Catholic Churchmen in Science. First Series. James Joseph Walsh

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СКАЧАТЬ style="font-size:15px;">      BASIL VALENTINE, FOUNDER OF MODERN CHEMISTRY

      The Protestant tradition which presumes a priori that no good can possibly have come out of the Nazareth of the times before the Reformation, and especially the immediately preceding century, has served to obscure to an unfortunate degree the history of several hundred years extremely important in every department of education. Strange as it may seem to those unfamiliar with the period, it is in that department which is supposed to be so typically modern the–physical sciences–that this neglect is most serious. Such a hold has this Protestant tradition on even educated minds that it is a source of great surprise to most people to be told that there were in many parts of Europe original observers in the physical sciences all during the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries who were doing ground-breaking work of the highest value, work that was destined to mean much for the development of modern science. Speculations and experiments with regard to the philosopher's stone and the transmutation of metals are supposed to fill up all the interests of the alchemists of those days. As a matter of fact, however, men were making original observations of very profound significance, and these were considered so valuable by their contemporaries that, though printing had not yet been invented, even the immense labor involved in copying large folio volumes by hand did not suffice to deter them from multiplying the writings of these men and thus preserving them for future generations, until the printing-press came to perpetuate them.

      At the beginning of the twentieth century, with some of the supposed foundations of modern chemistry crumbling to pieces under the influences of the peculiarly active light thrown upon older chemical theories by the discovery of radium and the radio-active elements generally, there is a reawakening of interest in some of the old-time chemical observers whose work used to be laughed at as so unscientific and whose theory of the transmutation of elements into one another was considered so absurd. The idea that it would be impossible under any circumstances to convert one element into another belongs entirely to the nineteenth century. Even so distinguished a mind as that of Newton, in the preceding century, could not bring itself to acknowledge the modern supposition of the absurdity of metallic transformation, but, on the contrary, believed very firmly in this as a basic chemical principle and confessed that it might be expected to occur at any time. He had seen specimens of gold ores in connexion with metallic copper, and had concluded that this was a manifestation of the natural transformation of one of these yellow metals into the other.

      With the discovery that radium transforms itself into helium, and that indeed all the so-called radio-activities of the very heavy metals are probably due to a natural transmutation process constantly at work, the ideas of the older chemists cease entirely to be a subject for amusement. The physical chemists of the present day are very ready to admit that the old teaching of the absolute independence of something over seventy elements is no longer tenable, except as a working hypothesis. The doctrine of matter and form taught for so many centuries by the scholastic philosophers which proclaimed that all matter is composed of two principles, an underlying material substratum and a dynamic or informing principle, has now more acknowledged verisimilitude, or lies at least closer to the generally accepted ideas of the most progressive scientists, than it has at any time for the last two or three centuries. Not only the great physicists, but also the great chemists, are speculating along lines that suggest the existence of but one form of matter, modified according to the energies that it possesses under a varying physical and chemical environment. This is, after all, only a restatement in modern terms of the teaching of St. Thomas of Aquin in the thirteenth century.

      It is not surprising, then, that there should be a reawakening of interest in the lives of some of the men who, dominated by the earlier scholastic ideas and by the tradition of the possibility of finding the philosopher's stone, which would transmute the baser metals into the precious metals, devoted themselves with quite as much zeal as any modern chemist to the observation of chemical phenomena. One of the most interesting of these–indeed he might well be said to be the greatest of the alchemists–is the man whose only name that we know is that which appears on a series of manuscripts written in the High German dialect of the end of the fifteenth and the beginning of the sixteenth century. That name is Basil Valentine, and the writer, according to the best historical traditions, was a Benedictine monk. The name Basil Valentine may only have been a pseudonym, for it has been impossible to trace it among the records of the monasteries of the time. That the writer was a monk there seems to be no doubt, for his writings in manuscript and printed form began to have their vogue at a time when there was little likelihood of their being attributed to a monk unless an indubitable tradition connected them with some monastery.

      This Basil Valentine (to accept the only name we have), as we can judge very well from his writings, eminently deserves the designation of the last of the alchemists and the first of the chemists. There is practically a universal recognition of the fact now that he deserves also the title of Founder of Modern Chemistry, not only because of the value of the observations contained in his writings, but also because of the fact that they proved so suggestive to certain scientific geniuses during the century succeeding Valentine's life. Almost more than to have added to the precious heritage of knowledge for mankind is it a boon for a scientific observer to have awakened the spirit of observation in others and to be the founder of a new school of thought. This Basil Valentine undoubtedly did.

      Besides, his work furnishes evidence that the investigating spirit was abroad just when it is usually supposed not to have been, for the Thuringian monk surely did not do all his investigating alone, but must have received as well as given many a suggestion to his contemporaries.

      In the history of education there are two commonplaces that are appealed to oftener than any other as the sources of material with regard to the influence of the Catholic Church on education during the centuries preceding the Reformation. These are the supposed idleness of the monks, and the foolish belief in the transmutation of metals and the search for the philosopher's stone which dominated the minds of so many of the educated men of the time. It is in Germany especially that these two features of the pre-Reformation period are supposed to be best illustrated. In recent years, however, there has come quite a revolution in the feelings even of those outside of the Church with regard to the proper appreciation of the work of the monastic scholars of these earlier centuries. Even though some of them did dream golden dreams over their alembics, the love of knowledge meant more to them, as to the serious students of any age, than anything that might be made by it. As for their scientific beliefs, if there can be a conversion of one element into another, as seems true of radium, then the possibility of the transmutation of metals is not so absurd as, for a century or more, it has seemed; and it is not impossible that at some time even gold may be manufactured out of other metallic materials.

      Of course, a still worthier change of mind has come over the attitude of educators because of the growing sense of appreciation for the wonderful work of the monks of the Middle Ages, and even of those centuries that are supposed to show least of the influence of these groups of men who, forgetting material progress, devoted themselves to the preservation and the cultivation of the things of the spirit. The impression that would consider the pre-Reformation monks in Germany as unworthy of their high calling in the great mass is almost entirely without foundation. Obscure though the lives of most of them were, many of them rose above their environment in such a way as to make their work landmarks in the history of progress for all time.

      Because their discoveries are buried in the old Latin folios that are contained only in the best libraries, not often consulted by the modern scientist, it is usually thought that the scientific investigators of these centuries before the Reformation did no work that would be worth while considering in our present day. It is only some one who goes into this matter as a labor of love who will consider it worth his while to take the trouble seriously to consult these musty old tomes. Many a scholar, however, has found his labor well rewarded by the discovery of many an anticipation of modern science in these volumes so much neglected and where such treasure-trove is least expected. Professor Clifford Allbutt, the Regius Professor of physics at the University of Cambridge, in his address on "The Historical Relations of Medicine СКАЧАТЬ