The _Liber de Compositione Alchemiæ_ contains a Hermetic conversation between Morien, Kalid, and Galip. It appeals to the authority of Hermes, whom it states to have been the first who discovered the grand magisterium, the secret of which he transmitted to his disciples. It declares the _prima materia_ to be one, quoting the testimony of the wise king and philosopher Hercules and the adept Arsicanus, with other pseudo authorities, which discredit the date of the dialogue far more than they support the alchemical theory in question. ALBERTUS MAGNUS. The universal genius of Albert, joined to a laudable curiosity in so great a philosopher, say the original “Lives of Alchemysticall Philosophers,” did not allow him to pass by the Hermetic science without giving it due attention. Counter authorities, while admitting that in things scientific he must be counted the most curious and investigating of the children of men, emphatically assert that he has been erroneously included by demonographers among the number of magicians, and that in the twenty-one goodly folio volumes which comprise his _opera omnia_, there is no trace of sorcery. In one place he declares formally that “all those stories of demons prowling in the regions of the air, and from whom the secrets of futurity may be ascertained, are absurdities which can never be admitted by sober reason.” The works on incredible secrets, so numerously attributed to him, are, therefore, condemned as spurious, Albertus Magnus having no more hand in their production than in the invention of the cannon and the pistol, which has been attributed to him by Matthias de Luna. So early, however, as the year 1480 the Great Chronicle of Belgium records him _magnus in magia, major in philosophia, maximus in theologia_. It is futile for the historians of his order to argue that Albert never applied himself to the Hermetic art, says an anonymous writer. His books alone--those which are his incontestably--bear witness to his alchemical erudition, and as a physician he carefully examined what regards Natural History, and above all the minerals and metals. His singular experiments are recorded in the _Secretum Secretorum_, which first appeared at Venice in 1508.