the latter into the former. Nevertheless, it is well to know what is the material of Luna, or whence it proceeds. Whoever is not able to consider or find this out will neither be able to make Luna. It will be asked, What is Luna? It is among the seven metals which are spiritually concealed, itself the seventh, external, corporeal, and material. For this seventh always contains the six metals spiritually hidden in itself. And the six spiritual metals do not exist without one external and material metal. So also no corporeal metal can have place or essence without those six spiritual ones. The seven corporeal metals mix easily by means of liquefaction, but this mixture is not useful for making Sol or Luna. For in that mixture each metal remains in its own nature, or fixed in the fire, or flies from it. For example, mix, in any way you can, Mercury, Jupiter, Saturn, Mars, Venus, Sol, and Luna. It will not thence result that Sol and Luna will so change the other five that, by the agency of Sol and Luna, these will become Sol and Luna. For though all be liquefied into a single mass, nevertheless each remains in its nature whatever it is. This is the judgement which must be passed on corporeal mixture....

A question may arise: If it be true that Luna and every metal derives its origin and is generated from the other six, what is then its property and its nature? To this we reply: From Saturn, Mercury, Jupiter, Mars, Venus, and Sol, nothing and no other metal than Luna could be made. The cause is that each metal has two good virtues of the other six, of which altogether there are twelve. These are the spirit of Luna, which thus in a few words may be made known. Luna is composed of the six spiritual metals and their virtues, whereof each possesses two. Altogether, therefore, twelve are thus posited in one corporeal metal,... Luna has from the planet Mercury...its liquidity and bright white colour. So Luna has from Jupiter... its white colour and its great firmness in fire. Luna has from Mars...its hardness and its clear sound. Luna has from Venus ...its measure of coagulation and its malleability. From Saturn... its homogeneous body, with gravity. From Sol...its spotless purity and great constancy against the power of fire. Such is the knowledge of the natural exaltation and of the course of the spirit and body of Luna, with its composite nature and wisdom briefly summarised...,

THE SEVENTH CANON. CONCERNING the Nature of
SOL (gold) AND ITS PROPERTIES

The seventh after the six spiritual metals is corporeally Sol, which in itself is nothing but pure fire. What in outward appearance is more beautiful, more brilliant, more clear and perceptible, a heavier, colder, or more homogeneous body to see? And it is easy to perceive the cause of this, namely, that it contains in itself the congelations of the other six metals, out of which it is made externally into one most compact body....The fire of Sol is of itself pure, not indeed alive, but hard, and so far shews the colour of sulphur in that yellow and red are mixed therein in due proportion. The five cold metals are Jupiter, Mars, Saturn, Venus, and Luna, which assign to Sol their virtues; according to cold, the body itself; according to fire, colour; according to dryness, solidity; according to humidity, weight; and out of brightness, sound. But that gold is not burned in the element of terrestrial fire, nor is even corrupted, is effected by the firmness of Sol. For one fire cannot burn another, or even consume it; but rather if fire be added to fire it is increased, and becomes more powerful in its operations. The celestial fire which flows to us on the earth from the Sun is not such a fire as there is in heaven, neither is it like that which exists upon the earth, but that celestial fire with us is cold and congealed, and it is the body of the Sun. Wherefore the Sun can in no way be overcome by our fire. This only happens, that it is liquefied, like snow or ice, by that same celestial Sun. Fire, therefore, has not the power of burning fire, because the Sun is fire, which, dissolved in heaven, is coagulated with us. The End of the Seven Canons

CERTAIN TREATISES AND APPENDICES ARISING OUT OF THE SEVEN CANONS

WHAT IS TO BE THOUGHT CONCERNING THE CONGELATION OF MERCURY To mortify or congeal Mercury, and afterwards seek to turn it into Luna, and to sublimate it with great labour, is labour in vain, since it involves a dissipation of Sol and Luna existing therein. There is another method, far different and much more concise, whereby, with little waste of Mercury and less ex

penditure of toil, it is transmuted into Luna without congelation. Any one can at pleasure learn this art in Alchemy, since it is so simple and easy; and by it, in a short time, he could make any quantity of silver and gold. It is tedious to read long descriptions, and everybody wishes to be advised in straightforward words. Do this, then; proceed as follows, and you will have Sol and Luna, by help whereof you will turn out a very rich man. Wait awhile, I beg, while this process is described to you in a few words, and keep these words well digested, so that out of Saturn, Mercury, and Jupiter you may make Sol and Luna. There is not, nor ever will be, any art so easy to find out and practise, and so effective in itself. The method of making Sol and Luna by Alchemy is so prompt that there is no more need of books, or of elaborate instruction, than there would be if one wished to write about last year's snow.

