Chemistry

"Chemists do not usually stutter. It would be very awkward if they did, seeing that they have at times to get out such words as methylethylamylophenylium."

"If a possible — nay, reasonable — variation in only one of the forces conditioning the human race, that of gravitation, could so modify our outward form, appearance, and proportions as to make us to all intents and purposes a different race of beings; if mere differences of size can cause some of the most simple facts in chemistry and physics to take so widely different a guise; if beings microscopically small and prodigiously large would simply as such be subject to the hallucinations I have pointed out, and to others I might enlarge upon, is it not possible that we, in turn, though occupying, as it seems to us, the golden mean, may also by the mere virtue of our size and weight fall into misinterpretations of phenomena from which we should escape were we or the globe we inhabit either larger or smaller, heavier or lighter? May not our boasted knowledge be simply conditioned by accidental environments, and thus be liable to a large element of subjectivity hitherto unsuspected and scarcely possible to eliminate?"

"Men are not allowed to think freely about chemistry and biology: why should they be allowed to think freely about political philosophy?"

"If we could determine the nature of substances burning at Mannheim, why should we not do the same with regard to the sun? ---But people would say we must have gone mad to dream of such a thing."

"A tidy laboratory means a lazy chemist."

"Every chemical combination is wholly and solely dependent on two opposing forces, positive and negative electricity, and every chemical compound must be composed of two parts combined by the agency of their electrochemical reaction, since there is no third force. Hence it follows that every compound body, whatever the number of its constituents, can be divided into two parts, one of which is positively and the other negatively electrical."

"Chemistry is not a primitive science, like geometry or astronomy; it is constructed from the debris of a previous scientific formation; a formation half chimerical and half positive, itself founded on the treasure slowly amassed by the practical discoveries of metallurgy, medicine, industry, and domestic economy. It has to do with alchemy, which pretended to enrich its adepts by teaching them to manufacture gold and silver, to shield them from diseases by the preparation of the , and finally to obtain for them perfect felicity by identifying them with the soul of the world and the universal spirit."

"Like a chemist, Napoleon considered all Europe to be material for his experiments. But in due course, this material reacted against him."

"God does not justify man on the ground of human learning; attainments in chemistry, anatomy, geology, botany, astronomy, or skill in sculpture and painting, — these do not prepare a man to die."

"We must trust to nothing but facts: These are presented to us by Nature, and cannot deceive. We ought, in every instance, to submit our reasoning to the test of experiment, and never to search for truth but by the natural road of experiment and observation."

"Its name [alchemy] will no doubt prevent its being acceptable to many; but why should wise people hate without cause that which some other wantonly misuse? Why hate blue because some clumsy painter uses it? Which would Caesar order to be crucified, the thief or the thing he had stolen? No science can be deservedly held in contempt by one who knows noting about it. Because you are ignorant of alchemy, you are ignorant of the mysteries of nature."

"the true use of chemistry is not to make gold but to prepare medicines."

"I praise the chemical physicians, for they do not go about gorgeous in satins, silks, and velvets, silver daggers hanging at their sides, and white gloves on their hands, but they tend their work at the fire patiently day and night. They do not go promenading, but seek their recreation in laboratory. They thrust their fingers among the coals into dirt and rubbish and not into golden rings."

"I admonish you not to reject the method of experiment, but according as your power permits, to follow it without prejudice. For every experiment is like a weapon which must be used according to its peculiar power, as a spear to thrust, a club to strike, so also is it with experiments."

"Luther is abundantly learned, therefore you hate him and me, but we are at least a match for you."

"My travels have developed me; no man becomes a master at home, nor finds his teacher behind the stove. Sicknesses wander here and there the whole length of the world. If a man wishes to understand them, he must wander too. A doctor must be an alchemist, he must see mother earth where the minerals grow. And as the mountains will not come to him, he must go to the mountains. It is indeed true that those who do not roam have greater possessions than those who do; those who sit behind the stove eat partridge, and those who follow after knowledge eat milkbroth. He who will serve the belly-- he will not follow after me."

"The physician's duty is to heal the sick, not enrich the apothecaries."

