Women's Movement in America

THE RISE OF THE WOMEN'S MOVEMENT IN AMERICA:

Protests of Colonial Women. The republican spirit which produced American independence was of slow and steady growth. It did not spring
up full-armed in a single night. It was, on the contrary, nourished
during a long period of time by fireside discussions as well as by
debates in the public forum. Women shared that fireside sifting of
political principles and passed on the findings of that scrutiny in
letters to their friends, newspaper articles, and every form of written
word. How widespread was this potent, though not spectacular force, is
revealed in the collections of women's letters, articles, songs, dramas,
and satirical "skits" on English rule that have come down to us. In this
search into the reasons of government, some women began to take thought
about laws that excluded them from the ballot. Two women at least left
their protests on record. Abigail, the ingenious and witty wife of John
Adams, wrote to her husband, in March, 1776, that women objected "to all
arbitrary power whether of state or males" and demanded political
privileges in the new order then being created. Hannah Lee Corbin, the
sister of "Lighthorse" Harry Lee, protested to her brother against the
taxation of women without representation.

The Stir among European Women. Ferment in America, in the case of
women as of men, was quickened by events in Europe. In 1792, Mary
Wollstonecraft published in England the _Vindication of the Rights of
Women_--a book that was destined to serve the cause of liberty among
women as the writings of Locke and Paine had served that of men. The
specific grievances which stirred English women were men's invasion of
women's industries, such as spinning and weaving; the denial of equal
educational opportunities; and political disabilities. In France also
the great Revolution raised questionings about the status of women. The
rights of "citizenesses" as well as the rights of "citizens" were
examined by the boldest thinkers. This in turn reacted upon women in the
United States.

Leadership in America. The origins of the American woman movement are
to be found in the writings of a few early intellectual leaders. During
the first decades of the nineteenth century, books, articles, and
pamphlets about women came in increasing numbers from the press. Lydia
Maria Child wrote a history of women; Margaret Fuller made a critical
examination of the status of women in her time; and Mrs. Elizabeth Ellet
supplemented the older histories by showing what an important part women
had played in the American Revolution.

More on American Cival War Results

The Status of the Freedmen. Even more intricate than the issues
involved in restoring the seceded states to the union was the question
of what to do with the newly emancipated slaves. That problem, often put
to abolitionists before the war, had become at last a real concern. The
thirteenth amendment abolishing slavery had not touched it at all. It
declared bondmen free, but did nothing to provide them with work or
homes and did not mention the subject of political rights. All these
matters were left to the states, and the legislatures of some of them,
by their famous "black codes," restored a form of servitude under the
guise of vagrancy and apprentice laws. Such methods were in fact partly
responsible for the reaction that led Congress to abandon Lincoln's
policies and undertake its own program of reconstruction.

Still no extensive effort was made to solve by law the economic problems
of the bondmen. Radical abolitionists had advocated that the slaves when
emancipated should be given outright the fields of their former
masters; but Congress steadily rejected the very idea of confiscation.
The necessity of immediate assistance it recognized by creating in 1865
the Freedmen's Bureau to take care of refugees. It authorized the issue
of food and clothing to the destitute and the renting of abandoned and
certain other lands under federal control to former slaves at reasonable
rates. But the larger problem of the relation of the freedmen to the
land, it left to the slow working of time.

Against sharp protests from conservative men, particularly among the
Democrats, Congress did insist, however, on conferring upon the freedmen
certain rights by national law. These rights fell into broad divisions,
civil and political. By an act passed in 1866, Congress gave to former
slaves the rights of white citizens in the matter of making contracts,
giving testimony in courts, and purchasing, selling, and leasing
property. As it was doubtful whether Congress had the power to enact
this law, there was passed and submitted to the states the fourteenth
amendment which gave citizenship to the freedmen, assured them of the
privileges and immunities of citizens of the United States, and declared
that no state should deprive any person of his life, liberty, or
property without due process of law. Not yet satisfied, Congress
attempted to give social equality to negroes by the second civil rights
bill of 1875 which promised to them, among other things, the full and
equal enjoyment of inns, theaters, public conveyances, and places of
amusement--a law later declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court.

The matter of political rights was even more hotly contested; but the
radical Republicans, like Charles Sumner, asserted that civil rights
were not secure unless supported by the suffrage. In this same
fourteenth amendment they attempted to guarantee the ballot to all negro
men, leaving the women to take care of themselves. The amendment
declared in effect that when any state deprived adult male citizens of
the right to vote, its representation in Congress should be reduced in
the proportion such persons bore to the voting population.

This provision having failed to accomplish its purpose, the fifteenth
amendment was passed and ratified, expressly declaring that no citizen
should be deprived of the right to vote "on account of race, color, or
previous condition of servitude." To make assurance doubly secure,
Congress enacted in 1870, 1872, and 1873 three drastic laws, sometimes
known as "force bills," providing for the use of federal authorities,
civil and military, in supervising elections in all parts of the Union.
So the federal government, having destroyed chattel slavery, sought by
legal decree to sweep away all its signs and badges, civil, social, and
political. Never, save perhaps in some of the civil conflicts of Greece
or Rome, had there occurred in the affairs of a nation a social
revolution so complete, so drastic, and far-reaching in its results.

