be capable of developing the latentpossibilities in the subject man." At the same time, it must be admittedthat the cryptic character of alchemical language was probably occasionedby a fear on the part of the alchemical mystic that he might lay himselfopen through his magical opinions to the rigors of the law. RECORDS OF ACTUAL TRANSMUTATIONS: Several records of allegedtransmutations of base metal into gold are in existence. These wereachieved by Nicholas Flamel, Van Helmont, Martini, Richthausen, and Sethon.For a detailed account of the methods employed the reader is referred toseveral articles on these hermetists. In nearly every case the transmutingelement was a mysterious powder or the "Philosopher's Stone". MODERN ALCHEMY That alchemy has been studied in modern times there canbe no doubt. M. figuier in his "L'Alchimie et les Alchimistes", dealingwith the subject of modern alchemy, as expressed by the initiates of thefirst half of the nineteenth century, states that many French alchemists ofhis time regarded the discoveries of modern science as merely so manyevidences of the truth of the doctrines they embraced. Throughout Europe,he says, the positive alchemical doctrine had many adherents at the end ofthe eighteenth century and the beginning of the nineteenth. Thus a "vastassociation of alchemists", founded in Westphalia in 1790, continued toflourish in the year 1819, under the name of the "Hermetic Society". In1837, an alchemist of Thuringia presented to the Societe Industrielle ofWeimar a tincture which he averred would effect metallic transmutation. About the same time several French journals announced a public course oflectures on hermetic philosophy by a professor of the University of Munich.He further states that many Honoverian and Bavarian families pursued incommon the search for the grand arcanum. Paris, however, was regarded asthe alchemical Mecca. There dwelt many theoretical alchemists and"empirical adepts...
