Extraordinary Popular Delusions Vol 3 | Page 4

of
them united several or all of the functions just mentioned; that the
alchymist was a fortune-teller, or a necromancer -- that he pretended to
cure all maladies by touch or charm, and to work miracles of every
kind. In the dark and early ages of European history, this is more
especially the case. Even as we advance to more recent periods, we
shall find great difficulty in separating the characters. The alchymist
seldom confined himself strictly to his pretended science -- the sorcerer
and necromancer to theirs, or the medical charlatan to his. Beginning
with alchymy, some confusion of these classes is unavoidable; but the
ground will clear for us as we advance.
Let us not, in the pride of our superior knowledge, turn with contempt
from the follies of our predecessors. The study of the errors into which
great minds have fallen in the pursuit of truth can never be
uninstructive. As the man looks back to the days of his childhood and
his youth, and recalls to his mind the strange notions and false opinions
that swayed his actions at that time, that he may wonder at them, so
should society, for its edification, look back to the opinions which

governed the ages fled. He is but a superficial thinker who would
despise and refuse to hear of them merely because they are absurd. No
man is so wise but that he may learn some wisdom from his past errors,
either of thought or action, and no society has made such advances as
to be capable of no improvement from the retrospect of its past folly
and credulity. And not only is such a study instructive: he who reads
for amusement only, will find no chapter in the annals of the human
mind more amusing than this. It opens out the whole realm of fiction --
the wild, the fantastic, and the wonderful, and all the immense variety
of things "that are not, and cannot be; but that have been imagined and
believed."
BOOK I.
THE ALCHYMISTS; OR, SEARCHERS FOR THE
PHILOSOPHER'S STONE AND THE WATER OF LIFE.
"Mercury (loquitur). -- The mischief a secret any of them know, above
the consuming of coals and drawing of usquebaugh! Howsoever they
may pretend, under the specious names of Geber, Arnold, Lulli, or
bombast of Hohenheim, to commit miracles in art, and treason against
nature! As if the title of philosopher, that creature of glory, were to be
fetched out of a furnace! I am their crude, and their sublimate, their
precipitate, and their unctions; their male and their female, sometimes
their hermaphrodite -- what they list to style me! They will calcine you
a grave matron, as it might be a mother of the maids, and spring up a
young virgin out of her ashes, as fresh as a phoenix; lay you an old
courtier on the coals, like a sausage or a bloat-herring, and, after they
have broiled him enough, blow a soul into him, with a pair of bellows!
See! they begin to muster again, and draw their forces out against me!
The genius of the place defend me!" -- Ben Jonson's Masque "Mercury
vindicated from the Alchymists."
THE ALCHYMISTS.
PART I.
HISTORY OF ALCHYMY FROM THE EARLIEST PERIODS TO
THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY.
PRETENDED ANTIQUITY OF THE ART. -- GEBER. -- ALFARABI.
-- AVICENNA. -- ALBERTUS MAGNUS. -- THOMAS AQUINAS.
-- ARTEPHIUS. -- ALAIN DE LISLE. -- ARNOLD DE
VILLENEUVE. -- PIETRO D'APONE. -- RAYMOND LULLI. --

ROGER BACON. -- POPE JOHN XXII. -- JEAN DE MEUNG. --
NICHOLAS FLAMEL. -- GEORGE RIPLEY. -- BASIL VALENTINE.
-- BERNARD OF TREVES. -- TRITHEMIUS. -- THE MARECHAL
DE RAYS. -- JACQUES COEUR. -- INFERIOR ADEPTS.
For more than a thousand years the art of alchymy captivated many
noble spirits, and was believed in by millions. Its origin is involved in
obscurity. Some of its devotees have claimed for it an antiquity coeval
with the creation of man himself; others, again, would trace it no
further back than the time of Noah. Vincent de Beauvais argues, indeed,
that all the antediluvians must have possessed a knowledge of alchymy;
and particularly cites Noah as having been acquainted with the elixir
vitae, or he could not have lived to so prodigious an age, and have
begotten children when upwards of five hundred. Lenglet du Fresnoy,
in his "History of the Hermetic Philosophy," says, "Most of them
pretended that Shem, or Chem, the son of Noah, was an adept in the art,
and thought it highly probable that the words chemistry and alchymy
were both derived from his name." Others say, the art was derived from
the Egyptians, amongst whom it was first founded by Hermes
Trismegistus. Moses, who is looked upon as a first-rate alchymist,
gained his knowledge in Egypt; but he kept