More on American Cival War

RECONSTRUCTION IN THE SOUTH

Theories about the Position of the Seceded States. On the morning of
April 9, 1865, when General Lee surrendered his army to General Grant,
eleven states stood in a peculiar relation to the union now declared
perpetual. Lawyers and political philosophers were much perturbed and
had been for some time as to what should be done with the members of the
former Confederacy. Radical Republicans held that they were "conquered
provinces" at the mercy of Congress, to be governed under such laws as
it saw fit to enact and until in its wisdom it decided to readmit any or
all of them to the union. Men of more conservative views held that, as
the war had been waged by the North on the theory that no state could
secede from the union, the Confederate states had merely attempted to
withdraw and had failed. The corollary of this latter line of argument
was simple: "The Southern states are still in the union and it is the
duty of the President, as commander-in-chief, to remove the federal
troops as soon as order is restored and the state governments ready to
function once more as usual."
Lincoln's Proposal. Some such simple and conservative form of
reconstruction had been suggested by Lincoln in a proclamation of
December 8, 1863. He proposed pardon and a restoration of property,
except in slaves, to nearly all who had "directly or by implication
participated in the existing rebellion," on condition that they take an
oath of loyalty to the union. He then announced that when, in any of the states named, a body of voters, qualified under the law as it stood
before secession and equal in number to one-tenth the votes cast in
1860, took the oath of allegiance, they should be permitted to
re stablish a state government. Such a government, he added, should be
recognized as a lawful authority and entitled to protection under the
federal Constitution. With reference to the status of the former slaves
Lincoln made it clear that, while their freedom must be recognized, he
would not object to any legislation "which may yet be consistent as a
temporary arrangement with their present condition as a laboring,
landless, and homeless class."

Andrew Johnson's Plan, His Impeachment. Lincoln's successor, Andrew
Johnson, the Vice President, soon after taking office, proposed to
pursue a somewhat similar course. In a number of states he appointed
military governors, instructing them at the earliest possible moment to
assemble conventions, chosen "by that portion of the people of the said
states who are loyal to the United States," and proceed to the
organization of regular civil government. Johnson, a Southern man and a
Democrat, was immediately charged by the Republicans with being too
ready to restore the Southern states. As the months went by, the
opposition to his measures and policies in Congress grew in size and
bitterness. The contest resulted in the impeachment of Johnson by the
House of Representatives in March, 1868, and his acquittal by the Senate
merely because his opponents lacked one vote of the two-thirds required
for conviction.
Congress Enacts "Reconstruction Laws. In fact, Congress was in a
strategic position. It was the law-making body, and it could, moreover,
determine the conditions under which Senators and Representatives from
the South were to be readmitted. It therefore proceeded to pass a series
of reconstruction acts--carrying all of them over Johnson's veto. These
measures, the first of which became a law on March 2, 1867, betrayed an
animus not found anywhere in Lincoln's plans or Johnson's proclamations.
They laid off the ten states--the whole Confederacy with the exception
of Tennessee--still outside the pale, into five military districts, each
commanded by a military officer appointed by the President. They ordered
the commanding general to prepare a register of voters for the election
of delegates to conventions chosen for the purpose of drafting new
constitutions. Such voters, however, were not to be, as Lincoln had
suggested, loyal persons duly qualified under the law existing before
secession but "the male citizens of said state, twenty-one years old and
upward, of whatever race, color, or previous condition, ... except such
as may be disfranchised for participation in the rebellion or for felony
at common law." This was the death knell to the idea that the leaders of
the Confederacy and their white supporters might be permitted to share
in the establishment of the new order. Power was thus arbitrarily thrust
into the hands of the newly emancipated male negroes and the handful of
whites who could show a record of loyalty. That was not all. Each state
was, under the reconstruction acts, compelled to ratify the fourteenth
amendment to the federal Constitution as a price of restoration to the
union.
The composition of the conventions thus authorized may be imagined.
Bondmen without the asking and without preparation found themselves the
governing power. An army of adventurers from the North, "carpet baggers" as they were called, poured in upon the scene to aid in
"reconstruction." Undoubtedly many men of honor and fine intentions gave
unbiased service, but the results of their deliberations only
aggravated the open wound left by the war. Any number of political
doctors offered their prescriptions; but no effective remedy could be
found. Under measures admittedly open to grave objections, the Southern
states were one after another restored to the union by the grace of
Congress, the last one in 1870. Even this grudging concession of the
formalities of statehood did not mean a full restoration of honors and
privileges. The last soldier was not withdrawn from the last Southern
capital until 1877, and federal control over elections long remained as
a sign of congressional supremacy.

Some Results of the American Civil War Part 3

Internal Improvements. If farmers and manufacturers were early divided on the matter of free homesteads, the same could hardly be said of internal improvements.The Western tiller of the soil was as eagerfor some easy way of sending his produce to market as the manufacturer
was for the same means to transport his goods to the consumer on the farm. While the Confederate leaders were writing into their constitution a clause forbidding all appropriations for internal improvements, the Republican leaders at Washington were planning such expenditures from the treasury in the form of public land grants to railways as would have dazed the authors of the national road bill half a century earlier.

