found thousands after his death. A sect of Paracelsists sprang up in
France and Germany, to perpetuate the extravagant doctrines of their
founder upon all the sciences, and upon alchymy in particular. The chief
leaders were Bodenstein and Dorneus. The following is a summary of his
doctrine, founded upon the supposed existence of the philosopher's stone;
it is worth preserving from its very absurdity, and is altogether
unparalleled in the history of philosophy. First of all, he maintained
that the contemplation of the perfection of the Deity sufficed to procure
all wisdom and knowledge; that the Bible was the key to the theory of all
diseases, and that it was necessary to search into the Apocalypse to know
the signification of magic medicine. The man who blindly obeyed the will
of God, and who succeeded in identifying himself with the celestial
intelligences, possessed the philosopher's stone--he could cure all
diseases, and prolong life to as many centuries as he pleased; it being by
the very same means that Adam and the antediluvian patriarchs prolonged
theirs. Life was an emanation from the stars--the sun governed the heart,
and the moon the brain. Jupiter governed the liver, Saturn the gall,
Mercury the lungs, Mars the bile, and Venus the loins. In the stomach of
every human being there dwelt a demon, or intelligence, that was a sort of
alchymist in his way, and mixed, in their due proportions, in his
crucible, the various aliments that were sent into that grand laboratory,
the belly.[40] He was proud of the title of magician, and boasted that
he kept up a regular correspondence with Galen from hell; and that he
often summoned Avicenna from the same regions to dispute with him on the
false notions he had promulgated respecting alchymy, and especially
regarding potable gold and the elixir of life. He imagined that gold could
cure ossification of the heart, and, in fact, all diseases, if it were
gold which had been transmuted from an inferior metal by means of the
philosopher's stone, and if it were applied under certain conjunctions of
the planets. The mere list of the works in which he advances these frantic
imaginings, which he called a doctrine, would occupy several pages.
[40] See the article "Paracelsus," by the learned Renaudin, in the
_Biographie Universelle_.
GEORGE AGRICOLA.
This alchymist was born in the province of Misnia, in 1494. His real name
was _Bauer_, meaning a husbandman, which, in accordance with the common
fashion of his age, he latinised into Agricola. From his early youth, he
delighted in the visions of the hermetic science. Ere he was sixteen, he
longed for the great elixir which was to make him live for seven hundred
years, and for the stone which was to procure him wealth to cheer him in
his multiplicity of days. He published a small treatise upon the subject
at Cologne, in 1531, which obtained him the patronage of the celebrated
Maurice duke of Saxony. After practising for some years as a physician at
Joachimsthal, in Bohemia, he was employed by Maurice as superintendent of
the silver mines of Chemnitz. He led a happy life among the miners, making
various experiments in alchymy while deep in the bowels of the earth. He
acquired a great knowledge of metals, and gradually got rid of his
extravagant notions about the philosopher's stone. The miners had no faith
in alchymy; and they converted him to their way of thinking, not only in
that but in other respects. From their legends, he became firmly convinced
that the bowels of the earth were inhabited by good and evil spirits, and
that firedamp and other explosions sprang from no other causes than the
mischievous propensities of the latter. He died in the year 1555, leaving
behind him the reputation of a very able and intelligent man.
DENIS ZACHAIRE.
Autobiography, written by a wise man who was once a fool, is not only the
most instructive, but the most delightful of reading. Denis Zachaire, an
alchymist of the sixteenth century, has performed this task, and left a
record of his folly and infatuation in pursuit of the philosopher's stone,
which well repays perusal. He was born in the year 1510, of an ancient
family in Guienne, and was early sent to the university of Bordeaux, under
the care of a tutor to direct his studies. Unfortunately his tutor was a
searcher for the grand elixir, and soon rendered his pupil as mad as
himself upon the subject. With this introduction, we will allow Denis
Zachaire to speak for himself, and continue his narrative in his own
words: "I received from home," says he, "the sum of two hundred crowns for
the expenses of myself and master; but before the end of the year, all our
money went away in the smoke of our furnaces. My master, at the same time,
died of a fever, brought on by the parching heat of our laboratory, from
which he seldom or never stirred, and which was scarcely less hot than the
arsenal of Venice. His death was the more unfortunate for me, as my
parents took the opportunity of reducing my allowance, and sending me only
sufficient for my board and lodging, instead of the sum I required to
continue my operations in alchymy.
