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1 have not the means of referring to the original tract, but from this mention of the Stoics, should apprehend it to be, if not among the earliest alchemical forgeries, subsequent to the revival of literature.* To what particular notion of the Stoics the author refers, I am not aware; the passage, however, if the tract be of any antiquity, is a curious one. Öther Hebrews are enumerated as eminent in the art, among whom Solomon, as might be supposed, is not overlooked; somewhat less plausible is the insertion (on the authority of Avicenna, Vincent of Beauvais, and the Peræ Ecclesiastica) of St. John the Evangelist. The notion seems to have had its rise in the misconception of a legend which represents St. John as having converted stones into gems, and wood into gold, for some eleemosynary purpose. This section is, for the most part, very dull and uninteresting. I will add nothing more, therefore, than a specimen of the arguments with which it concludes. "To that which is perfect (says the adversary), nothing can be added; but the inferior metals, as lead, &c. are perfect, therefore nothing can be added to them." It is answered that that which is naturally perfect in its kind may be yet further perfected by art, as corn which is perfect in se is yet further perfected by being made into bread, &c.

Book III, Greeks.-These are headed by Democritus the Abderite, for whose existence, philosophy, and merriment, sufficient authority is given; for his alchemy, that of Psellus and Picus Mirandulæ. Maier hints that the atomic theory might still have its supporters, if the Aristotelians did not cry it down, but objects strongly to the notion of a plurality of worlds. The catalogue of Greek alchemists includes Orpheus, Homer, the authors of the mysteries, and even of the Olympic and other games, Pythagoras, and nearly all the Greek physiologists; among the rest, Euclid, and Seneca, Hamech, and Abugazal, the master of Plato. Apollonius of Tyana is made, with somewhat more of plausibility, to occupy a prominent station among these gentry. Into the probable sources of the extraordinary hallucination which would convert nearly the whole learning of Grecian antiquity into a mere vehicle for the dreams of alchemy, I shall endeavour to inquire shortly. Here then I will add only a further specimen of alchemical dialectics. P. "From two elementary substances (entibus per se) one ens per se cannot be made. But the alchemist who affirms that gold (an ens per se), may be made by the union of lead, and the tincture assumes this. This assertion is, therefore, false." Answer. "We constantly see unum quid" made " ex duobus entibus," as bread of

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It is probably an early Greek forgery. G. Syncellus (A. D. 780), mentions one Maria, a Hebrew, as contemporary with Democritus of Abdera, and having written in language purposely obscure on subjects of the same kind, namely, gold, silver, stones, and purple, "Miriam and the Jewish writings," are also referred to in a Greek MS. entitled "The Sacred Art," in the Royal Library of France."(Fabricii Cod. Apqcryph. Vet. Test, vol. i. p. 869.)

flour and leaven, cheese of milk and rennet, &c. and one whole house of its several parts." Nothing (he concludes), save incredulity or ignorance, can see a difficulty here.

Book IV. Romans. The earliest alchemical authority our author is able to find among the Romans is one Morienus, whom he states to have lived about A. D. 800. He argues, however, that the Romans must have been acquainted with the Hermetic art from their knowledge of the mythology and philosophy of the Greeks, and from the extent of their public revenues. He employs much erudition to little purpose, and quotes as alchemical the well-known enigmatic epitaph Elia, Laelia, Crispis, said to have been found with a perpetual lamp, and a second in which occur the following lines:

Hic elementa brevi clausit digesta labore,
Vase sub hoc modico Maximus Olybius.

Both are probably forgeries of the 15th century. Virgil wrote alchemy. The golden bough of the sibyl, and indeed the whole descent of Eneas to the shades, is an allegory of this kind: he wisely omits all notice of the bard's "porta emittet eburnâ." He notices the tradition that Virgil was a necromancer, a fancy at least as old as the 12th century. This section concludes like the former with a logical disputation. The arguments, as we have seen, are either mere verbal equivoques, or barefaced assertions, that the metals have been decomposed and recomposed by sundry alchemical worthies.

Thus Maier concludes his review of the supposed Chrysopoetic science of the earlier and classical ages. It is unnecessary to add, that the whole can be considered at the present day only as a tissue of fiction, or at best of gratuitous assumption and gross misconception.

Among all that his labour and erudition have brought together, there is not a single real authority (if we except the very obscure passage in Philostratus) on which we can ground even a suspicion that alchemy was studied or heard of at any time previous to the utter declension of art and literature in the eighth and ninth centuries.

Yet that Maier and many others did sincerely believe much at least of what they affirmed concerning the history, as well as the reality of their art, can scarcely be doubted, nor is it, perhaps, difficult to trace the causes which tended to produce and to confirm these hallucinations.

The 16th century was no more the age of critical than of philosophical accuracy, and forgeries of all kinds were, therefore, received with less of question and examination. Add to this, that the mind of the adept already habituated to a symbolical language, chiefly borrowed from the heathen mythology, was the more easily led to assume, that the whole of that mythology was little more than the involucrum of chemical science. It will be

remembered too that the learned of Maier's age almost universally agreed in attributing to the varied and absurd fables of classical superstition an allegorical meaning of one kind or other; much of it had long since been regarded as shadowing out the phænomena and constitution of the material universe.* Fictions which were, or were held to be, thus symbolical of the great and universal operations of nature, might easily, either by transfer or misconstruction, be applied to the more restricted but yet analogous processes of the laboratory. Generation, mixture, separation, dissolution, and reproduction, formed equally the study, and were equally in the mouth, of the philosopher who speculated on generals, and of the artist whose labours were confined to the detail of experiment.