Sound Finance, National Banking. From Hamilton's day to Lincoln's, business men in the East had contended for a sound system of national currency. The experience of the states with paper money, painfullyimpressive in the years before the framing of the Constitution, had been
convincing to those who understood the economy of business. The Constitution, as we have seen, bore the signs of this experience. States were forbidden to emit bills of credit: paper money, in short.Thisprovision stood clear in the document; but judicial ingenuity had circumvented it in the age of Jacksonian Democracy. The states hadenacted and the Supreme Court, after the death of John Marshall, had sustained laws chartering banking companies and authorizing them to issue paper money. So the country was beset by the old curse, the banks of Western and Southern states issuing reams of paper notes to help borrowers pay their debts.
In dealing with war finances, the Republicans attacked this ancient evil. By act of Congress in 1864, they authorized a series of national banks founded on the credit of government bonds and empowered to issue notes. The next year they stopped all bank paper sent forth under the
authority of the states by means of a prohibitive tax. In this way, by two measures Congress restored federal control over the monetary system although it did not restablish the United States Bank so hated by Jacksonian Democracy.
Destruction of States' Rights by Fourteenth Amendment. These acts and others not cited here were measures of centralization and consolidation at the expense of the powers and dignity of the states. They were all of high import, but the crowning act of nationalism was the fourteenth
amendment which, among other things, forbade states to "deprive any person of life, liberty or property without due process of law." The immediate occasion, though not the actual cause of this provision, was the need for protecting the rights of freedmen against hostile legislatures in the South. The result of the amendment, as was prophesied in protests loud and long from every quarter of the Democratic party, was the subjection of every act of state, municipal, and county authorities to possible annulment by the Supreme Court at Washington. The expected happened.
Few negroes ever brought cases under the fourteenth amendment to the attention of the courts; but thousands of state laws, municipal ordinances, and acts of local authorities were set aside as null and void under it. Laws of states regulating railway rates, fixing hours of labor in bakeshops, and taxing corporations were in due time to be annulled as conflicting with an amendment erroneously supposed to be designed solely for the protection of negroes. As centralized power over tariffs, railways, public lands, and other national concerns went to Congress, so centralized power over the acts of state and local authorities involving an infringement of personal and property rights was conferred on the federal judiciary, the apex of which was the Supreme Court at Washington. Thus the old federation of "independent states," all equal in rights and dignity, each wearing the "jewel of sovereignty" so celebrated in Southern oratory, had gone the way of all flesh under the withering blasts of Civil War.

Some Results of the American Civil War Part 2

The Triumph of Industry. The wreck of the planting system was
accompanied by a mighty upswing of Northern industry which made the old
Whigs of Massachusetts and Pennsylvania stare in wonderment. The demands
of the federal government for manufactured goods at unrestricted prices
gave a stimulus to business which more than replaced the lost markets of
the South. Between 1860 and 1870 the number of manufacturing
establishments increased 79.6 per cent as against 14.2 for the previous
decade; while the number of persons employed almost doubled. There was
no doubt about the future of American industry.

The Victory for the Protective Tariff. Moreover, it was henceforth to
be well protected. For many years before the war the friends of
protection had been on the defensive. The tariff act of 1857 imposed
duties so low as to presage a tariff for revenue only. The war changed
all that. The extraordinary military expenditures, requiring heavy taxes
on all sources, justified tariffs so high that a follower of Clay or
Webster might well have gasped with astonishment. After the war was over
the debt remained and both interest and principal had to be paid.
Protective arguments based on economic reasoning were supported by a
plain necessity for revenue which admitted no dispute.

A Liberal Immigration Policy. Linked with industry was the labor
supply. The problem of manning industries became a pressing matter, and
Republican leaders grappled with it. In the platform of the Union party
adopted in 1864 it was declared "that foreign immigration, which in the
past has added so much to the wealth, the development of resources, and
the increase of power to this nation--the asylum of the oppressed of all
nations--should be fostered and encouraged by a liberal and just
policy." In that very year Congress, recognizing the importance of the
problem, passed a measure of high significance, creating a bureau of
immigration, and authorizing a modified form of indentured labor, by
making it legal for immigrants to pledge their wages in advance to pay
their passage over. Though the bill was soon repealed, the practice
authorized by it was long continued. The cheapness of the passage
shortened the term of service; but the principle was older than the
days of William Penn.

The Homestead Act of 1862. In the immigration measure guaranteeing a
continuous and adequate labor supply, the manufacturers saw an offset to
the Homestead Act of 1862 granting free lands to settlers. The Homestead
law they had resisted in a long and bitter congressional battle.
Naturally, they had not taken kindly to a scheme which lured men away
from the factories or enabled them to make unlimited demands for higher
wages as the price of those remaining. Southern planters likewise had feared
free homesteads for the very good reason that they only promised to add to the overbalancing power of the North.

In spite of the opposition, supporters of a liberal land policy made
steady gains. Free-soil Democrats,--Jacksonian farmers and
mechanics,--labor reformers, and political leaders, like Stephen A.
Douglas of Illinois and Andrew Johnson of Tennessee, kept up the
agitation in season and out. More than once were they able to force a
homestead bill through the House of Representatives only to have it
blocked in the Senate where Southern interests were intrenched. Then,
after the Senate was won over, a Democratic President, James Buchanan,
vetoed the bill. Still the issue lived. The Republicans, strong among
the farmers of the Northwest, favored it from the beginning and pressed
it upon the attention of the country. Finally the manufacturers yielded;
they received their compensation in the contract labor law. In 1862
Congress provided for the free distribution of land in 160-acre lots
among men and women of strong arms and willing hearts ready to build
their serried lines of homesteads to the Rockies and beyond.

