Notes on Chinese Alchemy

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Abstract
Alchemy, on the rare occasions when it has been made the subject of reasonable inquiry, has usually been studied as part of what one may call the pre-history of science. But if, to use a favourite phrase, we are to see in alchemy merely “the cradle of chemistry”, are we not likely, whatever its initial charm, to lose patience with an infancy protracted through some fifteen centuries?It is certain in any case that another aspect of alchemy—its interest as a branch of cultural history—has hitherto been strangely neglected. Mr. Walter Scott, for example, omits alchemistic writings from his great edition of the Hermetica on the odd ground that they are merely “masses of rubbish”. But if texts are to be dismissed as rubbish because they contain beliefs that we cannot share, I see no reason why the religious and philosophical parts of the Hermetica (and with them many books which to-day enjoy a far wider popularity) should continue to claim attention.

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