The service of having rediscovered the intrinsic value of alchemy over and above its chemical and physical phase, is to be ascribed probably to the American, Ethan Allen Hitchcock, who published his views on the alchemists in the book, “Remarks upon Alchemy and the Alchemists,” that appeared in Boston in 1857, and to the Frenchman, N. Landur, a writer on the scientific periodical “L'Institut,” who wrote in 1868 in similar vein [in the organ “L'Institut,” 1st Section, Vol. XXXVI, pp. 273 ff.], though I do not know whether he wrote with knowledge of the American work. Landur's observations [pg 152] are reported by Kopp (Alch., II, p. 192), but he does not rightly value their worth. It need not be a reproach to him. He undertook as a chemical specialist a work that would have required quite as much a psychologist, a philosopher or a theologian.
The discoveries made by the acute Hitchcock are so important for our analysis, that a complete exposition of them cannot be dispensed with. I should like better to refer to Hitchcock's book if it were not practically inaccessible.
We have heard that the greatest stumbling block for the uninitiated into the hermetic art lay in the determination of the true subject, the prima materia. The authors mentioned it by a hundred names; and the gold seeking toilers were therefore misled in a hundred ways. Hitchcock with a single word furnishes us the key to the understanding of the hermetic masters, when he says: The subject is man. We can also avail ourselves of a play on words and say the subject or substance is the subject.
The uninitiated read with amazement in many alchemists that “our subjectum,” that is, the material to be worked upon, is also identical with the vessel, the still, the philosopher's egg, etc. That becomes intelligible now. Hitchcock writes (H. A., p. 117) very pertinently: “The work of the alchemists was one of contemplation and not a work of the hands. Their alembic, furnace, cucurbit, retort, philosophical egg, etc., etc., in which the work of fermentation, distillation, extraction of essences and [pg 153] spirits and the preparation of salts is said to have taken place was Man,—yourself, friendly reader,—and if you will take yourself into your own study and be candid and honest, acknowledging no other guide or authority but Truth, you may easily discover something of hermetic philosophy; and if at the beginning there should be ‘fear and trembling’ the end may be a more than compensating peace.”
The alchemist Alipili (H. A., p. 34) writes: “The highest wisdom consists in this, for man to know himself, because in him God has placed his eternal Word.... Therefore let the high inquirers and searchers into the deep mysteries of nature learn first to know what they have in themselves, and by the divine power within them let them first heal themselves and transmute their own souls, ... if that which thou seekest thou findest not within thee, thou wilt never find it without thee. If thou knowest not the excellency of thine house, why dost thou seek and search after the excellency of other things? The universal Orb of the world contains not so great mysteries and excellences as does a little man formed by God in his own image. And he who desires the primacy amongst the students of nature, will nowhere find a greater or better field of study than himself. Therefore will I here follow the example of the Egyptians and ... from certain true experience proclaim, O Man, know thyself; in thee is hid the treasure of treasures.”
A seminalist has concluded from this that the [pg 154] prima materia is semen, a stercoralist, that it is dung.
George Ripley describes the subject of the philosopher's stone as follows:
“For as of one mass was made the thing,
Right must it so in our praxis be,
All our secrets of one image must spring;