Some American History 1

Some Results of The American Civil War

There is a strong and natural tendency on the part of writers to stress
the dramatic and heroic aspects of war; but the long judgment of history
requires us to include all other significant phases as well. Like every
great armed conflict, the Civil War out ran the purposes of those who
took part in it. Waged over the nature of the union, it made a
revolution in the union, changing public policies and constitutional
principles and giving a new direction to agriculture and industry.

The Supremacy of the Union: First and foremost, the war settled for
all time the long dispute as to the nature of the federal system. The
doctrine of state sovereignty was laid to rest. Men might still speak of
the rights of states and think of their commonwealths with affection,
but nullification and secession were destroyed. The nation was supreme.

The Destruction of the Slave Power: Next to the vindication of
national supremacy was the destruction of the planting aristocracy of
the South--that great power which had furnished leadership of undoubted
ability and had so long contested with the industrial and commercial
interests of the North. The first paralyzing blow at the planters was
struck by the abolition of slavery. The second and third came with the
fourteenth (1868) and fifteenth (1870) amendments, giving the ballot to
freedmen and excluding from public office the Confederate
leaders--driving from the work of reconstruction the finest talents of
the South. As if to add bitterness to gall and wormwood, the fourteenth
amendment forbade the United States or any state to pay any debts
incurred in aid of the Confederacy or in the emancipation of the
Slaves, plunging into utter bankruptcy the Southern financiers who had
stripped their section of capital to support their cause. So the
Southern planters found themselves excluded from public office and ruled
over by their former bondmen under the tutelage of Republican leaders.
Their labor system was wrecked and their money and bonds were as
worthless as waste paper. The South was subject to the North. That which
neither the Federalists nor the Whigs had been able to accomplish in the
realm of statecraft was accomplished on the field of battle.

Alchemy Part 8 The End.

1 An alchemistical work bearing the name of Ostanes
speaks of a divine water which cures all maladies--an early
appearance of the universal panacea or elixir of life.

2 ``Some traditionary knowledge might be secreted in the
temples and monasteries of Egypt: much useful experience might
have been acquired in the practice of arts and manufactures,
but the science of chemistry owes its origin and improvement
to the industry of the Saracens. They first invented
and named the alembic for the purposes of distillation,
analyzed the substances of the three kingdoms of nature,
tried the distinction and affinities of alkalis and acids,
and converted the poisonous minerals into soft and salutary
remedies. But the most eager search of Arabian chemistry
was the transmutation of metals, and the elixir of immortal
health: the reason and the fortunes of thousands were
evaporated in the crucibles of alchemy, and the consummation
of the great work was promoted by the worthy aid of mystery,
fable and superstition.'' It may be noted that the word
``alembic'' is derived from the Greek ambix, ``cup,''
with the Arabic article prefixed, and that the instrument
is figured in the MSS. of some of the Greek alchemists.

3 Cf. Chaucer, Chanouns Yemannes Tale, where,
however, mercury figures both as a spirit and a body:--

``The firste spirit quik-silver called is,
The second orpiment, the thridde ywis
Sal armoniak, and the ferthe brimstoon.''

Alchemy Part 7

Later History of Alchemy.--In the earlier part of the
16th century Paracelsus gave a new direction to alchemy by
declaring that its true object was not the making of gold but
the preparation of medicines, and this union of chemistry with
medicine was one characteristic of the iatrochemical school
of which he was the precursor. Increasing attention was paid
to the investigation of the properties of substances and of
their effects on the human body, and chemistry profited by
the fact that it passed into the hands of men who possessed
the highest scientific culture of the time, Still, belief
in the possibility of transmutation long remained orthodox,
even among the most distinguished men of science. Thus it
was accepted, at least academically, by Andreas Libavius (d.
1616); by F. de la Boe Sylvius (1614-1672), though not by
his pupil Otto Tachenius, and by J. R. Glauber (1603-1668);
by Robert Boyle (1627-1691) and, for a time at least, by Sir
Isaac Newton and his rival and contemporary, G. W. Leibnitz
(1646-1716); and by G. E. Stahl (1660-1734) and Hermann
Boerhaave (1668-1738). Though an alchemist, Boyle, in his
Sceptical Chemist (1661), cast doubts on the ``experiments
whereby vulgar Spagyrists are wont to endeavour to evince their
ssalt, ulphur and mercury to be the true principles of things,''
and advanced towards the conception of chemical elements
as those constituents of matter which cannot be further
decomposed. With J. J. Becher (1635-1682) and G. E. Stahl,
however, there was a reversion to earlier ideas. The former
substituted for the salt, sulphur and mercury of Basil
Valentine and Paracelsus three earths--the mercurial, the
vitreous and the combustible--and he explained combustion
as depending on the escape of this last combustible element;
while Stahl's conception of phlogiston--not fire itself,
but the principle of fire--by virtue of which combustible
bodies burned, was a near relative of the mercury of the
philosophers, the soul or essence of ordinary mercury.

