From the whole of which Boerhaave gathers that chemistry was thus originally denominated because it was considered of old as “not fit to be divulged to the populace, but treasured up as a religious _secret_.” If we are to credit Zozimus the Panopolite, who is said to have lived about the beginning of the fifth century, there were sound reasons for thus treasuring up chemistry as a religious secret, since, as it sprang from the _pretium amoris_, its origin was not too reputable. “What the divine writings relate is that the angels, enflamed with the desire of women, instructed ’em in all the works and mysteries of nature. For which indiscretion they were excluded heaven, as having taught men things unfit for ’em to know.” And Scaliger asserts that “Hermes testifies as much; and all our learning, both open and occult, confirms the account.” But who Hermes was, adds that author, is hard to say, for none of his writings has survived to our age, “that lately published in Italy under the name of _Hermes Trismegistus_ being a manifest forgery.” This legend of the “feministic” origin of chemistry is in reality much older than the fifth century of our era, and is but a variant of that which, according to Jewish writers, led to the expulsion of man from Paradise. A similar myth was current among the Phœnicians, Persians, Greeks, and Magi. We trace it in the legend of Sibylla, who demanded, as the price of her favour to Phœbus, not only length of years, but a knowledge of the divine _arcanum_. Some of the ecclesiastics who elaborated these myths are particular in their accounts of the mysteries thus imparted. They included the use of charms, a knowledge of gold and silver and precious stones, the art of dyeing, of painting the eyebrows, etc.—the kind of _arcana_, in fact, which women in all ages were presumably most keen to know. It is, however, significant that in all allusions to _chemia_, even after the translation of the seat of the Roman Empire to Constantinople, it is implied that a knowledge of it was a sacred mystery to be known only to the priesthood, and jealously guarded by them. It was characteristic of writers who had affixed an eternal stigma on Eve to make the sex in general answerable for an illicit knowledge of “things unfit for men to know.” For, in reality, chemistry originated with men, and it was not so much in the love of women as of wine that it took its rise.