agency of great power. From the sixth century to the thirteenth this science was cultivated with great assiduity by the Arabs in the academies which they established in Cordova and other cities of Spain; and it was from the latter region that the belief in alchemy spread to all the countries of Western Europe, gradually gaining strength up to perhaps the fifteenth century. It was during the thirteenth century that the so-called “philosophers’ stone” came to be considered the most effective agent in transmuting the baser metals into silver and gold, and there were not a few who even believed that this as yet non-existent stone possessed the power to increase longevity, to confer health, and to give a prosperous issue to one’s undertakings. It was not the rabble, but the very best and most highly educated men in the community who, during the thirteenth century, took the most active interest in alchemy and the philosophers’ stone. Arnold of Villanova, Raymund Lullus, Roger Bacon, Albertus Magnus, and, to a lesser degree, the famous theologian Thomas Aquinas were all believers in the art of the magician. And even more extraordinary than this is the fact that in Germany men of this stamp continued for two or three centuries longer to cherish a belief in the reality of alchemistic processes. Even Martin Luther (1483–1546), the great reformer, did not hesitate to express his approval of “the black art,” as is shown by the following quotation from one of his writings:-- The art of alchemy is commendable and belongs in truth to the philosophy of the ancient wise men, a fact which pleases me greatly, not merely because of the intrinsic merits and usefulness of the art in the matter of distillations of vegetables and oily fluids and sublimation of metals, but also because it serves as such a noble and beautiful symbol of the resurrection of the dead at the last day of judgment. (Berendes.) Another celebrated character who dabbled in the black art was Johannes Faust, who was born in 1485, obtained his degree of Bachelor of Arts at the University of Heidelberg, and died in 1540 in Staufen in Breisgau. Professor Scherer of Berlin says that “he was a great braggart, never failed to create a sensation wherever he went, and had the conceit and effrontery to pass himself off as a scientist among the learned men of his day. He called himself the philosopher of philosophers, a second Magus. He maintained that he was both a physician and an astrologer, and claimed that he could restore the dead to life, and could predict future events from a mere inspection of fire, air and water.”