Perhaps J. B. van Helmont (1577-1644) was the last distinguished
investigator who professed actually to have changed mercury
into gold, though impostors and mystics of various kinds
continued to claim knowledge of the art long after his
time. So late as 1782, James Price, an English physician,
showed experiments with white and red powders, by the aid
of which he was supposed to be able to transform fifty
and sixty times as much mercury into silver and gold. The
metals he produced are said to have proved genuine on assay;
when, however, in the following year he was challenged to
repeat the experiments he was unable to do so and committed
suicide. In the course of the 19th century the idea that
the different elements are constituted by different groupings
or condensations of one primal matter--a speculation which,
if proved to be well grounded, would imply the possibility
of changing one element into another--found favour with
more than one responsible chemist; but experimental research
failed to yield any evidence that was generally regarded as
offering any support to this hypothesis. About the beginning
of the 20th century, however, the view was promulgated
that the spontaneous production of helium from radium may
be an instance of the transformation of one element into
another. (See RADIOACTIVITY; also ELEMENT and MATTER.)

See M. P. E. Berthelot, Les Origines de l'alchimie (1885);
Collection des anciens alchimistes grecs (text and
translation, 3 vols., 1887-1888); Introduction a l'etude de
la chimie des anciens et du moyen age (1889): La Chimie au
moyen age (text and translation of Syriac and Arabic treatises
on alchemy, 3 vols., 1893). Much bibliographical and other
information about the later writers on alchemy is contained
in Bibliotheca Chemica (2 vols., Glasgow, 1906), a catalogue
by John Ferguson of the books in the collection of James
Young of Kelly (printed for private distribution). (H. M. R.)

Alchemy Part 6

The descent of alchemistical doctrine can thus be traced
with fair continuity for a thousand years, from the Greeks
of Alexandria down to the time when Latin alchemy was
firmly established in the West, and began to be written
of by historical authors like Albertus Magnus, Roger Bacon
and Arnoldus Villanovanus in the 13th century. But side
by side with this literary transmission Berthelot insists
that there was another mode of transmission, by means of the
knowledge of practical receipts and processes traditional
among jewellers, painters, workers in glass and pottery, and
other handicraftsmen. The chemical knowledge of Egyptian
metallurgists and jewellers, he holds, was early transmitted
to the artisans of Rome, and was preserved throughout the
dark ages in the workshops of Italy and France until about
the 13th century, when it was mingled with the theories of
the Greek alchemists which reached the West by way of the
Arabs. Receipts given in the Leiden papyrus reappear in
the Compositiones ad Tingenda and the Mappae Clavicula,
both workshop receipt books, one known in an 8th-century
MS. at Lucca, and the other in a 10th-century MS. in the
library of Schlettstadt; and again in such works as the De
Artibus Romanorum of Eraclius and the Schedula Diversarum
Artium of Theophilus, belonging to the 11th or 12th century.

Theory of Transmutation.--The fundamental theory of the
transmutation of metals is to be found in the Greek alchemists,
although in details it was modified and elaborated by the
Arabs and the Latin alchemists. Regarding all substances as
being composed of one primitive matter--the prima materia,
and as owing their specific differences to the presence of
different qualities imposed upon it, the alchemist hoped, by
taking away these qualities, to obtain the prima materia
itself, and then to get from it the particular substance he
desired by the addition of the appropriate qualities. The
prima materia was early identified with mercury, not ordinary
mercury, but the ``mercury of the philosophers,'' which was the
essence or soul of mercury, freed from the four Aristotelian
elements--earth, air, fire and water--or rather from the
qualities which they represent. Thus the operator had to
remove from ordinary mercury, earth or an earthy principle or
quality, and water or a liquid principle, and to fix it by
taking away air or a volatile principle. The prima materia
thus obtained had to be treated with sulphur (or with sulphur
and arsenic) to confer upon it the desired qualities that were
missing. This sulphur again was not ordinary sulphur, but some
principle derived from it, which constituted the philosopher's
stone or elixir--white for silver and yellow or red for
gold. This is briefly the doctrine that the metals are
composed of mercury and sulphur, which persisted in one form
or another down to the 17th century. Of course there were
numerous variations and refinements. Thus in the Speculum
Naturale of Vincent of Beauvais (c. 1250) it is said that
there are four spirits--mercury, sulphur, arsenic and sal
ammoniac-- and six bodies--gold, silver, copper, tin, lead and
iron.3 Of these bodies the two first are pure, the four last
impure. Pure white mercury, fixed by the virtue of white
non-corrosive sulphur, engenders in mines a matter which
fusion changes into silver, and united to pure clear red
sulphur it forms gold, while with various kinds of impure
mercury and sulphur the other bodies are produced. Vincent
attributes to Rhazes the statement that copper is potentially
silver, and any one who can eliminate the red colour will
bring it to the state of silver, for it is copper in outward
appearance, but in its inmost nature silver. This statement
represents a doctrine widely held in the 13th century, and
also to be found in the Greek alchemists, that everything
endowed with a particular apparent quality possesses a hidden
opposite quality, which can be rendered apparent by fire.
Later, as in the works attributed to Basil Valentine, sulphur,
mercury and salt are held to be the constituents of the metals.

