thecuring of afflictions and the prolongation of life; (3), as a 'spiritusmundi' to bring mankind into rapport with the supermundane spheres. Modernalchemists, he continued, reject the greater part of these ideas,especially those connected with spiritual contact. The object of modernalchemy might be reduced to the search for a substance having the power totransform and transmute all other substances into one another - in short,to discover that medium so well known to the alchemists of old and lost tous. This was a perfectly feasible proposition. In the four principalsubstances of oxygen, hydrogen, carbon, and azote, we have the tetractus ofPythagoras and the tetragram of the Chaldeans and Egyptians. All the sixtyelements are referable to these original four. The ancient alchemicaltheory established the fact that all the metals are the same in theircomposition, that all are formed from sulphur and mercury, and that thedifference between them is according to the proportion of these substancesin their composition. Further, all the products of minerals present intheir composition complete identity with those substances most opposed tothem. Thus fulminating acid contains precisely the same quantity of carbon,oxygen, and azote as cyanic acid, and "cyanhydric" acid does not differfrom formate ammoniac. This new property of matter is known as "isomerism".M. Figuier's friend then proceeds to quote support of his thesis andoperations and experiments of M. Dumas, a celebrated French savant, as iswell known to thous of Prout, and other English chemists of standing. Passing to consider the possibility of isomerism in elementary as well asin compound substances, the points out to M. Figuier that id the theory ofisomerism can apply to such bodies, the transmutation of metals ceases tobe a wild, unpractical dream, and becomes a scientific possibility, thetransformation being brought about by a molecular rearrangement. Isomerismcan be establis...
