![]() Thinking that he had been made a fool by the mad burgher’s whimsy, Helvetius returned to his own experiments in attaining the philosopher’s stone. He was disappointed to find that the grain evaporated, leaving the lead in its original state. It was his purpose only to offer him encouragement in his experiments.Īfter the man’s departure, Helvetius procured a crucible and a portion of lead, into which, when in a state of fusion, he threw the stolen grain he had secretly scraped from the alleged philosopher’s stone. It was enough that he had verified the existence of the metal to Helvetius. ![]() The stranger answered that he was not allowed to do so. He then returned the three pieces of metal to his mysterious visitor and invited him to perform the process of transmutation. The alchemist examined the pieces of metal and seeing that they were very brittle, he surreptitiously scraped off a small portion with his thumbnail. With those three bits of metal, he said, he could make as much as twenty tons of gold. The stranger immediately drew from his pocket a small ivory box, containing three pieces of metal the color of brimstone. One day in 1666 when he was working in his laboratory at the Hague, a stranger attired all in black, as befitted a respectable burgher of North Holland, appeared and informed him that he would remove all the alchemist’s doubts about the existence of the philosopher’s stone, for he himself possessed such an object. Helvetius, the grandfather of the celebrated philosopher of the same name, was an alchemist who labored ceaselessly to fathom the mystery of the “philosopher’s stone,” the legendary catalyst that would transmute base metals into gold.
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