"For the alchemist is the baker in baking the bread, the vintner in making the wine, the weaver in weaving cloth. Thus, whatever arises out of nature for human use is brought to that condition ordained by nature by an alchemist."

"Chymistry is all New; there was no such thing known to the Generations of Old. This Spagyrick Art, which was set on foot by Paracelsus and Helmont, and by some other searching Heads, hath had Prodigious Additions made to it lately. The Alchymists Retort and Alembick never were furnish'd with such rare and excellent Secrets as they are now; the Laboratories and Furnaces never afforded the like Inventions. It is indeed a rough and violent way of Philosophizing, it is an hectoring as it were of Nature, it is puting her upon the Rack, and on the Fiery Trial, to make her confess what she never did before. And truly she hath made a very ample Confession and Discovery, whereby the knowledge of Natural Philosophy is much increas'd and imbellish'd, very Noble and Precious Medicaments (consisting of Oyls, Spirits, Tinctures, Salts, &c.) are produced, and the Healthfulness of Men's Bodies, and their Longævity are procured, and the Almighty Creator thereby Exalted and Honoured."

"It is the study of the Chemists to liberate that unsensual truth from its fetters in things of sense, for through it the heavenly powers are persued with subtle understanding....Knowledge is the sure and undoubted resolution by experiment of all opinions concerning the truth....Experiment is manifest demonstration of the truth, and resolution the putting away of doubt. We cannot be resolved of any doubt save by experiment, and therefore is no better way to make it than on ourselves. Let us therefore verify what we have said above concerning the truth, beginning with ourselves. We have said that piety consists in knowledge of ourselves, and hence it is said that we make philosophical knowledge begin from this also. But no man can know himself unless he know what and not who he is, on whom he depends and whose he is (for by the law of truth no one belongs to himself, and to what end he was made. With this knowledge piety begins, which is concerned with two things, namely, with the Creator and the creature that is made like unto him. For it is impossible for the creature to know himself of himself, unless he first know his Creator....No one can better know the Creator, than the workman is known by his work."

"The matter lies before the eyes of all; everybody sees it, touches it, loves it, but knows it not. It is glorious and vile, precious and of small account, and is found everywhere... But, to be brief, our Matter has as many names as there are things in this world; that is why the foolish know it not."

"To solemnize this day the glorious sun Stays in his course and plays the alchemist, Turning with splendour of his precious eye The meagre cloddy earth to glittering gold."

"O, he sits high in all the people's hearts; And that which would appear offence in us, His countenance, like richest alchemy, Will change to virtue and to worthiness."

"I had discovered, early in my researches, that their doctrine was no mere chemical fantasy, but a philosophy they applied to the world, to the elements, and to man himself."

"Transmutemini (inquit) transmute∣mini de lapidibus mortuis in Lapides vivos philosophicos."

"It is necessary to deprive matter of its qualities in order to draw out its soul. ... Copper is like a man; it has a soul and a body; ...the soul is the most subtile part, ... that is to say, the tinctorial spirit. The body is the ponderable, material, terrestrial thing, endowed with a shadow. ... After a series of suitable treatments copper becomes without shadow and better than gold. ...The elements ... grow and are transmuted, because it is their qualities, not their substances, which are contrary."

"You are an alchemist; make gold of that."

"Alchemists knew the coiled serpent as Uboros. ...it represented the highest goal of their quest: the harmonious union of opposites, especially the masculine and the feminine sides of the personality. The motto that usually accompanied it was "From the One to the One.""

"The starving chemist in his golden views Supremely blest."

"Although Alchemy has now fallen into contempt, and is even considered a thing of the past, the physician should not be influenced by such judgements. For many arts, such as astronomy, philosophy , and others, are also in disrepute. I am directing you, physicians, to alchemy for the preparation of the magnalia, for the production of the mysteria, for the preparation of the arcana, for the separation of the pure from the impure, to the end that you may obtain a flawless, pure remedy, God-given, perfect, and of certain efficacy, acheiving the highest degree of virtue and power. For it is not God's design that the remedies should exist for us, ready-made, boiled and salted, but that we should boil them ourselves, and it pleases Him that we boil them and learn in the process, that we train ourselves in this art and are not idle on earth, but labour in daily toil. For it is we who must pray for our daily bread, and if He grants it to us, it is only through our labour, our skill and preparation."

