es blindly, and
troubles itself about nothing else.

Section II.

Alchemy.

The tradition of craftsmanship in metallurgy, an art that was practiced
from the earliest times, was during the speculative period of human
culture, saturated with philosophy. Especially was this the case in Egypt,
where metallurgy, as the source of royal riches and especially the methods
of gold mining and extraction, were guarded as a royal secret. In the
Hellenistic period the art of metal working, knowledge of which has spread
abroad and in which the interest had been raised to almost scientific
character, was penetrated by the philosophical theories of the Greeks: the
element and atom ideas of the nature-philosophers and of Plato and of
Aristotle, and the religious views of the neoplatonists. The magic of the
orient was amalgamated with it, Christian elements were added--in brief,
the content of the chemistry of that time, which mainly had metallurgy as
its starting point, took a vital part in the hybrid thought of syncretism
in the first centuries after Christ.

As the chemical science (in alchemy, alkimia, al is the Arabic article
prefixed to the Greek {~GREEK SMALL LETTER CHI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ETA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER MU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER EPSILON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER IOTA WITH OXIA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA~}) has come to us from the Arabs (Syrians,
Jews, etc.) it was long believed that it had an Arabian origin. Yet it was
found later that the Arabs, while they added much of their own to it,
still were but the preservers of Greek-Hellenistic knowledge and we are
convinced that the alchemists were right when they indicated in their
traditions the legendary Egyptian Hermes as their ancestor. This legendary
personage is really the Egyptian god Thoth, who was identified with Hermes
in the time of the Ptolemies. He was honored as the Lord of the highest
wisdom and it was a favorite practice to assign to him the authorship of
philosophical and especially of theological works. Hermes' congregations
were formed to practice the cult, and they had their special Hermes
literature.(2) In later times the divine, regal, Hermes figure was reduced
to that of a magician. When I speak, in what follows, of the hermetic
writings I mean (following the above mentioned traditions) the alchemic
writings, with, however, a qualification which will be mentioned later.

The idea of the production of gold was so