Sun and gold are identical in the hieroglyphic mode of expression. Whoever seeks only the chemical must therefore read: The work of gold, the production of gold; and that is what thousands and millions have read. The mere word gold was enough to make countless souls blind to everything besides the gold recipe that might be found in the Smaragdine tablet. But surely there were alchemistic masters who did not let themselves be blinded by the word gold and sympathetically carried out still further the language of the Smaragdine tablet. They were the previously mentioned lofty-minded men. The covetous crowd of sloppers, however, adhered to the gold of the Smaragdine tablet and other writings and had no appreciation of anything else. For a long time alchemy meant no more for modern historians. The fact that modern chemical science is sprung from the hermetic works,—as the only branch at present clearly visible and comprehensible of this misty tree of knowledge,—has had for result that in looking back we have received a false impression. Chemical specialists have made researches in the hermetic art and have been caught just as completely in the tangle of its hieroglyphics as were the blind seekers of gold before them. The hermetic art, or alchemy in the wider sense, is not exclusively limited to gold making or even to primitive chemistry. It should, however, not be surprising to us who are acquainted with the philosophical presuppositions of alchemy, that in addition to the chemical and mechanical side of alchemy a philosophical and religious side also received consideration and care. I think, however, that such historical knowledge was not at all necessary to enable us to gather their pious views from the religious language of many masters of the hermetic art. However, this naïve childish logic was a closed book to the chemists who made historical researches. They were hindered by their special knowledge. It is far from my purpose to desire in the least to minimize the services that a Chevreul or a Kopp has performed for the history of chemistry; what I should like to draw attention to is merely that the honored fathers of the history of chemistry saw only the lower—“inferius”—and not the higher—“superius”—phase of alchemy, for example, in the Smaragdine tablet; and that they used it as the type of universal judgment in such a way that it needed a special faculty for discovery to reopen a fountain that had been choked up. I now realize that the poets have been more fortunate than the scientists. Thus Wieland, who, for example, makes Theophron say in the Musarion (Book II):