"They can picture love affairs of chemicals and stars, a romance of stones, or the fertility of fire. Strange, fertile correspondences the alchemists sensed in unlikely orders of being. Between men and planets, plants and gestures, words and weather."

"Alchemy is an erotic science, involved in buried aspects of reality, aimed at purifying and transforming all being and matter."

"If by fire Of sooty coal th' empiric alchymist Can turn, or holds it possible to turn, Metals of drossiest ore to perfect gold."

"Everyone knows Newton as the great scientist. Few remember that he spent half his life muddling with alchemy, looking for the philosopher's stone. That was the pebble by the seashore he really wanted to find."

"Subtle. No egg but differs from a chicken more Than metals in themselves. Surly. That cannot be. The egg's ordained by nature to that end And is a chicken in potentia. Subtle. The same we say of lead and other metals, Which would be gold if they had time. ...for 'twere absurd To think that nature in the earth bred gold Perfect in the instant; something went before. There must be remote matter."

"[T]he growth of a plant, a tree, or an animal is an alchemical process going on in the alchemical laboratory of nature, and performed by the great Alchemist, the power of God acting in nature."

"And mark yon alchemist, with zodiac-spangled zone, Wrenching the mandrake root that fattens in the gloom."

"What a lovely afternoon On a cloudbusting kind of day. We took our own 'Mystery Tour' And got completely lost somewhere up in the hills. And we came up on a bee-keeper, And he said "Did you know they can change it all?" They got alchemy. They turn the roses into gold They turn the lilac into honey They're making love for the peaches. And they'll do it, Do it for you."

"[E]ach author seems to have aimed to write treatises intelligible only to himself, and we greatly doubt his success in even this respect."

"Azoth is the essence of life! We alchemists have the ability to convert it into power! We can live forever! Your Azoth, Fiona, belongs to me! Come to me, Fiona. I will now extract the Azoth latent in you, in order to realize the everlasting life of Aureolus Belli."

"Alchemy may be compared to the man who told his sons that he had left them gold, buried somewhere in his vineyard; while they by digging found no gold, but by turning up the mould about the roots of the vines procured a plentiful vintage. So the search and endeavours to make gold have brought many useful inventions to light."

"[E]very relation must be considered as suspicious, which depends in any degree upon religion, ... and ... everything that is to be found in the writers of natural magic or alchemy, or such authors, who seem, all of them, to have an unconquerable appetite for falsehood and fable."

"The Hindus do not pay particular attention to alchemy, but no nation is entirely free from it, and one nation has more bias for it than another, which must not be construed as proving intelligence or ignorance; for we find that many intelligent people are entirely given to alchemy, whilst ignorant people ridicule the art and its adepts."

"Humankind cannot gain anything without first giving something in return. To obtain, something of equal value must be lost. That is alchemy's first law of Equivalent Exchange. In those days, we really believed that to be the world's one, and only truth."

"[A]n art without principles, the beginning of which was deceit, the progress delusion, and the end poverty."

"Of herbs, and other country messes, Which the neat-handed Phillis dresses."

"Very astonishing indeed! strange thing!" (Turning the Dumpling round, rejoined the King), "'Tis most extraordinary, then, all this is; It beats Penetti's conjuring all to pieces; Strange I should never of a Dumpling dream! But, Goody, tell me where, where, where's the Seam?" "Sire, there's no Seam," quoth she; "I never knew That folks did Apple-Dumplings sew." "No!" cried the staring Monarch with a grin; "How, how the devil got the Apple in?"

"This Bouillabaisse a noble dish is— A sort of soup or broth, or brew, Or hotchpotch of all sorts of fishes, That Greenwich never could outdo; Green herbs, red peppers, mussels, saffron, Soles, onions, garlic, roach, and dace; All these you eat at Terre's tavern, In that one dish of Bouillabaisse."

"Velocius (or citius) quam asparagi coquantur."

"Let onion atoms lurk within the bowl, And, half-suspected, animate the whole."