Closes at will, and the sleeper, at will, reawakens.”—Odyssey, Book V.
“I saw the Samothracian rings
Leap, and steel-filings boil in a brass dish
So soon as underneath it there was placed
The magnet-stone; and with wild terror seemed
The iron to flee from it in stern hate....”—Lucretius, Book VI.
“But that which especially distinguishes the Brotherhood is their marvellous knowledge of the resources of the medical art. They work not by charms but by simples.”
(MS. Account of the Origin and Attributes of the True Rosicrucians.)
One of the truest things ever said by a man of science is the remark made by Professor Cooke in his New Chemistry. “The history of Science shows that the age must be prepared before scientific truths can take root and grow. The barren premonitions of science have been barren because these seeds of truth fell upon unfruitful soil; and, as soon as the fulness of the time has come, the seed has taken root and the fruit has ripened ... every student is surprised to find how very little is the share of new truth which even the greatest genius has added to the previous stock.”
The revolution through which chemistry has recently passed, is well calculated to concentrate the attention of chemists upon this fact; and it would not be strange, if, in less time than it has required to effect it, the claims of the alchemists would be examined with impartiality, and studied from a rational point of view. To bridge over the narrow gulf which now separates the new chemistry from old alchemy, is little, if any harder than what they have done in going from dualism to the law of Avogadro.