Part 3

"Each petty artery of this body As hardy as the Nemean lion's nerve."

The natural spirit is generated in the liver, the seat of digestion, "there where our nourishment is administered"; it then passes to the heart, and manifests itself as the spirit of life; from thence it passes to the brain, where it is the animal spirit--"spirit animate" Rossetti calls it--dwelling in the brain.

In the brain there are three ventricles or chambers, the foremost being the "cell fantastike" of the "Knight's Tale," the second the logistic, and the third the chamber of memory, where "memory, the warder of the brain," keeps watch over the passage of the spirit into the "sinews" of moving. Into the foremost cell come all the perceptions of sight, hearing, etc., and thus we have the opportunity for

"Fantasy, That plays upon our eyesight,"

to freak it on us. The pedant, Holofernes, in Love's Labour's Lost, characteristically puts the origin of his good things in the ventricle of memory.

As a specimen of the physical science of the time the Editor gives extracts from the chapter on light.

The introduction of extracts enough to give some idea of the mediaeval astronomy would have made such large demands on the patience of the reader that the Editor has decided with some regret to omit them altogether. The universe is considered to be a sphere, whose centre is the earth and whose circumference revolved about two fixed points. Our author does not decide the nice point in dispute between the philosophers and the theologians, the former holding that there is only one, the latter insisting on seven heavens-the fairy, ethereal, olympian, fiery, firmament, watery, and empyrean.

The firmament, that

"Majestical roof, fretted with golden fire,"

is the part of heaven in which the planets move. It carries them round with it; it governs the tides; it stood with men for the type of irresistible regularity. Each of the planets naturally has a motion of its own, contrary in direction to that of the firmament, which was from east to west. All the fixed stars move in circles whose centre is the centre of the universe, but the courses of the planets (among which the moon is reckoned) depend on other circles, called eccentric, since their centre is elsewhere. Either the centre or the circumference of the circle in which the planet really moves is applied to the circumference of the eccentric circle, and in this way all the movements of the planets are fully explained. Our author is sorely puzzled to account for the existence of the watery heavens above the fiery, they being cold and moist, but is sure from scriptural reasons that they are there, and ventures the hypothesis that their presence may account for the sluggish and evil properties of Saturn, the planet whose circle is nearest them.

Having considered the simpler substances, those composed of pure elemental forms, and those resembling them--the meteors--we turn to the perfect compounds, those which have assumed substantial forms, as metals, stones, etc. Our author retains the Aristotelian classification--earthy, and those of other origin, as beasts, roots, and trees. Earths may be metals or fossils; metals being defined as hard bodies, generated in the earth or in its veins, which can be beaten out by a hammer, and softened or liquefied by heat; while fossils include all other inanimate objects.

A large number of extracts have been made from this part of the subject, because the book gives the position of positive, as distinguished from speculative, Alchemy at the time. It is the Editor's desire to show that at this period there was a system of theory based on the practical knowledge of the day.

Chemistry took its rise as a science about four hundred years before our era. In the fragments of two of the four books of Democritus we have probably the earliest treatise on chemical matters we are ever likely to get hold of. Whether it is the work of Democritus or of a much later writer is uncertain. But merely taking it as a representative work of the early stage of chemistry, we remark that the receipts are practicable, and some of them, little modified, are in use to-day in goldsmith's shops. The fragments remaining to us are on the manufacture of gold and silver, and one receipt for dyeing purple. In this state of the science the collection of facts is the chief point, and no purely chemical theory seems to have been formed. Tradition, confirmed by the latest researches, associates this stage with Egypt.

The second stage in the history of Chemistry--the birth of Alchemy in the Western World--occurred when the Egyptian practical receipts, the neo-Greek philosophies, and the Chinese dreams of an "elixir vitae" were fused into one by the Arab and Syriac writers. Its period of activity ranges from the seventh to the tenth centuries. Little is really known about it, or can be, until the Arabic texts, which are abundant in Europe, are translated and classified both from the scholar's and the chemist's standpoint. Many works were translated into Latin about the end of the tenth century, such as the spurious fourth book of the Meteorics of Aristotle, the treatises of the Turta Philosophorum, Artis Auriferae, etc., which formed the starting-point of European speculation. The theoretical chemistry of our author is derived from them.

The third stage of chemistry begins with the fourteenth and ends with the sixteenth century. It is characterized by an immense growth of theory, a fertile imagination, and untiring industry. It reached its height in England about 1440, and is represented by the reputed works of Lully (vixit circ. 1300), which first appeared about this date. In this period practical alchemy is on its trial.

The fourth stage begins with Boyle, and closes with the eighteenth century. Still under the dominion of theoretical alchemy, practical alchemy was rejected by it, and its interest was concentrated on the collection of facts. It led up to modern chemistry, which begins with Lavoisier, and the introduction of the balance in the study of chemical change.

Chemical theory, then, in our author's time stood somewhat thus. Metals as regarded their elemental composition were considered to partake of the nature of earth, water, and air, in various proportions. Fossils, or those things generated in the earth which were not metals, were again subdivided into two classes--those which liquefy on being heated, as sulphur, nitre, etc., and those which do not. The metals were considered to be composed of sulphur and mercury. These substances are themselves compounds, but they act as elements in the composition of metals. Sulphur represented their combustible aspect, and also that which gave them their solid form; while mercury was that to which their weight and powers of becoming fluid were due.

