The thrones and shrines, which delusion once sustained even in the civilized quarter of the globe, are for ever fallen, and that civil and religious liberty, which in past ages was kept down by the marvellous exhibitions of science to the senses, is now maintained by its application to the reason of man. The charlatans, whether they deal in moral or in physical wonders, form a race which is never extinct. They migrate to the different zones of the social system, and though they change their place, and their purposes, and their victims, yet their character and motives remain the same. The philosophical mind, therefore, is not disposed to study either of these varieties of impostors; but the other two families which compose the second class are objects of paramount interest. The eccentricities and even the obliquities of great minds merit the scrutiny of the metaphysician and the moralist, and they derive a peculiar interest from the state of society in which they are exhibited. Had Cardan and Cornelius Agrippa lived in modern times, their vanity and self-importance would have been checked by the forms of society, and even if their harmless pretensions had been displayed, they would have disappeared in the blaze of their genius and knowledge. But nursed in superstition, and educated in dark and turbulent times, when every thing intellectual was in a state of restless transition, the genius and character of great men necessarily reflected the peculiarities of the age in which they lived.
Had history transmitted to us correct details of the leading alchemists and scientific magicians of the dark ages, we should have been able to analyse their actions and their opinions, and trace them, probably, to the ordinary principles by which the human mind is in every age influenced and directed. But when a great man has once become an object either of interest or of wonder, and still more when he is considered as the possessor of knowledge and skill which transcend the capacity of the age, he is soon transformed into the hero of romance. His powers are overrated, his deeds exaggerated, and he becomes the subject of idle legends, which acquire a firmer hold on credulity from the slight sprinkling of truth with which they are seasoned. To disclaim the possession of lofty attributes thus ascribed to great men is a degree of humility which is not often exercised. But even when this species of modesty is displayed, it never fails to defeat its object. It but calls forth a deeper homage, and fixes the demigod more firmly in his shrine.
The history of learning furnishes us with many examples of that species of delusion in which a great mind submits itself to vulgar adulation, and renounces unwillingly, if it renounces at all, the unenviable reputation of supernatural agency. In cases where self-interest and ambition are the basis of this peculiarity of temperament, and in an age when the conjuror and the alchemist were the companions and even the idols of princes, it is easy to trace the steps by which a gifted sage retains his ascendancy among the ignorant. The hecatomb which is sacrificed to the magician, he receives as an oblation to his science, and conscious of possessing real endowments, the idol devours the meats that are offered to him without analysing the motives and expectations under which he is fed. But even when the idolater and his god are not placed in this transverse relation, the love of power or of notoriety is sufficient to induce good men to lend a too willing ear to vulgar testimony in favour of themselves; and in our own times it is not common to repudiate the unmerited cheers of a popular assembly, or to offer a contradiction to fictitious tales which record our talents or our courage, our charity or our piety.
The conduct of the scientific alchemists of the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries presents a problem of very difficult solution. When we consider that a gas, a fluid, and a solid may consist of the very same ingredients in different proportions; that a virulent poison may differ from the most wholesome food only in the difference of quantity of the very same elements; that gold and silver, and lead and mercury, and indeed all the metals, may be extracted from transparent crystals, which scarcely differ in their appearance from a piece of common salt or a bit of sugarcandy; and that diamond is nothing more than charcoal,—we need not greatly wonder at the extravagant expectation that the precious metals and the noblest gems might be procured from the basest materials. These expectations, too, must have been often excited by the startling results of their daily experiments. The most ignorant compounder of simples could not fail to witness the magical transformations of chemical action; and every new product must have added to the probability that the tempting doublets of gold and silver might be thrown from the dice-box with which he was gambling.
But when the precious metals were found in lead and copper by the action of powerful re-agents, it was natural to suppose that they had been actually formed during the process; and men of well-regulated minds even might have thus been led to embark in new adventures to procure a more copious supply, without any insult being offered to sober reason, or any injury inflicted on sound morality.
