Abstract
THE author of this book thinks he perceives the trend of modern chemical doctrine an ap proximation to the fundamental dogmas of philo sophical alchemy, as these were understood and taught by its greatest exponents. The application of the principles of evolution to the genesis of the chemical elements has, in his opinion, brought us back to the “basic idea” permeating all alchemistic theory, and that, in his judgment, the time is gone when it may be regarded as legitimate to point to alchemy as an instance of the aberrations of the human mind. How far the general proposition is, or can be, substantiated by the facts of experiment at present known to us, may be seriously questioned. It is practically certain that no proof of transmutation has ever been given. Allegations of such an occurrence have been made, of course, times without number. But whenever any instance of the kind has been properly scrutinised, the allegation has been wholly disproved, and the evidence that it has been made in bad faith and as the result of conscious fraud, and not merely of honest self-deception, is, in a large number of instances, complete and irrefutable.
Alchemy: Ancient and Modern: Being a Brief Account of the Alchemistic Doctrines, and their Relations, to Mysticism on the One Hand, and to Recent Discoveries in Physical Science on the Other Hand, together with some particulars regarding the Lives and Teachings of the most noted Alchemists.
By H. Stanley Redgrove. Pp. xiv + 141. (London: W. Rider and Son, Ltd., 1911.) Price 4s. 6d. net.
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Alchemy: Ancient and Modern: Being a Brief Account of the Alchemistic Doctrines, and their Relations, to Mysticism on the One Hand, and to Recent Discoveries in Physical Science on the Other Hand, together with some particulars regarding the Lives and Teachings of the most noted Alchemists . Nature 86, 375 (1911). https://doi.org/10.1038/086375a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/086375a0