It must be noted that the processes described by the alchemists
of the 13th century are not put forward as being miraculous
or supernatural; they rather represent the methods employed by
nature, which it is the end of the alchemist's art to reproduce
artificially in the laboratory. But even among the late
Arabian alchemists it was doubted whether the resources of
the art were adequate to the task; and in the West, Vincent of
Beauvais remarks that success had not been achieved in making
artificial metals identical with the natural ones. Thus he
says that the silver which has been changed into gold by the
projection of the red elixir is not rendered resistant to the
agents which affect silver but not gold, and Albertus Magnus
in his De Mineralibus --the De Alchemia attributed to him
is spurious--states that alchemy cannot change species but
merely imitates them--for instance, colours a metal white to
make it resemble silver or yellow to give it the appearance of
gold. He has, he adds, tested gold made by alchemists, and
found that it will not withstand six or seven exposures to
fire. But scepticism of this kind was not universal. Roger
Bacon--or more probably some one who usurped his name--declared
that with a certain amount of the philosopher's stone he could
transmute a million times as much base metal into gold, and
on Raimon Lull was fathered the boast, ``Mare tingerem si
mercurius esset.'' Numerous less distinguished adepts also
practised the art, and sometimes were so successful in their
deceptions that they gained the ear of kings, whose desire
to profit by the achievements of science was in several
instances rewarded by an abundant crop of counterfeit coins.

Alchemy Part 5

Several alchemistical treatises, written in Arabic, exist
in manuscript in the National Library at Paris and in the
library of the university of Leiden, and have been reproduced
by Berthelot, with translations, in vol. iii. of La Chimie
au moyen age. They fall into two groups: those in one are
largely composed of compilations from Greek sources, while
those in the other have rather the character of original
compositions. Of the first group the most interesting and
possibly the oldest is the Book of Crates; it is remarkable
for containing some of the signs used for the metals by the
Greek alchemists, and for giving figures of four pieces of
apparatus which closely resemble those depicted in Greek
MSS., the former being never, and the latter rarely, found
in other Arabic MSS. Its concluding words suggest that its
production was due to Khalid ben Yezid (died in 708), who
was a pupil of the Syrian monk Marianus, and according to
the Kitab-al-Fihrist was the first Mussulman writer on
alchemy. The second group consists of a number of treatises
professing to be written by Jaber, celebrated in Latin alchemy
as Geber (q.v..) Internal evidence suggests that they are not
all from the same hand or of the same date, but probably they
are not earlier than the 9th nor later than the 12th century.
The Arabic chroniclers record the names of many other writers
on alchemy, among the most famous being Rhazes and Avicenna.

But the further development of alchemy took place in the West
rather than in the East. With the spread of their empire
to Spain the Arabs took with them their knowledge of Greek
medicine and science, including alchemy, and thence it passed,
strengthened by the infusion of a certain Jewish element, to
the nations of western Europe, through the medium of Latin
translations. The making of these began about the 11th
century, one of the earliest of the translators, Constantinus
Africanus, wrote about 1075, and another, Gerard of Cremona,
lived from 1114 to 1187. The Liber de compositione alchemiae,
which professes to be by Morienus--perhaps the same as the
Marianus who was the teacher of Khalid--was translated by
Robertus Castrensis, who states that he finished the work in
1182, and speaks as if he were making a revelation--``Quid
sit alchemia nondum cognovit vestra Latinitas.'' The earlier
translations, such as the Turba Philosophorum and other
Works printed in collections like the Artis auriferae quam
chemiam vocant (1572), Theatrum chemicum (1602), and
J. J. Manget's Bibliotheca chemica curiosa (1702), are
confused productions, written in an allegorical style, but
full of phrases and even pages taken literally from the Greek
alchemists, and citing by name various authorities of Greek
alchemy. They were followed by treatises of a different
character, clearer in matter, more systematic in arrangement,
and reflecting the methods of the scholastic logic; these are
farther from the Greek tradition, for although they contain
sufficient traces of their ultimate Greek ancestry, their
authors do not know the Greeks as masters and cite no Greek
names. So far as they are Latin versions of Arabico-Greek
treatises, they must have been much remodelled in the course
of translation; but there is reason to suppose that many of
them, even when pretending to be translations, are really
original compositions. It is curious that although we possess
a certain number of works on alchemy written in Arabic, and
also many Latin treatises that profess to be translated from
Arabic, yet in no case is the existence known of both the
Arabic and the Latin version. The Arabic works of Jaber, as
contained in MSS. at Paris and Leiden, are quite Aissimiiar
from the Latin works attributed to Geber, and show few if any
traces of the positive chemical knowledge, as of nitric acid
(aqua dissolutiva or fortis) or of the mixture of nitric
and hydrochloric acids known as aqua regis or regia, that
appears in the latter. The treatises attributed to Geber, in
fact, appear to be original works composed not earlier than the
13th century and fathered on Jaber in order to enhance their
authority. If this view be accepted, an entirely new light
is thrown on the achievements of the Arabs in the history of
chemistry. Gibbon asserts that the Greeks were inattentive
either to the use or to the abuse of chemistry (Decline and
Fall, chap. xiii.), and gives the Arabs the credit of the
origin and improvement of the science (chap. lii.).2 But
the chemical knowledge attributed to the Arabs has been so
attributed largely on the basis of the contents of the Latin
Geber, regarded as a translation from the Arabic Jaber. If,
then, those contents do not represent the knowledge of Jaber,
and if the contents of other Latin translations which there
is reason to believe are really made from the Arabic, show
little, if any, advance on the knowledge of the Alexandrian
Greeks, evidently the part played by the Arabs must be less, and
that of the Westerns greater, than Gibbon is prepared to admit.

