nobles, doctors, professors, and priests, to engage them in the pursuit of the philosopher’s stone, especially the priests, who having power (says the pious king) to convert bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ, may well convert an impure into a perfect metal.
Even Pope John XXII., the father of the church, was weak enough to become an adept; he worked at the practice of hermetic philosophy in Avignon, and at his death were found eighteen millions of florins in gold, and seven millions in jewels and sacred vases. Notwithstanding his writing a treatise on alchemy, and making transmutations, yet such was the mischief arising in his times from the knavery of pretended alchemists, that he issued a bull, condemning all traders in this science as impostors.
Pope Sixtus V. had a true idea of the real value of this science; for, when one presented to him a book on alchemy, his holiness gave the author an empty purse, emblematic of the vanity of the study.
In the fifteenth century this science was applied to medical uses, and the preparations of mercury, antimony, and other metals, were used with the happiest success. The unexpected success which attended the first exhibition of chemical preparations awakened a new hope in the minds of the alchemists, which was no less than the discovery of a universal medicine, an elixir vitæ, for conferring immortality and perpetual youth and health. Paracelsus and Van Helmont entertained these visionary speculations; and the hopes of possessing a universal solvent long haunted the imaginations of writers on chemistry.
Paracelsus was born in 1494; he practised physic in Basle, and the following circumstance induced him to leave it. A canon was in extreme sickness, and the physicians forsook him, as incurable: Paracelsus saw him, and promised to restore him to health. The canon expressed himself gratefully, as one who would feel the obligation, and make him a suitable recompense. Two pills performed the cure; which was no sooner effected, than the canon undervalued it, and contended against the claim of the doctor: he had beencured too soon. The magistrates were applied to, and they awarded Paracelsus a very moderate fee, proportioned to his short attendance; so, in disgust, he quitted the city, and declared that he would leave the inhabitants of Basle to the eternal destruction which they deserved. He then retired to Strasburg, and thence into Hungary, where he took to drinking; he died in great poverty, at Saltzburg, in 1541. Oporinus, who served him as his pupil, said he often saw him in greatwant, borrowing money of carmen and porters, and the next day he would repay them double from a fund that could not be discovered. His proper name was Philip Aureolus Theophrastus Paracelsus Bombastus, of Hohenheim; and his disciples add, “Prince of Physicians, Philosopher of Fire, the Trismegistus of Switzerland, Reformer of Alchemistical Philosophy, Nature’s faithful Secretary, Master of the Elixir of Life, and Philosopher’s Stone, Great Monarch of Chemical Secrets.”
The ingenious Mr. Evelyn, both a sensible and learned man, seems to have been unwilling to deny the truth of what had so often been asserted to him; in his entertaining “Diary,” he says, “June 4th, 1705, the season very dry and hot; I went to see Dr. Dickenson, the famous chymist; we had a long conversation about the philosopher’s elixir, which he believed attainable, and himself had seen it performed, by one who went under the name of Mundanus, who sometimes came among the adepts, but was unknown as to his country or abode. The doctor has written a treatise in Latin, full of astonishing relations; he is a very learned man, formerly of St John’s, Oxford, where he practised physic.”
Being in Paris, Mr. Evelyn visited Marc Antonio, an ingenious enameller, who told him two or three stories of men who had the great arcanum, and who had successfully made projection before him several times. “This,” says Evelyn, who obviously hesitated between doubt and belief, “Antonio asserted with great obtestation; nor know I what to think of it, there are so many impostors, and people who love to tell strange stories, as this artist did; who had been a great rover, and spake ten different languages.”
