Bygone Beliefs: Being a Series of Excursions in the Byways of Thought

by H. Stanley Redgrove

(1) PHILIP S. WELLBY, M.A., in The Journal of the Alchemical Society, vol. ii. (1914), p. 104.

Another recent writer on the subject, my friend the late Mr ABDUL-ALI, has remarked that "he thought that, in the mind of the alchemist at least, there was something more than analogy between metallic and psychic transformations, and that the whole subject might well be assigned to the doctrinal category of ineffable and transcendent Oneness. This Oneness comprehended all—soul and body, spirit and matter, mystic visions and waking life—and the sharp metaphysical distinction between the mental and the non-mental realms, so prominent during the history of philosophy, was not regarded by these early investigators in the sphere of nature. There was the sentiment, perhaps only dimly experienced, that not only the law, but the substance of the Universe, was one; that mind was everywhere in contact with its own kindred; and that metallic transmutation would, somehow, so to speak, signalise and seal a hidden transmutation of the soul."(1)

(1) SIJIL ABDUL-ALI, in The Journal of the Alchemical Society, vol. ii. (1914), p. 102.

I am to a large extent in agreement with this view. Mr ABDUL-ALI quarrels with the term "analogy," and, if it is held to imply any merely superficial resemblance, it certainly is not adequate to my own needs, though I know not what other word to use. SWEDENBORG'S term "correspondence" would be better for my purpose, as standing for an essential connection between spirit and matter, arising out of the causal relationship of the one to the other. But if SWEDENBORG believed that matter and spirit were most intimately related, he nevertheless had a very precise idea of their distinctness, which he formulated in his Doctrine of Degrees—a very exact metaphysical doctrine indeed. The alchemists, on the other hand, had no such clear ideas on the subject. It would be even more absurd to attribute to them a Cartesian dualism. To their ways of thinking, it was by no means impossible to grasp the spiritual essences of things by what we should now call chemical manipulations. For them a gas was still a ghost and air a spirit. One could 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 writes: "The Sages... after having conceived in their minds a Divine idea of the relations of the whole universe... selected from among the rest a certain substance, from which they sought to elicit the elements, to separate and purify them, and then again put them together in a manner suggested by a keen and profound observation of Nature."(1c)

(1a) op cit., pp,. 65 and 110, cf. p. 154.

(1b) Vide a rather frivolous review of my Alchemy: Ancient and Modern in The Outlook for 14th January 1911.

(1c) EDWARD KELLY: The Humid Path. (See The Alchemical Writings of EDWARD KELLY, edited by A. E. WAITE, 1893, pp. 59-60.)

In describing the realm of spirit as ex hypothesi known, that of Nature unknown, to the alchemists, I have made one important omission, and that, if I may use the name of a science to denominate a complex of crude facts, is the realm of physiology, which, falling within that of Nature, must yet be classed as ex hypothesi known. But to elucidate this point some further considerations are necessary touching the general nature of knowledge. Now, facts may be roughly classed, according to their obviousness and frequency of occurrence, into four groups. There are, first of all, facts which are so obvious, to put it paradoxically, that they escape notice; and these facts are the commonest and most frequent in their occurrence. I think it is Mr CHESTERTON who has said that, looking at a forest one cannot see the trees because of the forest; and, in The Innocence of Father Brown, he has a good story ("The Invisible Man") illustrating the point, in which a man renders himself invisible by dressing up in a postman's uniform. At any rate, we know that when a phenomenon becomes persistent it tends to escape observation; thus, continuous motion can only be appreciated with reference to a stationary body, and a noise, continually repeated, becomes at last inaudible. The tendency of often-repeated actions to become habitual, and at last automatic, that is to say, carried out without consciousness, is a closely related phenomenon. We can understand, therefore, why a knowledge of the existence of the atmosphere, as distinct from the wind, came late in the history of primitive man, as, also, many other curious gaps in his knowledge. In the second group we may put those facts which are common, that is, of frequent occurrence, and are classed as obvious. Such facts are accepted at face-value by the primitive mind, and are used as the basis of explanation of facts in the two remaining groups, namely, those facts which, though common, are apt to escape the attention owing to their inconspicuousness, and those which are of infrequent occurrence. When the mind takes the trouble to observe a fact of the third group, or is confronted by one of the fourth, it feels a sense of surprise. Such facts wear an air of strangeness, and the mind can only rest satisfied when it has shown them to itself as in some way cases of the second group of facts, or, at least, brought them into relation therewith. That is what the mind—at least the primitive mind—means by "explanation". "It is obvious," we say, commencing an argument, thereby proclaiming our intention to bring that which is at first in the category of the not-obvious, into the category of the obvious. It remains for a more sceptical type of mind—a later product of human evolution—to question obvious facts, to explain them, either, as in science, by establishing deeper and more far-reaching correlations between phenomena, or in philosophy, by seeking for the source and purpose of such facts, or, better still, by both methods.

Of the second class of facts—those common and obvious facts which the primitive mind accepts at face-value and uses as the basis of its explanations of such things as seem to it to stand in need of explanation—one could hardly find a better instance than sex. The universality of sex, and the intermittent character of its phenomena, are both responsible for this. Indeed, the attitude of mind I have referred to is not restricted to primitive man; how many people to-day, for instance, just accept sex as a fact, pleasant or unpleasant according to their predilections, never querying, or feeling the need to query, its why and wherefore? It is by no means surprising, that when man first felt the need of satisfying himself as to the origin of the universe, he should have done so by a theory founded on what he knew of his own generation. Indeed, as I queried on a former occasion, what other source of explanation was open to him? Of what other form of origin was he aware? Seeing Nature springing to life at the kiss of the sun, what more natural than that she should be regarded as the divine Mother, who bears fruits because impregnated by the Sun-God? It is not difficult to understand, therefore, why primitive man paid divine honours to the organs of sex in man and woman, or to such things as he considered symbolical of them—that is to say, to understand the extensiveness of those religions which are grouped under the term "phallicism". Nor, to my mind, is the symbol of sex a wholly inadequate one under which to conceive of the origin of things. And, as I have said before, that phallicism usually appears to have degenerated into immorality of a very pronounced type is to be deplored, but an immoral view of human relations is by no means a necessary corollary to a sexual theory of the universe.(1)

(1) "The reverence as well as the worship paid to the phallus, in early and primitive days, had nothing in it which partook of indecency; all ideas connected with it were of a reverential and religious kind....