Alchemy Part 4

But while there are thus some grounds for supposing that the
idea of transmutation grew out of the practical receipts of
Alexandrian Egypt, the alchemy which embraced it as a leading
principle was also strongly affected by Eastern influences
such as magic and astrology. The earliest Greek alchemistical
writings abound with references to Oriental authorities and
traditions. Thus the pseudo-Democritus, who was reputed the
author of the Physica et Mystica, which itself concludes
each of its receipts with a magical formula, was believed
to have travelled in Chaldaea, and to have had as his master
Ostanes1 the Mede, a name mentioned several times in the
Leiden papyrus, and often by early Christian writers such as
Tertullian, St Cyprian and St Augustine. The practices of
the Persian adepts also are appealed to in the writings of the
pseudo-Democritus, Zosimus and Synesius. The philosopher's
egg, as a symbol of creation, is both Egyptian and
Babylonian. In the Greek alchemists it appears as the symbol
at once of the art and of the universe, enclosing within
itself the four elements; and there is sometimes a play of
words between to on and to won. The conception of
man, the microcosm, containing in himself all the parts
of the universe or macrocosm, is also Babylonian, as again
probably is the famous identification of the metals with the
planets. Even in the Leiden papyrus the astronomical symbols
for the sun and moon are used to denote gold and silver, and
in the Meteorologica of Olympiodorus lead is attributed to
Saturn, iron to Mars, copper to Venus, tin to Hermes (Mercury)
and electrum to Jupiter. Similar systems of symbols, but
elaborated to include compounds, appear in Greek MSS. of
the 10th century, preserved in the library of St Mark's at
Venice. Subsequently electrum (an alloy of gold and silver)
disappeared as a specific metal, and tin was ascribed to Jupiter
instead, the sign of mercury becoming common to the metal and the
planet. Thus we read in Chaucer (Chanouns Yemannes Tale):--

The bodies sevene eek, lo! hem heer anoon:
Sol gold is, and Luna silver we threpe,
Mars yren, Mercurie quik-silver we clepe,
Saturnus leed and Jupiter is tin,
And Venus coper, by my fader kin!
Literature of Alchemy.--A considerable body of Greek chemical
writings is contained in MSS. belonging to the various great
libraries of Europe, the oldest being that at St Mark's, just
mentioned. The contents of these MSS. are all of similar
composition, and in Berthelot's opinion represent a collection
of treatises made at Constantinople in the 8th or 9th
century. The treatises are nearly all anterior to the 7th
century, and most appear to belong to the 3rd and 4th centuries;
some are the work of authentic authors like Zosimus and
Synesius, while of others, such as profess to be written by
Moses, Democritus, Ostanes, &c., the authorship is clearly
fictitious. Some of the same names and the same works can
be identified in the lists of the Kitab-al- Fihrist. But
the Arabs did not acquire their knowledge of this literature
at first hand. The earliest Hellenic culture in the East was
Syrian, and the Arabs made their first acquaintance with
Greek chemistry, as with Greek philosophy, mathematics,
medicine, &c., by the intermediary of Syriac translations. Examples
of such translations are preserved in MSS. at the British
Museum, partly written in Syriac, partly in Arabic with Syriac
characters. In Berthelot's opinion, the Syriac portions
represent a compilation of receipts and processes undertaken in
the Syrian school of medicine at Bagdad under the Abbasids in
the 9th or 10th century, and to a large extent constituted by
the earlier translations made by Sergius of Resaena in the 6th
century. They contain, under the title Doctrine of Democritus,
a fairly methodical treatise in ten books comprising the
Argyropoeia and Chrysopoeia of the pseudo-Democritus,
with many receipts for colouring metals, making artificial
precious stones, effecting the diplosis or doubling of
metals, &c. They give illustrations of the apparatus employed,
and their close relationship to the Greek is attested by
the frequent occurrence of Greek words and the fact that
the signs and symbols of the Greek alchemists appear almost
unchanged. The other portion seems of somewhat later date.
Another Syriac MS., in the library of Cambridge University,
contains a translation of a work by Zosimus which is so far
unknown in the original Greek. Berthelot gives reproductions
of the British Museum MSS. in vol. ii. of La Chimie au moyen

