Bygone Beliefs

Book Excerpt: ...two Substances are not of one and the same species, yet one Stone doth thence arise, and although they appear and are said to be two Substances, yet in truth it is but one, to wit, Argent-vive."[1] No doubt this sounds fantastic; but with all their seeming intellectual follies these old thinkers were no fools. The fact of sex is the most fundamental fact of the universe, and is a spiritual and physical as well as a physiological fact. I shall deal with the subject as concerns the speculations of the alchemists in some detail in a later excursion.[1] BERNARD, Earl of TREVISAN: A Treatise of the Philosopher's Stone, 1683. (See Collectanea Chymica: A Collection of Ten Several Treatises in Chemistry, 1684, p. 91.) IIPYTHAGORAS AND HIS PHILOSOPHYIT is a matter for enduring regret that so little is known to us concerning PYTHAGORAS. What little we do know serves but to enhance for us the interest of the man and his philosophy, to make him, ...