"To meet this difficulty and get out of leading-strings, I returned home
at the age of twenty-five, and mortgaged part of my property for four
hundred crowns. This sum was necessary to perform an operation of the
science, which had been communicated to me by an Italian at Toulouse, and
who, as he said, had proved its efficacy. I retained this man in my
service, that we might see the end of the experiment. I then, by means of
strong distillations, tried to calcinate gold and silver; but all my
labour was in vain. The weight of the gold I drew out of my furnace was
diminished by one-half since I put it in, and my four hundred crowns were
very soon reduced to two hundred and thirty. I gave twenty of these to my
Italian, in order that he might travel to Milan, where the author of the
receipt resided, and ask him the explanation of some passages which we
thought obscure. I remained at Toulouse all the winter, in the hope of his
return; but I might have remained there till this day if I had waited for
him, for I never saw his face again.
"In the succeeding summer there was a great plague, which forced me to
quit the town. I did not, however, lose sight of my work. I went to
Cahors, where I remained six months, and made the acquaintance of an old
man, who was commonly known to the people as 'the Philosopher;' a name
which, in country places, is often bestowed upon people whose only merit
is, that they are less ignorant than their neighbours. I shewed him my
collection of alchymical receipts, and asked his opinion upon them. He
picked out ten or twelve of them, merely saying that they were better than
the others. When the plague ceased, I returned to Toulouse, and
recommenced my experiments in search of the stone. I worked to such effect
that my four hundred crowns were reduced to one hundred and seventy.
"That I might continue my work on a safer method, I made acquaintance, in
1537, with a certain abbé who resided in the neighbourhood. He was smitten
with the same mania as myself, and told me that one of his friends, who
had followed to Rome in the retinue of the Cardinal d'Armagnac, had sent
him from that city a new receipt which could not fail to transmute iron
and copper, but which would cost two hundred crowns. I provided half this
money, and the abbé the rest; and we began to operate at our joint
expense. As we required spirits of wine for our experiment, I bought a tun
of excellent _vin de Gaillac_. I extracted the spirit, and rectified it
several times. We took a quantity of this, into which we put four marks of
silver and one of gold that had been undergoing the process of calcination
for a month. We put this mixture cleverly into a sort of horn-shaped
vessel, with another to serve as a retort; and placed the whole apparatus
upon our furnace to produce congelation. This experiment lasted a year;
but, not to remain idle, we amused ourselves with many other less
important operations. We drew quite as much profit from these as from our
great work.
"The whole of the year 1537 passed over without producing any change
whatever; in fact we might have waited till doomsday for the congelation
of our spirits of wine. However, we made a projection with it upon some
heated quicksilver; but all was in vain. Judge of our chagrin, especially
of that of the abbé, who had already boasted to all the monks of his
monastery, that they had only to bring the large pump which stood in a
corner of the cloister, and he would convert it into gold: but this ill
luck did not prevent us from persevering. I once more mortgaged my
paternal lands for four hundred crowns, the whole of which I determined to
devote to a renewal of my search for the great secret. The abbé
contributed the same sum; and with these eight hundred crowns I proceeded
to Paris, a city more abounding with alchymists than any other in the
world, resolved never to leave it until I had either found the
philosopher's stone or spent all my money. This journey gave the greatest
offence to all my relations and friends, who, imagining that I was fitted
to be a great lawyer, were anxious that I should establish myself in that
profession. For the sake of quietness, I pretended, at last, that such was
my object.
"After travelling for fifteen days, I arrived in Paris on the 9th of
January 1539. I remained for a month almost unknown; but I had no sooner
begun to frequent the amateurs of the science, and visited the shops of
the furnace-makers, than I had the acquaintance of more than a hundred
operative alchymists, each of whom had a different theory and a different
mode of working. Some of them preferred cementation; others sought the
universal alkahest or dissolvent; and some of them boasted the great
efficacy of the essence of emery. Some of them endeavoured to extract
mercury from other metals, to fix it afterwards; and, in order that each
of us should be thoroughly acquainted with the proceedings of the others,
we agreed to meet somewhere every night and report progress. We met
sometimes at the house of one, and sometimes in the garret of another; not
only on week days, but on Sundays and the great festivals of the Church.
