uld quote pages in support of this, but I will content myself with a
few words from the _Turba_--the antiquity of the book makes it of value,
and anyway it is near at hand. "Permanent water," whatever that may be,
being pounded with the body, we are told, "by the will of God it
turns that body into spirit." And in another place we read that "the
Philosophers have said: Except ye turn bodies into not-bodies, and
incorporeal things into bodies, ye have not yet discovered the rule of
operation."(1a) No one who could write like this, and believe it, could
hold matter and spirit as altogether distinct. But it is equally obvious
that the injunction to convert body into spirit is meaningless if spirit
and body are held to be identical. I have been criticised for crediting
the alchemists "with the philosophic acumen of Hegel,"(1b) but that is
just what I think one ought to avoid doing. At the same time, however,
it is extremely difficult to give a precise account of views which are
very far from being precise themselves. But I think it may be said,
without fear of error, that the alchemist who could say, "As above, so
below," _ipso facto_ recognised both a very close connection between
spirit and matter, and a distinction between them. Moreover, the
division thus implied corresponded, on the whole, to that between the
realms of the known (or what was thought to be known) and the unknown.
The Church, whether Christian or pre-Christian, had very precise
(comparatively speaking) doctrine concerning the soul's origin,
duties, and destiny, backed up by tremendous authority, and speculative
philosophy had advanced very far by the time PLATO began to concern
himself with its problems. Nature, on the other hand, was a mysterious
world of magical happenings, and there was nothing deserving of the
name of natural science until alchemy was becoming decadent. It is not
surprising, therefore, that the alchemists--these men who wished to
probe Nature's hidden mysteries--should reason from above to
below; indeed, unless they had started _de novo_--as babes knowing
nothing,--there was no other course open to them. And that they did
adopt the obvious course is all that my former thesis amounts to. In
passing, it is interesting to note that a sixteenth-century alchemist,
who had exceptional opportunities and leisure to study the works of the
old masters of alchemy, seems to have come to a similar conclusion as
to the nature of their reasoning. He