ts. From this sprang the search, so long
continued and still pursued, for the _elixir vitae_, or _water of life_,
which has led thousands to pretend to it and millions to believe in it.
From the second sprang the search for the philosopher's stone, which was
to create plenty by changing all metals into gold; and from the third, the
false sciences of astrology, divination, and their divisions of
necromancy, chiromancy, augury, with all their train of signs, portents,
and omens.

In tracing the career of the erring philosophers, or the wilful cheats,
who have encouraged or preyed upon the credulity of mankind, it will
simplify and elucidate the subject, if we divide it into three classes:
the first comprising alchymists, or those in general who have devoted
themselves to the discovering of the philosopher's stone and the water of
life; the second comprising astrologers, necromancers, sorcerers,
geomancers, and all those who pretended to discover futurity; and the
third consisting of the dealers in charms, amulets, philters,
universal-panacea mongers, touchers for the evil, seventh sons of a
seventh son, sympathetic powder compounders, homoeopathists, animal
magnetisers, and all the motley tribe of quacks, empirics, and charlatans.

But in narrating the career of such men, it will be found that many 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 opi