'Ah!' one used to say, 'if I had the means of recommencing this
experiment, I should do something.' 'Yes,' said another, 'if my crucible
had not cracked, I should have succeeded before now;' while a third
exclaimed, with a sigh, 'If I had but had a round copper vessel of
sufficient strength, I would have fixed mercury with silver.' There was
not one among them who had not some excuse for his failure; but I was deaf
to all their speeches. I did not want to part with my money to any of
them, remembering how often I had been the dupe of such promises.
"A Greek at last presented himself; and with him I worked a long time
uselessly upon nails made of cinnabar or vermilion. I was also acquainted
with a foreign gentleman newly arrived in Paris, and often accompanied him
to the shops of the goldsmiths to sell pieces of gold and silver, the
produce, as he said, of his experiments. I stuck closely to him for a long
time, in the hope that he would impart his secret. He refused for a long
time, but acceded at last on my earnest entreaty, and I found that it was
nothing more than an ingenious trick. I did not fail to inform my friend
the abbé, whom I had left at Toulouse, of all my adventures; and sent him,
among other matters, a relation of the trick by which this gentleman
pretended to turn lead into gold. The abbé still imagined that I should
succeed at last, and advised me to remain another year in Paris, where I
had made so good a beginning. I remained there three years; but,
notwithstanding all my efforts, I had no more success than I had had
elsewhere.
"I had just got to the end of my money, when I received a letter from the
abbé, telling me to leave every thing, and join him immediately at
Toulouse. I went accordingly, and found that he had received letters from
the king of Navarre (grandfather of Henry IV.). This prince was a great
lover of philosophy, full of curiosity, and had written to the abbé that I
should visit him at Pau; and that he would give me three or four thousand
crowns if I would communicate the secret I had learned from the foreign
gentleman. The abbé's ears were so tickled with the four thousand crowns,
that he let me have no peace night or day until he had fairly seen me on
the road to Pau. I arrived at that place in the month of May 1542. I
worked away, and succeeded, according to the receipt I had obtained. When
I had finished to the satisfaction of the king, he gave me the reward that
I expected. Although he was willing enough to do me further service, he
was dissuaded from it by the lords of his court; even by many of those who
had been most anxious that I should come. He sent me then about my
business, with many thanks; saying, that if there was any thing in his
kingdom which he could give me--such as the produce of confiscations or
the like--he should be most happy. I thought I might stay long enough for
these prospective confiscations, and never get them at last; and I
therefore determined to go back to my friend the abbé.
"I learned that, on the road between Pau and Toulouse, there resided a
monk who was very skilful in all matters of natural philosophy. On my
return, I paid him a visit. He pitied me very much, and advised me, with
much warmth and kindness of expression, not to amuse myself any longer
with such experiments as these, which were all false and sophistical; but
that I should read the good books of the old philosophers, where I might
not only find the true matter of the science of alchymy, but learn also
the exact order of operations which ought to be followed. I very much
approved of this wise advice; but before I acted upon it, I went back to
my abbé of Toulouse, to give him an account of the eight hundred crowns
which we had had in common, and, at the same time, share with him such
reward as I had received from the king of Navarre. If he was little
satisfied with the relation of my adventures since our first separation,
he appeared still less satisfied when I told him I had formed a resolution
to renounce the search for the philosopher's stone. The reason was that he
thought me a good artist. Of our eight hundred crowns, there remained but
one hundred and seventy-six. When I quitted the abbé, I went to my own
house with the intention of remaining there, till I had read all the old
philosophers, and of then proceeding to Paris.
"I arrived in Paris on the day after All Saints, of the year 1546, and
devoted another year to the assiduous study of great authors. Among
others, the _Turba Philosophorum_ of the Good Trevisan, the _Remonstrance
of Nature to the Wandering Alchymist_, by Jean de Meung, and several
others of the best books; but, as I had no right principles, I did not
well know what course to follow.
