Water of life, which has led thousands to pretend to it and millions to believe in it. From this sprang the search, so long continued and still pursued, for the The first has led many to imagine that they might find means to avoid death, or, failing in this, that they might, nevertheless, so prolong existence as to reckon it by centuries instead of units.
These are death, toil, and ignorance of the future-the doom of man upon this sphere, and for which he shews his antipathy by his love of life, his longing for abundance, and his craving curiosity to pierce the secrets of the days to come. Three causes especially have excited the discontent of mankind and, by impelling us to seek for remedies for the irremediable, have bewildered us in a maze of madness and error. Vast as the subject appears, it is easily reducible within such limits as will make it comprehensive without being wearisome, and render its study both instructive and amusing.
But the same discontent which has been the source of all improvement, has been the parent of no small progeny of follies and absurdities to trace these latter is our present object. So far, however, from being an evil, as at first might be supposed, it has been the great civiliser of our race and has tended, more than anything else, to raise us above the condition of the brutes. What they list to style me! They will calcine you a grave matron, as it might be a mother of the maids, and spring up a young virgin out of her ashes, as fresh as a phœnix lay you an old courtier on the coals, like a sausage or a bloat-herring, and, after they have broiled him enough, blow a soul into him, with a pair of bellows! See, they begin to muster again, and draw their forces out against me! The genius of the place defend me!”ĭISSATISFACTION WITH HIS LOT seems to be the characteristic of man in all ages and climates. The mischief a secret any of them know, above the consuming of coals and drawing of usquebaugh! howsoever they may pretend, under the specious names of Geber, Arnold, Lulli, or bombast of Hohenheim, to commit miracles in art, and treason against nature! As if the title of philosopher, that creature of glory, were to be fetched out of a furnace! I am their crude and their sublimate, their precipitate and their unctions their male and their female, sometimes their hermaphrodite. Searchers for the Philosopher’s Stone and the Water of Life.
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