This theory was due to two main facts. Most ores of metals, especially of copper and lead, contain much sulphur, which can be either obtained pure from them, or be recognised by its smell when burning. This gave rise to the sulphur theory, while the presence of mercury was inferred doubtless from the resemblance of the more commonly molten metals, silver, tin, and lead, to quicksilver. The properties of each metal were then put down to the presence of these substances. The list of seven metals is that of the most ancient times--gold, electrum, silver, copper, tin, lead, iron; but it is clearly recognised that electrum is an alloy of gold and silver.

Most of the facts in this book are derived from Pliny through Isidore, but, that the theory is Arab in origin, one fact alone would convince us. A consideration of the composition of the metals shows us that tin is nearest in properties of all metals to the precious ones, but tin is precisely the metal chosen by Arab alchemists as a starting-point in the Chrysopoeia.

Beside their scientific interest these passages have supplied many analogies. When Troilus is piling up his lover's oaths to Cressida, his final words are:

"As iron to adamant, as earth to centre;"

our chapter on the adamant supplies the origin of this allusion in part, astronomy gives the other. Diamonds are still, unfortunately, the precious stones of reconciliation and of love our author bespeaks them. The editor has not lengthened the chapter by extracts giving the occult properties of gems, and has contented himself by quoting from the chapter on glass a new simile and an old story.

Matter and form are principles of all bodily things; and privation of matter and form is naught else but destruction of all things. And the more subtle and high matter is in kind, the more able it is to receive form and shape. And the more thick and earthly it is, the more feeble is it to receive impression, printing of forms and of shapes. And matter is principle and beginning of distinction, and of diversity, and of multiplying, and of things that are gendered. For the thing that gendereth and the thing that is gendered are not diverse but touching matter. And therefore where a thing is gendered without matter, the thing that gendereth, and the thing that is gendered, are all one in substance and in kind: as it fareth of the persons in the Trinity. Of form is diversity, by the which one thing is diverse from another, and some form is essential, and some accidental. Essential form is that which cometh into matter, and maketh it perfect; and accordeth therewith to the perfection of some thing. And when form is had, then the thing hath its being, and when form is destroyed nothing of the substance of the thing is found. And form accidental is not the perfection of things, nor giveth them being. But each form accidental needeth a form substantial. And each form is more simple and more actual and noble than matter. And so the form asketh that shall be printed in the matter, the matter ought to be disposed and also arrayed. For if fire shall be made of matter of earth, it needeth that the matter of earth be made subtle and pured and more simple. Form maketh matter known. Matter is cause that we see things that are made, and so nothing is more common and general than matter. And natheless nothing is more unknown than is matter; for matter is never seen without form, nor form may not be seen in deed, but joined to matter.

Elements are simple, and the least particles of a body that is compound. And it is called least touching us, for it is not perceived by wits of feeling. For it is the least part and last in undoing of the body, as it is first in composition. And is called simple, not for an element is simple without any composition, but for it hath no parts that compound it, that be diverse in kind and in number as some medlied bodies have: as it fareth in metals of the which some parts be diverse; for some part is air, and some is earth. But each part of fire is fire, and so of others. Elements are four, and so there are four qualities of elements, of the which every body is composed and made as of matter. The four elements are Earth, Water, Fire, and Air, of the which each hath his proper qualities. Four be called the first and principal qualities, that is, hot, cold, dry, and moist: they are called the first qualities because they slide first from the elements into the things that be made of elements. Two of these qualities are called Active--heat and coldness. The others are dry and wetness and are called Passive.

The Rainbow is impression gendered in an hollow cloud and dewy, disposed to rain in endless many gutters, as it were shining in a mirror, and is shapen as a bow, and sheweth divers colours, and is gendered by the beams of the sun or of the moon. And is but seldom gendered by beams of the moon, no more but twice in fifty years, as Aristotle saith. In the rainbow by cause of its clearness be seen divers forms, kinds, and shapes that be contrary. Therefore the bow seemeth coloured, for, as Bede saith, it taketh colour of the four elements. For therein, as it were in any mirror, shineth figures and shapes and kinds of elements. For of fire he taketh red colour in the overmost part, and of earth green in the nethermost, and of the air a manner of brown colour, and of water somedeal blue in the middle. And first is red colour, that cometh out of a light beam, that touches the outer part of the roundness of the cloud: then is a middle colour somedeal blue, as the quality asketh, that hath mastery in the vapour, that is in the middle of the cloud. Then the nethermost seemeth a green colour in the nether part of a cloud; there the vapour is more earthly. And these colours are more principal than others.

As Beda saith, and the master of stories, forty years tofore the doom, the rainbow shall not be seen, and that shall be token of drying, and of default of elements.

And though dew be a manner of airy substance, and most subtle outward, natheless in a wonder manner it is strong in working and virtue. For it besprinkleth the earth, and maketh it plenteous, and maketh flour, pith, and marrow increase in corn and grains: and fatteth and bringeth forth broad oysters and other shell fish in the sea, and namely dew of spring time. For by night in spring time oysters open themselves against dew, and receive dew that cometh in between the two shells, and hold and keep it; and that dew so holden and kept feedeth the flesh, and maketh it fat; and by its incorporation with the inner parts of the fish breedeth a full precious gem, a stone that is called Margarita. Also the birds of ravens, while they are whitish in feathers, ere they are black, dew feedeth and sustaineth them, as Gregory saith.

Fumosities that are drawn out of the waters and off the earth by strength of heat of heaven are drawn to the nethermost part of the middle space of the air, and there by coldness of the place they are made thick, and then by heat dissolving and departing the moisture thereof and not wasting all, these fumosities are resolved and fall and turn into rain and showers.