"At last I left my solitude, not to see my former acquaintances, the
adepts and operators, but to frequent the society of true philosophers.
Among them I fell into still greater uncertainties; being, in fact,
completely bewildered by the variety of operations which they shewed me.
Spurred on, nevertheless, by a sort of frenzy or inspiration, I threw
myself into the works of Raymond Lulli and of Arnold de Villeneuve. The
reading of these, and the reflections I made upon them, occupied me for
another year, when I finally determined on the course I should adopt. I
was obliged to wait, however, until I had mortgaged another very
considerable portion of my patrimony. This business was not settled until
the beginning of Lent, 1549, when I commenced my operations. I laid in a
stock of all that was necessary, and began to work the day after Easter.
It was not, however, without some disquietude and opposition from my
friends who came about me; one asking me what I was going to do, and
whether I had not already spent money enough upon such follies? Another
assured me that, if I bought so much charcoal, I should strengthen the
suspicion already existing, that I was a coiner of base money. Another
advised me to purchase some place in the magistracy, as I was already a
Doctor of Laws. My relations spoke in terms still more annoying to me, and
even threatened that, if I continued to make such a fool of myself, they
would send a posse of police-officers into my house, and break all my
furnaces and crucibles into atoms. I was wearied almost to death by this
continued persecution; but I found comfort in my work and in the progress
of my experiment, to which I was very attentive, and which went on bravely
from day to day. About this time, there was a dreadful plague in Paris,
which interrupted all intercourse between man and man, and left me as much
to myself as I could desire. I soon had the satisfaction to remark the
progress and succession of the three colours which, according to the
philosophers, always prognosticate the approaching perfection of the work.
I observed them distinctly, one after the other; and next year, being
Easter Sunday, 1550, I made the great trial. Some common quicksilver,
which I put into a small crucible on the fire, was, in less than an hour,
converted into very good gold. You may judge how great was my joy, but I
took care not to boast of it. I returned thanks to God for the favour he
had shewn me, and prayed that I might only be permitted to make such use
of it as would redound to his glory.
"On the following day, I went towards Toulouse to find, the abbé, in
accordance with a mutual promise, that we should communicate our
discoveries to each other. On my way, I called in to see the sage monk who
had assisted me with his counsels; but I had the sorrow to learn that they
were both dead. After this, I would not return to my own home, but retired
to another place, to await one of my relations whom I had left in charge
of my estate. I gave him orders to sell all that belonged to me, as well
movable as immovable--to pay my debts with the proceeds, and divide all
the rest among those in any way related to me who might stand in need of
it, in order that they might enjoy some share of the good fortune which
had befallen me. There was a great deal of talk in the neighbourhood about
my precipitate retreat; the wisest of my acquaintance imagining that,
broken down and ruined by my mad expenses, I sold my little remaining
property, that I might go and hide my shame in distant countries.
"My relative already spoken of rejoined me on the 1st of July, after
having performed all the business I had entrusted him with. We took our
departure together, to seek a land of liberty. We first retired to
Lausanne, in Switzerland, when, after remaining there for some time, we
resolved to pass the remainder of our days in some of the most celebrated
cities of Germany, living quietly and without splendour."
Thus ends the story of Denis Zachaire, as written by himself. He has not
been so candid at its conclusion as at its commencement, and has left the
world in doubt as to his real motives for pretending that he had
discovered the philosopher's stone. It seems probable that the sentence he
puts into the mouths of his wisest acquaintances was the true reason of
his retreat; that he was, in fact, reduced to poverty, and hid his shame
in foreign countries. Nothing further is known of his life, and his real
name has never yet been discovered. He wrote a work on alchymy, entitled
_The true Natural Philosophy of Metals_.
DR. DEE AND EDWARD KELLY.