Nor does it appear altogether an absurd or untenable hypothesis, that the whole fabric of alchemical delusion had its origin in the misinterpretation of those cosmological works which were popular in the declining age of classical literature. The Alexandrian and other schools which mingled much of oriental philosophy with the systems, real or pretended, of Pythagoras and Plato, seem to have abounded in this lore, and to have expressed it not unfrequently in a figurative or symbolical manner. They produced also many forgeries attributed usually to authors of a high antiquity, and occasionally designed, perhaps, to prop the failing cause of heathenism. These, in process of time, would become unintelligible, and a new set of impostors or fanatics+ would intentionally or credulously distort their enigmatical contents, to the illustration of theories equally visionary, but better calculated to attract and dazzle an ignorant and barbarous age. We know at least that the Sealed or Hermetic Vase was of old considered as the symbol of the material universe, ever full, but never overflowing. The Mundane Egg was the same; and the serpent with the tail in his mouth figured the eternity of that universe (a well-known dogma of the pseudoPythagorean school), while fire was the type of the vivifying principle which pervades and preserves the whole. These are all common to the schools both of cosmogony and of alchemy,‡

Thus in the well-known lines of Virgil.

Quum Pater omnipotens facundis imbribus æther,
Conjugis in lætæ gremium descendit.

There are traces of this mode of interpretation in the remains of a much earlier poet, the philosophic Empedocles; the Stoics and the Platonists (at least the later Platonists) were also much given to it.

There is in truth little to choose between such writers as Philostratus or Jamblichus, and R. Lully or Ripley.

For the former, I would refer the scholar to the learned though sometimes fanci ful essays of Creuzer, entitled, " Dionysius, &c." (Heidelberg, 1809); for the latter, to the alchemical hieroglyphics engraved in Barchusen's Chemia (Leyden, 1718). It may be added that Beckman and Bergman both quote from Origen against Celsus, an account of a Persian temple, in which the different planetary spheres were represented by different metals. It seems probable that the metals were employed in talismans, &c. as symbolical of the planets, long before the names of the planets were used to designate the metals,

and more resemblances might, I suspect, be traced by any one who had the inclination and opportunities to examine the earlier forgeries termed alchemical, those especially which are extant, or were originally written, in the Greek language.

(To be continued.)

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ARTICLE II.

On the Changes which have taken place in the Declination of some of the principal fixed Stars. By John Pond, Esq. Astronomer Royal, FRS. Read April 18, 1822.*

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THE mural circle having in September last been put into complete repair, and declared by Mr. Troughton to be in as perfect a state as when first erected, I resumed ny examination of the principal fixed stars which form the Greenwich Catalogue. In the course of a very short time, I found that several anomalies, which had previously given me much perplexity, still subsisted: some of these were of such a nature as to lead to a suspicion that a change might possibly have taken place in the figure of the instrument; on the other hand, there were circumstances, that strongly militated against such a supposition.

Several of the stars in which the supposed discordance appeared the greatest, passed over almost the same divisions with others, in which no such discordance could be perceived. Moreover, in examining these discordances in different points of view: (that is, both with respect to their right ascensions and polar distances) I fancied I perceived something like a general faw, that was quite incompatible with any possible hypothesis of error in the instrument.

On a point of this importance, I clearly saw the necessity of devising some new method of observation which might decide with certainty, that which otherwise would become an endless subject of doubt and conjecture.

I had often attempted to observe the altitudes of stars by means of an artificial horizon of quicksilver, or other fluid, but had abandoned the attempt from the difficulty of protecting it from the wind, and from the number of observations I lost in fruitless experiments. To this method I had again recourse; and by means of wooden boxes of different sizes and figures, according to the different altitudes of the stars, I have sufficiently accomplished my purpose. A very few observations were sufficient to convince me that the instrument was in every respect

From the Philosophical Transactions for 1823, Part I.

perfect, and that I might repose the greatest confidence in every result it gave.

. Several stars, and particularly those most discordant, I have observed by this new method, and find their places, without any exception, to agree within a fraction of a second, with those determined by direct measurement from the pole.

Presuming that the observations* which accompany this paper will remove every shadow of a doubt as to the accuracy of the instrument, I shall now proceed to state, in as few words as possible, the nature of the changes which appear to me to have taken place since the year 1812.

If Bradley's catalogue of stars for the year 1756, be compared with the Greenwich catalogue for 1813, it will be possible to deduce the annual variation for each star for the mean period, or for the year 1784, on the supposition of uniformity in the proper motion of each star; then allowing for the change of precession for each star, a catalogue may be computed for distant period; as for example, the present year 1822. Suppose such a catalogue computed, which I have named a predicted catalogue; then, if this be compared with the observed cata logue for the same year, the following differences will be found to subsist between them.

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The general tendency of all the stars will be to appear to the south of their predicted places, and this tendency seems to be greater in southern than in northern stars; if any star be found north of its predicted place, it will always be a star north of the zenith, and the quantity of its motion extremely small. There may be observed a much greater tendency to southern motion in some parts of the heavens than in opposite or distant parts as to right ascension, and in much the greater portion of the heavens the southern motion seems to prevail. A southern star, as Sirius, situated in that part of the heavens most favourable for southern motion, will be found more to the south of its predicted place than Antares, situated in the part least favourable for southern motion, though it is itself more southward.

Several stars have moved more from their predicted places than other neighbouring stars; when this happens, the motion is always southward; I have yet met with no exception to this rule; not a single star can be found having an extra tendency to northern motion; and indeed the northern motion in any star is so very small, that it would never have excited attention.

A very great deviation will be found in three very bright stars, Capella, Procyon, and Sirius: the proper motion of each of these is southward; it therefore follows that these proper motions are accelerated. The proper motion of Arcturus is very great, and likewise southward. It is situated in that part of the

*These observations are given, in the Transactions, in a copious appendix of tables to this and the two succeeding papers, which, on account of its length, we are compelled to omit.-Edit.

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