degenerated into orgies of the most frightful character,
but the view of Nature which thus degenerated is not, I think,
an altogether unsound one, and very interesting remnants of it
are to be found in mediaeval philosophy.

These remnants are very marked in alchemy. The metals, as I have
suggested, are there regarded as types of man; hence they are
produced from seed, through the combination of male and female
principles--mercury and sulphur, which on the spiritual plane are
intelligence and love. The same is true of that Stone which is
perfect Man. As BERNARD of TREVISAN (1406-1490) wrote in the
fifteenth century: "This Stone then is compounded of a Body and
Spirit, or of a volatile and fixed Substance, and that is therefore
done, because nothing in the World can be generated and brought to
light without these two Substances, to wit, a Male and Female: From
whence it appeareth, that although these two Substances are not of
one and the same species, yet one Stone doth thence arise,
and although they appear and are said to be two Substances,
yet in truth it is but one, to wit, _Argent-vive_."[1] No
doubt this sounds fantastic; but with all their seeming
intellectual follies these old thinkers were no fools.
The fact of sex is the most fundamental fact of the universe,
and is a spiritual and physical as well as a physiological fact.
I shall deal with the subject as concerns the speculations
of the alchemists in some detail in a later excursion.


[1] BERNARD, Earl of TREVISAN: _A Treatise of the
Philosopher's Stone_, 1683. (See _Collectanea Chymica: A Collection
of Ten Several Treatises in Chemistry_, 1684, p. 91.)