IS ALCHEMY DEAD ?

Greymouth Evening Star, 10 November 1928, Page 8

IS ALCHEMY DEAD ?

MIDAS IN MODERN LIFE. Of all queer worlds the queerest is certainly that which is just, and only just, news. Tantalising glimpses or it are constantly printed in the newspapers, but always in those little halfinch paragraphs which appear without a headline at the very bottom of the page. They tell you so little; but their very baldness is always hinting at superb fantasies hidden round the corner. To read them, and to set your imagination working to discovei what they hide, is to persuade yourself into the splendid belief that m a world of hard metallic light moonshine, too, .is real. I should like to make a collection of these little paiagraphs and to give it to Mr G. K. Chesterton as a proof that his kingdom of Topsy-Turvy is indeed here (writes R.B.L. in the Manchester “Guardian”). It was only the other day that I came across such a paragraph. A jeweller had prosecuted a. man for fraud, and his fraud appeared to be that he had said he was an alchemist. But that in itself 'is not even slander. Before fraud can be alleged money must have passed, and therefore the jeweller hiust have believed the mans claiihs, and bought some of the products of this alchemist’s art, finding too late that all is not gold that is vouched for by a glittering Story. But that a jeweller of all men should have been victimised is eloquent of a credulity altogether sublime. What happened to the alchemist, I do not know, but I fear the worst, for his brothers of the craft usually Caftie to a bad end. In the Ages of Faith to profess the craft of alchemy was to step at once into high society. For it had a good intellectual pedigree, the process having beeh scientifically described by Roger Bacon and Albertus Magnus, and the man who can carelessly flingshovelfuls of gold about among his friends with the air “There’s plenty more Where that came from” is likely td enjoy a large acquaintanceship. That, at any rate, was the method by which Mamugu’ano, who came to Venice from nowhere in particular in the year 1589, got himself appointed Government alchemist within the astonishingly short space of ten days from his arrival. The chronicler was ecstatic, and his reports testify to the prestige of alchemy. “Monday last he gave a banquet in honour of the Due de Luxembourg which cost near upon 600 crowns. The Duke speaks to him in the second person. By day noblemen attend on him, by night he . is guarded by armed barges.” It did not, of course, last long, for the simple reason that Mamuguano, to put it crudely, failed to deliver the goods; The shovelfuls of gold were his working capital, and .for the rest, when that was gone, there was his clever tongue. That lasted him three months and then he fled. The idea of a modern alchemist being able to deceive the corporation of a city and to be given free lodgings and meals is cheerful but academic. The thing wouldn’t happen —not with the corporation. But I cannot help thinking that the alchemist of the newspaper paragraph might have dohe inofe than he did. Probably he did not get his patter correct. For np chichaiiery on earth lends itself as easily to a showman’s patter as does alchemy. Compared With that, crystal gazing is nowhere. For alchemy can be traced back to, the Greeks of Alexandria. It rested Upon the belief that substance was composed of one primitive quality, essence of mercury. Substances thus differed only owing to the presence Of different qualities 'superimposed on the original essence. The alchemist claimed to extract the original essence of mercury from a substance and then to turn it into gold by adding the right qualities. Substance and essence; If Mamuguano had had the handling of that jeweller he would have fairly dinned those two magnificently sounding and indefinable terms into his ears. He would-have talked well about the NeoPlatonists of Alexandria and pretended to a dark knowledge of Arabian magic, for the mediaeval Arabians knew quite as much about alchemy as they did about Aristotle. He would, I am convinced, have had a long run for his money even in this year of grace. For if it is alchemy to make gold where gold was not we have quite a lumber of amateurs living in plenty on and among us. They do not pretend to extract from a definite lump of stone a definite piece of wrought gold. They are, as befits the twentieth century, a little less material. But they live on the same learnedsounding patter, and the folk that feed them fall into the same snares for the same reasons, the desire to appear learned and the desire to get something for nothing. Our modern alchemists are, in fact, those astute gentry who claim to extract gold ore from the more impossibly wasted places of the earth, or. who issue specious circulars describing the wealth and the whereabouts of the treasure ships sunk at Navarino. Then, by promising to produce gold where none was, they persuade the public to provide the capital. Gold thus - comes Where none was, but, as always, the place of the early dearth and the late plenty is the pocket of the alchemist.