Part 3 (1/2)

In his _Tract Concerning the Great Stone of the Ancient Sages_, Basil Valentine speaks of the ”three Principles,” salt, sulphur, and mercury, the source of which is the Elements.

”There are four Elements, and each has at its centre another element which makes it what it is. These are the four pillars of the earth.”

Of the element _Earth_, he says:--”In this element the other three, especially fire, are latent.... It is gross and porous, specifically heavy, but naturally light.... It receives all that the other three project into it, conscientiously conceals what it should hide, and brings to light that which it should manifest.... Outwardly it is visible and fixed, inwardly it is invisible and volatile.”

Of the element _Water_, Basil Valentine says:--”Outwardly it is volatile, inwardly it is fixed, cold, and humid.... It is the solvent of the world, and exists in three degrees of excellence: the pure, the purer, and the purest. Of its purest substance the heavens were created; of that which is less pure the atmospheric air was formed; that which is simply pure remains in its proper sphere where ... it is guardian of all subtle substances here below.”

Concerning the element _Air_, he writes:--”The most n.o.ble Element of Air ... is volatile, but may be fixed, and when fixed renders all bodies penetrable.... It is n.o.bler than Earth or Water.... It nourishes, impregnates, conserves the other elements.”

Finally, of the element _Fire_:--”Fire is the purest and n.o.blest of all Elements, full of adhesive unctuous corrosiveness, penetrant, digestive, inwardly fixed, hot and dry, outwardly visible, and tempered by the earth.... This Element is the most pa.s.sive of all, and resembles a chariot; when it is drawn, it moves; when it is not drawn, it stands still.”

Basil Valentine then tells his readers that Adam was compounded of the four pure Elements, but after his expulsion from Paradise he became subject to the various impurities of the animal creation. ”The pure Elements of his creation were gradually mingled and infected with the corruptible elements of the outer world, and thus his body became more and more gross, and liable, through its grossness, to natural decay and death.” The process of degeneration was slow at first, but ”as time went on, the seed out of which men were generated became more and more infected with perishable elements. The continued use of corruptible food rendered their bodies more and more gross; and human life was soon reduced to a very brief span.”

Basil Valentine then deals with the formation of the three _Principles_ of things, by the mutual action of the four Elements.

Fire acting on Air produced _Sulphur_; Air acting on Water produced _Mercury_; Water acting on Earth produced _Salt_. Earth having nothing to act on produced nothing, but became the nurse of the three Principles. ”The three Principles,” he says, ”are necessary because they are the immediate substance of metals. The remoter substance of metals is the four elements, but no one can produce anything out of them but G.o.d; and even G.o.d makes nothing of them but these three Principles.”

To endeavour to obtain the four pure Elements is a hopeless task. But the Sage has the three Principles at hand. ”The artist should determine which of the three Principles he is seeking, and should a.s.sist it so that it may overcome its contrary.” ”The art consists in an even mingling of the virtues of the Elements; in the natural equilibrium of the hot, the dry, the cold, and the moist.”

The account of the Elements given by Philalethes differs from that of Basil Valentine.

Philalethes enumerates three Elements only: Air, Water, and Earth.

Things are not formed by the mixture of these Elements, for ”dissimilar things can never really unite.” By a.n.a.lysing the properties of the three Elements, Philalethes reduced them finally to one, namely, Water. ”Water,” he says, ”is the first principle of all things.” ”Earth is the fundamental Element in which all bodies grow and are preserved. Air is the medium into which they grow, and by means of which the celestial virtues are communicated to them.”

According to Philalethes, _Mercury_ is the most important of the three Principles. Although gold is formed by the aid of Mercury, it is only when Mercury has been matured, developed, and perfected, that it is able to trans.m.u.te inferior metals into gold. The essential thing to do is, therefore, to find an agent which will bring about the maturing and perfecting of Mercury. This agent, Philalethes calls ”Our divine Arcanum.”

Although it appears to me impossible to translate the sayings of the alchemists concerning Elements and Principles into expressions which shall have definite and exact meanings for us to-day, still we may, perhaps, get an inkling of the meaning of such sentences as those I have quoted from Basil Valentine and Philalethes.

