swords with silver hilts by their sides, or fine and gay gloves on
their hands; but diligently follow their labours, sweating whole days
and nights by their furnaces. They do not spend their time abroad for
recreation, but take delight in their laboratories. They put their
fingers among coals, into clay and filth, not into gold rings. They
are sooty and black, like smiths and miners, and do not pride
themselves upon clean and beautiful faces."

In these respects the chemist of to-day faithfully follows the
practice of the alchemists who were his predecessors. You can nose a
chemist in a crowd by the smell of the laboratory which hangs about
him; you can pick him out by the stains on his hands and clothes. He
also "takes delight in his laboratory"; he does not always "pride
himself on a clean and beautiful face"; he "sweats whole days and
nights by his furnace."

Why does the chemist toil so eagerly? Why did the alchemists so
untiringly pursue their quest? I think it is not unfair to say: the
chemist experiments in order that he "may liken his imaginings to the
facts which he observes"; the alchemist toiled that he might liken the
facts which he observed to his imaginings. The difference may be put
in another way by saying: the chemist's object is to discover "how
changes happen in combinations of the unchanging"; the alchemist's
endeavour was to prove the truth of his fundamental assertion, "that
every substance contains undeveloped resources and potentialities, and
can be brought outward and forward into perfection."

Looking around him, and observing the changes of things, the alchemist
was deeply impressed by the growth and modification of plants and
animals; he argued that minerals and metals also grow, change,