CONCERNING THE RECEIPTS OF ALCHEMY

What, then, shall we say about the receipts of Alchemy, and about the diversity of its vessels and instruments? These are furnaces, glasses, jars, waters, oils, limes, sulphurs, salts, saltpetres, alums, vitriols, chrysocollæ, copper-greens, atraments, auri-pigments, fel vitri, ceruse, red earth, thucia, wax, lutum sapientiæ, pounded glass, verdigris, soot, crocus of Mars, soap, crystal, arsenic, antimony, minium, elixir, lazarium, gold-leaf, salt-nitre, sal ammoniac, calamine stone, magnesia, bolus armenus, and many other things. Moreover, concerning preparations, putrefactions, digestions, probations, solutions, cementings, filtrations, reverberations, calcinations, graduations, rectifications, amalgamations, purgations, etc., with these alchemical books are crammed. Then, again, concerning herbs, roots, seeds, woods, stones, animals, worms, bone dust, snail shells, other shells, and pitch. These and the like, whereof there are some very far-fetched in Alchemy, are mere incumbrances of work; since even if Sol and Luna could be made by them they rather hinder and delay than further one's purpose. But it is not from these to say the truth-that the Art of making Sol and Luna is to be learnt. So, then, all these things should be passed by, because they have no effect with the five metals, so far as Sol and Luna are concerned. Someone may ask, What,

then, is this short and easy way, which involves no difficulty, and yet whereby Sol and Luna can be made? Our answer is, this has been fully and openly explained in the Seven Canons. It would be lost labour should one seek further to instruct one who does not understand these. It would be impossible to convince such a person that these matters could be so easily understood, but in an occult rather than in an open sense.

THE ART IS THIS; After you have made heaven, or the sphere of Saturn, with its life to run over the earth, place it on all the planets, or such, one or more, as you wish, so that the portion of Luna may be the smallest. Let all run, until heaven, or Saturn, has entirely disappeared. Then all those planets will remain dead with their old corruptible bodies, having meanwhile obtained another new, perfect and incorruptible body.

That body is the spirit of heaven. From it these planets again receive a body and life, and live as before. Take this body from the life and the earth. Keep it. It is Sol and Luna. Here you have the Art altogether, clear and entire. If you do not yet understand it, or are not practised therein, it is well. It is better that it should be kept concealed, and not made public.

LAVOISIER AND THE RISE OF MODERN CHEMISTRY

MODERN chemistry began with the successful explanation of combustion and respiration. The wonderful phenomena of flame have always fascinated the human mind. To some of the Greeks, as we have seen, fire was the noblest of the elements. To the men who followed the Renaissance, it seemed that flame escaped when a body burned, and, since the calx which sometimes remained was heavier than the fuel, the escaping essence must have a negative weight. We thus return, out of due time, to Aristotle's idea of a substance essentially light in nature. To this substance the name of "phlogiston" was given by Stahl (16601734), who considered it to be one of the elements.

Within a few years, the experiments of Black, Cavendish and Priestley gave enough evidence to overthrow Stahl's theory, but it was Antoine Laurent Lavoisier (1743-1794), who grasped their significance

and added new confirmatory work of his own. Lavoisier saw that there was no need to invent a body with properties unlike those of common substances; that combustion was but intense chemical action between the fuel and an active gas forming part of the air which was also used by animals when they breathe. To this gas he afterwards gave the name of oxygen. Thus, as Galileo and Newton proved that terrestrial mechanics held good in the heavens, so Lavoisier showed that the mysterious phenomena of flame and the breath of life itself could be brought into conformity with ordinary chemistry, and subjected to exact methods of analysis. Lavoisier, a man of affairs and a master of all the science of his time, had the honour of becoming obnoxious to the Jacobins of the French Revolution, and was sent to the guillotine to prove that "the republic has no need of savants."

WORKS OF LAVOISIER

MEMOIR ON THE NATURE OF THE PRINCIPLE WHICH COMBINES WITH

METALS DURING CALCINATION AND INCREASES THEIR WEIGHT

(Read to the Académie des Sciences, Easter, 1775.)

ARE there different kinds of air?...Are the different airs that nature offers us, or that we succeed in making, exceptional substances, or are they modifications of atmospheric air? Such are the principal subjects embraced in my scheme of work, the development of which I propose to submit to the Academy. But since the time devoted to our public meetings does not allow me to treat any one of these questions in full, I will confine myself to-day to one particular case, and will only show that the principle which unites with metals during calcination is nothing else than the healthiest and purest part of air, so that if air, after entering into combination with a metal, is set free again, it emerges in an eminently respirable condition, more suited than atmospheric air to support ignition and combustion.

The majority of metallic calces are only reduced, that is to say, only return to the metallic condition, by immediate contact with a carbonaceous material, or with some substance containing what is called phlogiston. The charcoal that one uses is entirely destroyed during the operation when the amount is in suitable proportion, whence it follows that the air set free from metallic reductions with charcoal is not simple; it is in some way