human emotions.




CHAPTER III.

THE ALCHEMICAL CONCEPTION OF THE UNITY AND SIMPLICITY OF NATURE.


In the preceding chapter I have referred to the frequent use made by
the alchemists of their supposition that nature follows the same plan,
or at any rate a very similar plan, in all her processes. If this
supposition is accepted, the primary business of an investigator of
nature is to trace likenesses and analogies between what seem on the
surface to be dissimilar and unconnected events. As this idea, and
this practice, were the foundations whereon the superstructure of
alchemy was raised, I think it is important to amplify them more fully
than I have done already.

Mention is made in many alchemical writings of a mythical personage
named _Hermes Trismegistus_, who is said to have lived a little later
than the time of Moses. Representations of Hermes Trismegistus are
found on ancient Egyptian monuments. We are told that Alexander the
Great found his tomb near Hebron; and that the tomb contained a slab
of emerald whereon thirteen sentences were written. The eighth
sentence is rendered in many alchemical books as follows:

"Ascend with the greatest sagacity from the earth to heaven, and then
again descend to the earth, and unite together the powers of things