The most celebrated history of transmutation is that given by Helvetius, in his “Brief of the Golden Calf.” Itis thus given by Mr. Brande. “The 27th day of December, 1666, came a stranger to my house at the Hague, in a plebeick habit, of honest gravity and serious authority, of a mean stature, and a little long face, black hair not at all curled, a beardless chin, and about forty-four years of age, and born in North Holland. After salutation, he beseeched me, with great reverence, to pardon his rude access, for he was a lover of the pyrotechnian art, and having read my treatise against the sympathetic powder of Sir Kenelm Digby, and observed my doubt about the philosophic mystery, induced him to ask me if I really was a disbeliever as to the existence of an universal medicine, which would cure all diseases, unless the principal parts were perished, or the predestinated time of death come. I replied, I never met with an adept, or saw such a medicine, though I had fervently prayed for it. Then I said, ‘Surely, you are a learned physician.’ ‘No,’ said he, ‘I am a brass-founder, and a lover of chemistry.’ He then took from his bosom-pouch a neat ivory box, and out of it three ponderous lumps of stone, each about the bigness of a walnut. I greedily saw and handled this most noble substance, the value of which might be somewhere about twenty tons of gold; and having drawn from the owner many rare secrets of its admirable effects, I returned him this treasure of treasures with a most sorrowful mind, humbly beseeching him to bestow a fragment of it upon me, in perpetual memory of him, though but the size of a coriander seed. ‘No, no,’ said he, ‘that is not lawful, though thou wouldest give me as many golden ducats as would fill this room; for it would have particular consequences, and if fire could be burned of fire, I would at this instant rather cast it into the fiercest flames.’ He then asked if I had a private chamber, whose prospect was from the public street; so I presently conducted him to my best furnished room backwards,which he entered, (said Helvetius, in the true spirit of Dutch cleanliness,) without wiping his shoes, which were full of snow and dirt. I now expected he would bestow some great secret upon me, but in vain. He asked for a piece of gold, and opening his doublet, showed me five pieces of that precious metal, which he wore upon a green riband, and which very much excelled mine in flexibility and colour, each being the size of a small trencher. I now earnestly again craved a crumb of the stone, and at last, out of his philosophical commiseration, he gave me a morsel as large as a rape-seed, but I said, ‘This scanty portion will scarcely transmute four grains of lead.’ ‘Then,’ said he, ‘deliver it me back;’ which I did, in hopes of a greater parcel; but he, cutting off half with his nail, said, ‘Even this is sufficient for thee.’ ‘Sir,’ said I, with a dejected countenance, ‘what means this?’ And he said, ‘Even that will transmute half an ounce of lead.’ So I gave him great thanks, and said, ‘I would try it, and reveal it to no one.’ He then took his leave, and said he would call again next morning at nine. I then confessed, that while the mass of his medicine was in my hand the day before, I had secretly scraped off a bit with my nail, which I projected in lead, but it caused no transmutation, for the whole flew away in fumes. ‘Friend,’ said he, ‘thou art more dexterous in committing theft, than in applying medicine. Hadst thou wrapped up thy stolen prey in yellow wax, it would have penetrated, and transmuted the lead into gold.’ I then asked, if the philosophic work cost much, or required long time, for philosophers say, that nine or ten months are required for it. He answered, ‘Their writings are only to be understood by the adepts, without whom no student can prepare this magistery. Fling not away, therefore, thy money and goods in hunting out this art, for thou shalt never find it.’ To which Ireplied, ‘As thy master showed it thee, so mayest thou, perchance, discover something thereof to me, who know the rudiments, and therefore it may be easier to add to a foundation than begin anew.’ ‘In this art,’ said he, ‘it is quite otherwise; for, unless thou knowest the thing from head to heel, thou canst not break open the glassy seal of Hermes. But enough: to-morrow, at the ninth hour, I will show thee the manner of projection.’ But Elias never came again; so my wife, who was curious in the art whereof the worthy man had discovered, teased me to make the experiment with the little spark of bounty the artist had left. So I melted half an ounce of lead, upon which, my wife put in the said medicine; it hissed and bubbled, and in a quarter of an hour the mass of lead was transmuted into fine gold, at which we were exceedingly amazed. I took it to the goldsmith, who judged it most excellent, and willingly offered fifty florins for each ounce.”