When an ardent and ambitious mind is once dazzled with the fascination of some lofty pursuit, where gold is the object, or fame the impulse, it is difficult to pause in a doubtful career, and to make a voluntary shipwreck of the reputation which has been staked. Hope still cheers the aspirant from failure to failure, till the loss of fortune and the decay of credit disturb the serenity of his mind, and hurry him on to the last resource of baffled ingenuity and disappointed ambition. The philosopher thus becomes an impostor; and by the pretended transmutation of the baser metals into gold, or the discovery of the philosopher’s stone, he attempts to sustain his sinking reputation, and recover the fortune he has lost. The communication of the great secret is now the staple commodity with which he is to barter, and the grand talisman with which he is to conjure. It can be imparted only to a chosen few—to those among the opulent who merit it by their virtues, and can acquire it by their diligence, and the divine vengeance is threatened against its disclosure. A process commencing in fraud and terminating in mysticism is conveyed to the wealthy aspirant, or instilled into the young enthusiast, and the grand mystery passes current for a season, till some cautious professor of the art, like Tycho, denounces its publication as detrimental to society.
Among the extravagant pretensions of the alchemists, that of forming a universal medicine was perhaps not the most irrational. It was only when they pretended to cure every disease, and to confer longevity, that they did violence to reason. The success of the Arabian physicians in the use of mercurial preparations naturally led to the belief that other medicines, still more general in their application, and efficacious in their healing powers, might yet be brought to light; and we have no doubt that many substantial discoveries were the result of such overstrained expectations. Tycho was not merely a believer in the medical dogmas of the alchemists, he was actually the discoverer of a new elixir, which went by his name, and which was sold in every apothecary’s shop as a specific against the epidemic diseases which were then ravaging Germany. The Emperor Rudolph having heard of this celebrated medicine, obtained a small portion of it from Tycho by the hands of the Governor of Brandisium; but, not satisfied with the gift, he seems to have applied to Tycho for an account of the method of preparing it. Tycho accordingly addressed to the Emperor a long letter, dated September 7, 1599, containing a minute account of the process. The base of this remarkable medicine is Venetian treacle, which undergoes an infinity of chemical operations and admixtures before it is ready for the patient. When properly prepared he assures the Emperor that it is better than gold, and that it may be made still more valuable by mixing with it a single scruple either of the tincture of corals, or sapphire, or hyacinth, or a solution of pearls, or of potable gold, if it can be obtained free of all corrosive matter! In order to render the medicine universal for all diseases which can be cured by perspiration, and which, he says, form a third of those which attack the human frame, he combines it with antimony, a well known sudorific in the present practice of physic. Tycho concludes his letter by humbly beseeching the Emperor to keep the process secret, and reserve the medicine for himself alone!
The same disposition of mind which made Tycho an astrologer and an alchemist, inspired him with a singular love of the marvellous.
He had various automata with which he delighted to astonish the peasants; and by means of invisible bells, which communicated with every part of his establishment, and which rung with the gentlest touch, he had great pleasure in bringing any of his pupils suddenly before strangers, muttering at a particular time the words “Come hither, Peter,” as if he had commanded their presence by some supernatural agency. If, on leaving home, he met with an old woman or a hare, he returned immediately to his house: But the most extraordinary of all his peculiarities remains to be noticed. When he lived at Uraniburg he maintained an idiot of the name of Lep, who lay at his feet whenever he sat down to dinner, and whom he fed with his own hand. Persuaded that his mind, when moved, was capable of foretelling future events, Tycho carefully marked every thing he said. Lest it should be supposed that this was done to no purpose, Longomontanus relates that when any person in the island was sick, Lep never, when interrogated, failed to predict whether the patient would live or die. It is stated also in the letters of Wormius, both to Gassendi and Peyter, that when Tycho was absent, and his pupils became very noisy and merry in consequence of not expecting him soon home, the idiot, who was present, exclaimed, Juncher xaa laudit, “Your master has arrived.” On another occasion, when Tycho had sent two of his pupils to Copenhagen on business, and had fixed the day of their return, Lep surprised him on that day while he was at dinner, by exclaiming, “Behold your pupils are bathing in the sea.” Tycho, suspecting that they were shipwrecked, sent some person to the observatory to look for their boat. The messenger brought back word that he saw some persons wet on the shore, and in distress, with a boat upset at a great distance. These stories have been given by Gassendi, and may be viewed as specimens of the superstition of the age.
Tycho left behind him a wife and six children, but even in the time of Gassendi nothing was known of their history, excepting that Tengnagel, who married one of the daughters, gave up his scientific pursuits, and, having been admitted among the Emperor’s counsellors, was employed in several of his embassies.