once very real and the mere shadow of a dream. The conditions were
favourable to the growth of magic; for man was regarded as the measure
of the universe, the central figure in an awful tragedy.

Magic is an attempt, by thinking and speculating about what we
consider must be the order of nature, to discover some means of
penetrating into the secret life of natural things, of realising the
hidden powers and virtues of things, grasping the concealed thread of
unity which is supposed to run through all phenomena however seemingly
diverse, entering into sympathy with the supposed inner oneness of
life, death, the present, past, and future. Magic grows, and gathers
strength, when men are sure their theory of the universe must be the
one true theory, and they see only through the glasses which their
theory supplies. "He who knows himself thoroughly knows God and all
the mysteries of His nature," says a modern writer on magic. That
saying expresses the fundamental hypothesis, and the method, of all
systems of magic and mysticism. Of such systems, alchemy was one.




CHAPTER II.

A SKETCH OF ALCHEMICAL THEORY.


The system which began to be called _alchemy_ in the 6th and 7th
centuries of our era had no special name before that time, but was
known as _the sacred art, the divine science, the occult science, the
art of Hermes_.