For thousands of years before men had any accurate and exact knowledge of thechanges of material things, they had thought about these changes, regardedthem as revelations of spiritual truths, built on them theories of things inheaven and earth (and a good many things in neither), and used them inmanufactures, arts, and handicrafts, especially in one very curiousmanufacture wherein not the thousandth fragment of a grain of the finishedarticle was ever produced.
The accurate and systematic study ofthe changes which material things undergo is called chemistry; we may,perhaps, describe alchemy as the superficial, and what may be calledsubjective, examination of these changes, and the speculative systems, andimaginary arts and manufactures, founded on that examination.
We are assured by many old writersthat Adam was the first alchemist, and we are told by one of the initiatedthat Adam was created on the sixth day, being the 15th of March, of the firstyear of the world; certainly alchemy had a long life, for chemistry did notbegin until about the middle of the 18th century.
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