John Dee and Edward Kelly claim to be mentioned together, having been so
long associated in the same pursuits, and undergone so many strange
vicissitudes in each other's society. Dee was altogether a wonderful man,
and had he lived in an age when folly and superstition were less rife, he
would, with the same powers which he enjoyed, have left behind him a
bright and enduring reputation. He was born in London in the year 1527,
and very early manifested a love for study. At the age of fifteen he was
sent to Cambridge, and delighted so much in his books, that he passed
regularly eighteen hours every day among them. Of the other six, he
devoted four to sleep and two for refreshment. Such intense application
did not injure his health, and could not fail to make him one of the first
scholars of his time. Unfortunately, however, he quitted the mathematics
and the pursuits of true philosophy, to indulge in the unprofitable
reveries of the occult sciences. He studied alchymy, astrology, and magic,
and thereby rendered himself obnoxious to the authorities at Cambridge. To
avoid persecution, he was at last obliged to retire to the university of
Louvain; the rumours of sorcery that were current respecting him rendering
his longer stay in England not altogether without danger. He found at
Louvain many kindred spirits who had known Cornelius Agrippa while he
resided among them, and by whom he was constantly entertained with the
wondrous deeds of that great master of the hermetic mysteries. From their
conversation he received much encouragement to continue the search for the
philosopher's stone, which soon began to occupy nearly all his thoughts.
[Illustration: DR. DEE.]
He did not long remain on the Continent, but returned to England in 1551,
being at that time in the twenty-fourth year of his age. By the influence
of his friend Sir John Cheek, he was kindly received at the court of King
Edward VI., and rewarded (it is difficult to say for what) with a pension
of one hundred crowns. He continued for several years to practise in
London as an astrologer; casting nativities, telling fortunes, and
pointing out lucky and unlucky days. During the reign of Queen Mary he got
into trouble, being suspected of heresy, and charged with attempting
Mary's life by means of enchantments. He was tried for the latter offence,
and acquitted; but was retained in prison on the former charge, and left
to the tender mercies of Bishop Bonner. He had a very narrow escape from
being burned in Smithfield, but he somehow or other contrived to persuade
that fierce bigot that his orthodoxy was unimpeachable, and was set at
liberty in 1555.
On the accession of Elizabeth, a brighter day dawned upon him. During her
retirement at Woodstock, her servants appear to have consulted him as to
the time of Mary's death, which circumstance no doubt first gave rise to
the serious charge for which he was brought to trial. They now came to
consult him more openly as to the fortunes of their mistress; and Robert
Dudley, the celebrated Earl of Leicester, was sent by command of the Queen
herself to know the most auspicious day for her coronation. So great was
the favour he enjoyed, that, some years afterwards, Elizabeth condescended
to pay him a visit at his house in Mortlake, to view his museum of
curiosities, and when he was ill, sent her own physician to attend upon
him.
Astrology was the means whereby he lived, and he continued to practise it
with great assiduity; but his heart was in alchymy. The philosopher's
stone and the elixir of life haunted his daily thoughts and his nightly
dreams. The Talmudic mysteries, which he had also deeply studied,
impressed him with the belief, that he might hold converse with spirits
and angels, and learn from them all the mysteries of the universe. Holding
the same idea as the then obscure sect of the Rosicrucians, some of whom
he had perhaps encountered in his travels in Germany, he imagined that, by
means of the philosopher's stone, he could summon these kindly spirits at
his will. By dint of continually brooding upon the subject, his
imagination became so diseased, that he at last persuaded himself that an
angel appeared to him, and promised to be his friend and companion as long
as he lived. He relates that, one day, in November 1582, while he was
engaged in fervent prayer, the window of his museum looking towards the
west suddenly glowed with a dazzling light, in the midst of which, in all
his glory, stood the great angel Uriel. Awe and wonder rendered him
speechless; but the angel smiling graciously upon him, gave him a crystal,
of a convex form, and told him that whenever he wished to hold converse
with the beings of another sphere, he had only to gaze intently upon it,
and they would appear in the crystal, and unveil to him all the secrets of
futurity.[41] Thus saying, the angel disappeared. Dee found from
experience of the crystal that it was necessary that all the faculties of
the soul should be concentrated upon it, otherwise the spirits did not
appear. He also found that he could never recollect the conversations he
had with the angels. He therefore determined to communicate the secret to
another person, who might converse with the spirit while he (Dee) sat in
another part of the room, and took down in writing the revelations which
they made.