CHAPTER VIII.
THE DEGENERACY OF ALCHEMY.
I have tried to show that alchemy aimed at giving experimental proof of a certain theory of the whole system of nature, including humanity.
The practical culmination of the alchemical quest presented a threefold aspect; the alchemists sought the stone of wisdom, for by gaining that they gained the control of wealth; they sought the universal panacea, for that would give them the power of enjoying wealth and life; they sought the soul of the world, for thereby they could hold communion with spiritual existences, and enjoy the fruition of spiritual life.
The object of their search was to satisfy their material needs, their intellectual capacities, and their spiritual yearnings.

The alchemists of the nobler sort always made the first of these objects subsidiary to the other two; they gave as their reason for desiring to make gold, the hope that gold might become so common that it would cease to be sought after by mankind.

The author of _An Open Substance_ says: "Would to God ...

all men might become adepts in our art, for then gold, the common idol of mankind, would lose its value, and we should prize it only for its scientific teaching." But the desire to make gold must always have been a very powerful incentive in determining men to attempt the laborious discipline of alchemy; and with them, as with all men, the love of money was the root of much evil.

When a man became a student of alchemy merely for the purpose of making gold, and failed to make it--as he always did--it was very easy for him to pretend he had succeeded in order that he might really make gold by cheating other people.