oth words implies, establishes a fact in place
of a chimera. Experimental philosophy has made Alchemy an impossible
belief, but the faith in it was natural in an age when reason was seldom
appealed to. The credulity which accepted witchcraft for a truth, was
not likely to reject the theory of the transmutation of metals, nor
strain at the dogma of perpetual youth and health; the concomitants of
the Philosopher's Stone.

The Alchemists claim for their science the remotest antiquity possible,
but it was not until three or four centuries after the Christian era
that the doctrine of transmutation began to spread. It was among the
Arabian physicians that it took root. Those learned men, through whom
was transmitted so much that was useful in astronomy, in mathematics,
and in medicine, were deeply tinctured with the belief in an universal
elixir, whose properties gave the power of multiplying gold, of
prolonging life indefinitely, and of making youth perpetual. The
discoveries which they made of the successful application of mercury in
many diseases, led them to suppose that this agent contained within
itself the germ of all curative influences, and was the basis of all
other metals. An Eastern imagination, ever prone to heighten the effects
of nature, was not slow to ascribe a preternatural force to this
medicine, but not finding it in its simple state, the practitioners of
the new science had recourse to combination, in the hope, by that means,
of attaining their object. To fix mercury became their first endeavor,
and this fixation they described as "catching the flying bird of
Hermes." Once embarked in the illusory experiment, it is easy to
perceive how far the Alchemists might be led; nor need it excite any
wonder that in pursuit of the ideal, they accidentally hit upon a good
deal that was real. The labors, therefore, of the Arabian physicians
were not thrown away, though they entangled the feet of science in
mazes, from which escape was only effected, after the lapse of centuries
of misdirected efforts.

From the period we have last spoken of, until the commencement of the
eleventh century, the only Alchemist of note is the Arabian Geber, who,
though he wrote on the perfections of metals, of the new-found art of
making gold, in a word, on the philosopher's stone, has only descended
to our times as the founder of that jargon which passes under the name
of "gibberish." He was, however, a great authority in the middle age