CONCLUSION.

It has now been made plain beyond all reasonable doubt by the certain and abundant evidence of the lives and labours of the alchemists, that they were in search of a physical process for the transmutation of the so-called baser metals into silver and gold. The methods and processes by which they endeavoured to attain this désir désiré, and the secrets which they are supposed to have discovered, are embodied in allegorical writings, and their curious symbolism in the hands of ingenious interpreters is capable of several explanations, but the facts in their arduous and generally chequered careers are not allegorical, and are not capable of any mystical interpretations; consequently, the attempt to enthrone them upon the loftiest pinnacles of achievement in the psychic world, however attractive and dazzling to a romantic imagination, and however spiritually suggestive, must be regretfully abandoned. Their less splendid but substantial and permanent reputation is based on their physical discoveries and on their persistent enunciation of a theory of Universal Development, which true and far-sighted adepts well perceived, had an equal application to the triune man as to those metals which in their conception had also a triune nature.

As stated in the Introduction to this work, I have little personal doubt, after a careful and unbiassed appreciation of all the evidence, that the Magnum Opus has been performed, at least occasionally, in the past, and that, therefore, the alchemists, while laying the foundations of modern chemistry, had already transcended its highest results in the metallic kingdom. Now, the Hermetic doctrine of correspondences which is, at any rate, entitled to the sincere respect of all esoteric thinkers, will teach us that the fact of their success in the physical subject is analogically a substantial guarantee of the successful issue of parallel methods when applied in the psychic world with the subject man. But the revelations of mesmerism, and the phenomena called spiritualism, have discovered thaumaturgic possibilities for humanity, which in a wholly independent manner contribute to the verification of the alchemical hypothesis of development in its extension to the plane of intelligence. These possibilities I believe to be realizable exclusively along the lines indicated in Hermetic parables. I am not prepared to explain how the alchemical theory of Universal Development came to be evolved in the scientific and psychological twilight of the middle ages, but the fact remains. Nor am I prepared to explain how and why the method of a discredited science which is not commonly supposed to have attained its end, should not only be consistent within its own sphere, but should have a vast field of application without it; yet, again, the fact remains. I have brought a wide acquaintance with the history of modern supernaturalism to bear on the serious study of alchemy, and have found the old theories illustrated by the novel facts, while novel facts coincided with old theories. As all this has occurred, in the words of the alchemists, “by a natural process, devoid of haste or violence,” I may trust that it is no illusory discovery, and that its future enunciation may give a new impulse to the study of the Hermetic writings among the occultists of England and America.

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