They hid this art that noe man find it can.

By their bokes thei do shew reasons faire, Whereby much people are brought to despaire: Yet Anaxagoras wrote plainest of them all In his boke of Conversions Naturall; Of the old Fathers that ever I founde, He most discloses of this science the grounde; Whereof Aristotle had great envy, And him rebuked unrightlfully, In manie places, as I can well report, Intending that men should not to him resort, For he was large of his cunnying and love, God have his soul in bliss above; And such as sowed envious seede God forgive them for their mis-deede" (21). Aristotle is much blamed by Adepts in general for the manner in which he has not only veiled the knowledge which he secretly possessed, but also for having willfully, as they complain, led mankind astray from the path of true experiment. We hesitate to judge this question, since, however much the barrenness of his philosophy may be deplored, it appears improbable that any philosopher, much less one who took such pains as Aristotle, should designedly labor to deceive mankind. His idea was peculiar and appears itself unjust. He blames his predecessors for the various and contradictory positions they had made in philosophizing; i.e., apparently contradictory, as respects their language when taken in a literal sense; for he never quarrels with their true meaning, and carefully avoids disputing their general ground. His metaphysics indeed, which are the natural touchstone of his whole system, differ in no one fundamental aspect or particular that is essential from those of Anaxagoras, Plato and Heraclitus. Certain epistles to Alexander the Great on the Philosophers stone, attributed to Aristotle, are preserved in the fifth volume of the Theatrum Chemicum; and the Secreta Secretorum is generally acknowledged to be authentic. In the book of Meteors also a clearer intelligence of intrinsic causes is evinced than may be apparent to the common eye (22). But the whole philosophy of Plato is hyperphysical; the Phaedrus, Philebus, and sevnth book of Laws, the beautiful and sublime Parmenides, the Phaedo, Banquet, and Timaeus have long been admired by the studious without being understood; a mystic semblance pervades the whole, and recondite allusions baffle the pursuit of sense and ordinary imagination. Yet the philosopher speaks more familiarly in his Epistles; --- and if the correspondence with Dionysius of Syracuse had concerned moral philosophy only and the abstract relations of mind, why such dread as is there expressed about setting the truth to paper? But the science which drew the tyrant to the philosopher was more probably practical and profitably interesting than abstracts would appear to be to such a mind. "Indeed, O son of Dionysius and Doris, this your inquiry concerning the cause of all beautiful things is endued with a certain quality, or rather it is a parturition respecting this ingenerated in the soul, from which he who is not liberated will never in reality acquire truth" (23). Wisdom must be sought for her own sake, neither for gold or silver or any intermediate benefit, lest these all should be denied together without the discovery of their source. There is a treatise on the philosophers stone in the fifth volume of the Theatrum Chemicum attributed to Plato, but the authenticity is doubtful; and since the principal Greek records of the art were afterwards destroyed with the remnant of Egyptian literature at Alexandria, we are not desirous to enroll either of these names without more extant evidence to prove their claim to the title of Hermetic philosophers. They are mentioned here in their series, because we hope to make it probable, as the nature of the subject comes to be developed, that the most famous schools of theosophy have in all ages been based on a similar experimental ground and profound science of truth in their leaders. It was about the year 284 of the Christian era when, as Suidas relates, the facility with which the Egyptians were able to make gold and silver, and in consequence to levy troops against Rome, excited the envy and displeasure of the Emperor to such an extent, that he issued an edict, by which every chemical book was to be seized and burned together in the public market-place; vainly hoping, as the