n the mind. No two ideas that are contradictory of one another, and are
perceived to be of this nature, can permanently exist in any sane man's
mind. It is true that many people try to keep certain portions of their
mental life in water-tight compartments; thus some try to keep their
religious convictions and their business ideas, or their religious
faith and their scientific knowledge, separate from another one--and, it
seems, often succeed remarkably well in so doing. But, ultimately, the
arbitrary mental walls they have erected will break down by the force
of their own ideas. Contradictory ideas from different compartments will
then present themselves to consciousness at the same moment of time,
and the result of the perception of their contradictory nature will
be mental anguish and turmoil, persisting until one set of ideas is
conquered and overcome by the other, and harmony and unity are restored.

It is true of all of us, then, that we seek for Unity--unity in mind and
life. Some seek it in science and a life of knowledge; some seek it in
religion and a life of faith; some seek it in human love and find it in
the life of service to their fellows; some seek it in pleasure and the
gratification of the senses' demands; some seek it in the harmonious
development of all the facets of their being. Many the methods, right
and wrong; many the terms under which the One is conceived, true
and false--in a sense, to use the phraseology of a bygone system of
philosophy, we are all, consciously or unconsciously, following paths
that lead thither or paths that lead away, seekers in the quest of the
Philosopher's Stone.

Let us, in these excursions in the byways of thought, consider for a
while the form that the quest of fundamental unity took in the hands
of those curious mediaeval philosophers, half mystics, half
experimentalists in natural things--that are known by the name of
"alchemists."

The common opinion concerning alchemy is that it was a pseudo-science or
pseudo-art flourishing during the Dark Ages, and having for its aim
the conversion of common metals into silver and gold by means of a most
marvellous and wholly fabulous agent called the Philosopher's Stone,
that its devotees were half knaves, half fools, whose views concerning
Nature were entirely erroneous, and whose objects were entirely
mercenary. This opinion is not absolutely destitute of truth; as a
science alchemy involved many fantastic errors; and in the