Take the terms _Fire_ and _Water_. In former times all liquid substances were supposed to be liquid because they possessed something in common; this hypothetical something was called the _Element, Water_. Similarly, the view prevailed until comparatively recent times, that burning substances burn because of the presence in them of a hypothetical imponderable fluid, called ”_Caloric_”; the alchemists preferred to call this indefinable something an Element, and to name it _Fire_.

We are accustomed to-day to use the words _fire_ and _water_ with different meanings, according to the ideas we wish to express. When we say ”do not touch the fire,” or ”put your hand into the water,” we are regarding fire and water as material things; when we say ”the house is on fire,” or speak of ”a diamond of the first water,” we are thinking of the condition or state of a burning body, or of a substance as transparent as water. When we say ”put out the fire,” or ”his heart became as water,” we are referring to the act of burning, or are using an image which likens the thing spoken of to a substance in the act of liquefying.

As we do to-day, so the alchemists did before us; they used the words _fire_ and _water_ to express different ideas.

Such terms as hardness, softness, coldness, toughness, and the like, are employed for the purpose of bringing together into one point of view different things which are alike in, at least, one respect. Hard things may differ in size, weight, shape, colour, texture, &c. A soft thing may weigh the same as a hard thing; both may have the same colour or the same size, or be at the same temperature, and so on. By cla.s.sing together various things as hard or soft, or smooth or rough, we eliminate (for the time) all the properties wherein the things differ, and regard them only as having one property in common. The words hardness, softness, &c., are useful cla.s.s-marks.

Similarly the alchemical Elements and Principles were useful cla.s.s-marks.

We must not suppose that when the alchemists spoke of certain things as formed from, or by the union of, the same Elements or the same Principles, they meant that these things contained a common substance.

Their Elements and Principles were not thought of as substances, at least not in the modern meaning of the expression, _a substance_; they were qualities only.

If we think of the alchemical elements earth, air, fire, and water, as general expressions of what seemed to the alchemists the most important properties of all substances, we may be able to attach some kind of meaning to the sayings of Basil Valentine, which I have quoted. For instance, when that alchemist tells us, ”Fire is the most pa.s.sive of all elements, and resembles a chariot; when it is drawn, it moves; when it is not drawn, it stands still”--we may suppose he meant to express the fact that a vast number of substances can be burnt, and that combustion does not begin of itself, but requires an external agency to start it.

Unfortunately, most of the terms which the alchemists used to designate their Elements and Principles are terms which are now employed to designate specific substances. The word _fire_ is still employed rather as a quality of many things under special conditions, than as a specific substance; but _earth_, _water_, _air_, _salt_, _sulphur_, and _mercury_, are to-day the names applied to certain groups of properties, each of which is different from all other groups of properties, and is, therefore, called, in ordinary speech, a definite kind of matter.

As knowledge became more accurate and more concentrated, the words _sulphur_, _salt_, _mercury_, &c., began to be applied to distinct substances, and as these terms were still employed in their alchemical sense as compendious expressions for certain qualities common to great cla.s.ses of substances, much confusion arose. Kunckel, the discoverer of phosphorus, who lived between 1630 and 1702, complained of the alchemists' habit of giving different names to the same substance, and the same name to different substances. ”The sulphur of one,” he says, ”is not the sulphur of another, to the great injury of science. To that one replies that everyone is perfectly free to baptise his infant as he pleases. Granted. You may if you like call an a.s.s an ox, but you will never make anyone believe that your ox is an a.s.s.” Boyle is very severe on the vague and loose use of words practised by so many writers of his time. In _The Sceptical Chymist_ (published 1678-9) he says: ”If judicious men, skilled in chymical affairs, shall once agree to write clearly and plainly of them, and thereby keep men from being stunned, as it were, or imposed upon by dark and empty words; it is to be hoped that these [other] men finding, that they can no longer write impertinently and absurdly, without being laughed at for doing so, will be reduced either to write nothing, or books that may teach us something, and not rob men, as formerly, of invaluable time; and so ceasing to trouble the world with riddles or impertinences, we shall either by their books receive an advantage, or by their silence escape an inconvenience.”

Most of the alchemists taught that the elements produced what they called _seed_, by their mutual reactions, and the principles matured this seed and brought it to perfection. They supposed that each cla.s.s, or kind, of things had its own seed, and that to obtain the seed was to have the power of producing the things which sprung from that seed.

Some of them, however, a.s.serted that all things come from a common seed, and that the nature of the products of this seed is conditioned by the circ.u.mstances under which it is caused to develop.