The accumulated disappointments of several centuries, in the prosecution of this science or discovery, did not eradicate the belief in its practicability; and, so late as the year 1698, one, humbly styling himself Philadept, wrote a book concerning adepts, not proving that they did exist, but leaving theonus probandito those who were sceptical on the subject. Indeed, it was a generally received opinion, in the seventeenth century, that the philosopher’s stone did really exist; and the gravity and sincerity of the authors who discoursed of it, prove this. Philadept says, “It is evidently unreasonable to assert or deny any thing without reason; no man can give any good reason, importing that there is no such thing as the philosopher’s stone. On the contrary, there are many reasons to believe there is such a thing. There is a tradition of it in the world: there are many books on that subject, written by men that show an extraordinary gravity, sincerity, and fear of God, and who solemnly andsacredly protest they have wrought it with their own hands; and, besides, they have, at several times, shown the effects of it before divers witnesses, whereof there are too many instances to reject this proof. Then, they lay down principles which appear rational to any one that considers them. There have been, also, too many great cures performed by philosophers, to be reasonably questioned by them whoareacquainted with those matters. Those thatare not, ought not, in reason, to determine against it. My intention is not to dispute about the principles of hermetic philosophy, they have been established by many authors beyond dispute, but most clearly and invincibly by the learned Gasto Claveus of any I know.”
Passages in Scripture, as has been stated above, were often brought forward in corroboration of the theory of alchemy, and it resulted, in the course of time, that a religious sect arose, who blended the mysteries of the Christian religion with the several processes of alchemy towards the grand regeneration of metals; a species of allegory understood and to be interpreted only by the disciples of that order, known by the name of Rosie Cross; its symbol being four red roses arranged in a crucial form.
In later times there have been a few believers in transmutation. In the year 1782, Dr. Price, of Guildford, by means of a white and red powder, professed to convert mercury into silver and gold; and he is said to have convinced many disbelievers of the possibility of such a change. His experiments were repeated seven times before learned and intelligent persons, who themselves furnished all the materials except the powders, which were to operate the transmutation. These powders were in very small quantity. By whatever means it may have been accomplished, it is certain that gold and silver were produced. But, admitting that, with respect to its production, Price was an impostor, it is indubitable that he must have been in possession of one valuable secret, thatof fixing mercury, so as not to evaporate in a red heat. Price published an account of these experiments, but stated that he had expended the whole of his powder, and that he could not obtain more, except by a tedious process, which had already injured his health, and which, therefore, he would not repeat. He died in the following year, and his death was attributed to his having swallowed laurel-water, in order to evade further scrutiny and the detection of his imposture. The fact of his having poisoned himself is at least doubtful.
Another true believer in the mysteries of this art, says Mr. Brande, was Peter Woulfe. He occupied chambers in Barnard’s Inn, when he resided in London. His rooms, which were extensive, were so filled with furnaces and apparatus, that it was difficult to reach his fireside. A gentleman once put down his hat, and never could find it again, such was the confusion of boxes, packages, and parcels, that lay about the chamber. Woulfe had long vainly searched for the elixir, and attributed his repeated failures to the want of due preparation by pious and charitable acts. Some of his apparatus is said to have been extant since his death, upon which are supplications for success, and for the welfare of the adepts. He had an heroic remedy for illness: when he felt himself seriously indisposed, he took a place in the Edinburgh mail, and, having reached that city, immediately came back in the returning coach to London. He died in 1805.
The last of the English alchemists seems to have been a gentleman of the name of Kellerman, who, as lately as 1828, was living at Lilley, a village between Luton and Hitchin. He was a singular character, who shunned all society, carried six loaded pistols in his pockets, barricaded his house, and filled his ground with spring-guns. The interior of his dilapidated mansion was a complete chaos. He pretended to have discovered the universal solvent, the art of fixing mercury, and the powder of projection. With the last of these he had, he said, madegold, and could make as much as he pleased. He kept eight men for the purpose of superintending his crucibles, two at a time being employed, who were relieved every six hours. He had one characteristic of a disturbed intellect, that of believing that all the world was in a confederacy against him, and that there was a conspiracy to assassinate him.