Alchemy Part 3

Origins of Alchemy.--Numerous legends cluster round the
origin of alchemy. According to one story, it was founded
by the Egyptian god Hermes (Thoth), the reputed inventor of
the arts and sciences, to whom, under the appellation Hermes
Trismegistus, Tertullian refers as the master of those who
occupy themselves with nature; after him later alchemists
called their work the ``hermetic art,'' and the seal of
Hermes, which they placed upon their vessels, is the origin
of the common phrase ``hermetically sealed.'' Another legend,
given by Zosimus of Panopolis, an alchemistical writer said
to date from the 3rd century, asserts that the fallen angels
taught the arts to the women they married (cf. Genesis vi.
2), their instruction being recorded in a book called
Chema. A similar story appears in the Book of Enoch,
and Tertullian has much to say about the wicked angels who
revealed to men the knowledge of gold and silver, of lustrous
stones, and of the power of herbs, and who introduced the
arts of astrology and magic upon the earth. Again, the
Arabic Kitab-al-Fihrist, written by al-Nadim towards the
end of the 10th century, says that the ``people who practise
alchemy, that is, who fabricate gold and silver from strange
metals, state that the first to speak of the science of the
work was Hermes the Wise, who was originally of Babylon, but
who established himself in Egypt after the dispersion of the
peoples from Babel.'' Another legend, also to be found in Arabic
sources, asserts that alchemy was revealed by God to Moses and
Aaron. But there is some evidence that, in accordance with
the strong and constant tradition among the alchemists, the
idea of transmutation did originate in Egypt with the Greeks of
Alexandria. In the Leiden museum there are a number of papyri
which were found in a tomb at Thebes, written probably in the
3rd century A.D., though their matter is older. Some are
in Greek and demotic, and one, of peculiar interest from the
chemical point of view, gives a number of receipts, in Greek,
for the manipulation of base metals to form alloys which simulate
gold and are intended to be used in the manufacture of imitation
jewellery. Possibly this is one of the books about gold
and silver of which Diocletian decreed the destruction about
A.D. 290--an act which Gibbon styles the first authentic
event in the history of alchemy (Decline and Fall, chap.
xiii.). The author of these receipts is not under any
delusion that he is transmuting metals; the MS. is merely
a workshop manual in which are described processes in daily
use for preparing metals for false jewellery, but it argues
considerable knowledge of methods of making alloys and colouring
metals. It has been suggested by M. P. E. Berthelot that
the workers in these processes, which were a monopoly of the
priestly caste and were kept strictly secret, though fully
aware that their products were not truly gold, were in time
led by their success in deceiving the public to deceive
themselves also, and to come to believe that they actually
had the power of making gold from substances which were not
gold. Philosophical sanction and explanation of this belief
was then found by bringing it into relation with the theory
of the prima materia, which was identical in all bodies
but received its actual form by the adjunction of qualities
expressed by the Aristotelian elements--earth, air, fire and
water. Some support for this view is gained from study
of the alchemistical writings of the period. Thus, in the
treatise known as Physica et Mystica and falsely ascribed
to Democritus (such false attributions are a constant feature
of the literature of alchemy), various receipts are given
for colouring and gilding metals, but the conception of
transmutation does not occur. This treatise was probably
composed at a date not very different from that of the Leiden
papyrus. Later, however, as in the Commentary on this
work written by Synesius to Dioscorus, priest of Serapis at
Alexandria, which probably dates from the end of the 4th
century, a changed attitude becomes apparent; the more
practical parts of the receipts are obscured or omitted,
and the processes for preparing alloys and colouring
metals, described in the older treatise, are by a mystical
interpretation represented as resulting in real transmutation.

Alchemy part 2

Regarding the derivation of the word, there are two main views
which agree in holding that it has an Arabic descent, the
prefix al being the Arabic article. But according to one,
the second part of the word comes from the Greek chumeia,
pouring, infusion, used in connexion with the study of the
juices of plants, and thence extended to chemical manipulations
in general; this derivation accounts for the old-fashioned
spellings ``chymist'' and ``chymistry.'' The other view
traces it to khem or khame, hieroglyph khmi, which
denotes black earth as opposed to barren sand, and occurs in
Plutarch as chumeia; on this derivation alchemy is explained
as meaning the ``Egyptian art.'' The first occurrence of
the word is said to be in a treatise of Julius Firmicus, an
astrological writer of the 4th century, but the prefix al
there must be the addition of a later copyist. Among the
Alexandrian writers alchemy was designated as e tes chrusou
te kai argurou poieseos techne theia kai iera or
e episteme iera. In English, Piers Plowman (1362)
contains the phrase ``experimentis of alconomye,'' with
variants ``alkenemye'' and ``alknamye.'' The prefix al
begins to be dropped about the middle of the 16th century.

Part 1 Alchemy

ALCHEMY. In the narrow sense of the word, alchemy is the
pretended art of making gold and silver, or transmuting the
base metals into the noble ones. The idea of such transmutation
probably arose among the Alexandrian Greeks in the early
centuries of the Christian era; thence it passed to the
Arabs, by whom it was transmitted to western Europe, and its
realization was a leading aim of chemical workers down to the
time of Paracelsus and even later. But ``alchemy'' was something
more than a particularly vain and deluded manifestation of
the thirst for gold, as it is sometimes represented; in its
wider and truer significance it stands for the chemistry of
the middle ages. The idea of transmutation, in the country
of its origin, had a philosophical basis, and was linked
up with the Greek theories of matter there current; thus,
by supplying a central philosophical principle, it to some
extent unified and focussed chemical effort, which previously,
so far as it existed at all, had been expended on acquiring
empirical acquaintance with a mass of disconnected technical
processes. Alchemy in this sense is merely an early phase of
the development of systematic chemistry; in Liebig's words, it
was ``never at any time anything different from chemistry.''

ALCESTIS (ALKESTIS), in Greek legend the daughter of
Pelias and Anaxibia, and wife of Admetus, king of Pherae in
Thessaly. She consented to die in place of her husband,
and was afterwards rescued by Heracles. This beautiful
story of conjugal devotion forms the subject of the
Alcestis of Euripides, which furnished the basis of
Robert Browning's Balaustion's Adventure. Sophocles
also wrote an Alcestis, of which only fragments remain.

History is the interpretation of past events, societies and civilisations. The term history comes from the Greek historia. The 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica stated that "history in the wider sense is all that has happened, not merely all the phenomena of human life, but those of the natural world as well.

A Fact Of History

History hasn't changed much in over 2000 years.

"I am involved in the land of a 'Leonine' (lion-like) and brave people, where every Foot of the ground is like a well of steel, confronting my soldier. You have brought only one son into the world, but everyone in this land can be called an Alexander.” quote by Alexander the Great about Afghanistan people around 330bce

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