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177
The Story of Alchemy and the Beginnings of Chemistry
·
M. M. Pattison Muir
34
In
Ben
Jonson's
play
called
The
Alchemist,
Subtle
(who
is
the
alchemist
of
the
play)
says,
"
...
metals
would
be
gold
if
they
had
time."
The
alchemist
not
only
attributed
ethical
qualities
to
material
things,
he
also
became
the
guardian
and
guide
of
the
moral
practices
of
these
things.
He
thought
himself
able
to
recall
the
erring
metal
to
the
path
of
metalline
virtue,
to
lead
the
extravagant
mineral
back
to
the
moral
home-life
from
which
it
had
been
seduced,
to
show
the
doubting
and
vacillating
salt
what
it
was
ignorantly
seeking,
and
to
help
it
to
find
the
unrealised
object
of
its
search.
The
alchemist
acted
as
a
sort
of
conscience
to
the
metals,
minerals,
salts,
and
other
substances
he
submitted
to
the
processes
of
his
laboratory.
He
treated
them
as
a
wise
physician
might
treat
an
ignorant
and
somewhat
refractory
patient.
"I
know
what
you
want
better
than
you
do,"
he
seems
often
to
be
saying
to
the
metals
he
is
calcining,
separating,
joining
and
subliming.
But
the
ignorant
alchemist
was
not
always
thanked
for
his
treatment.
Sometimes
the
patient
rebelled.
For
instance,
Michael
Sendivogius,
in
his
tract,
The
New
Chemical
Light
drawn
from
the
Fountain
of
Nature
and
of
Manual
Experience
(17th
century),
recounts
a
dialogue
between
Mercury,
the
Alchemist,
and
Nature.
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