ABSTRACT
Q ui suus esse potest non sit alterius is a motto ascribed to Aureolus Phillippus Theophrastus Bombastus of Hohenheim, immortalized in occult annals as Paracelsus; and it is at least characteristic of one who, amidst all his cloud of fantasies and his terminology from a world of nightmare, was a new spirit in the age to which he belonged, a dauntless seeker in the heart of things, untrammeled by authority or tradition. But we are concerned with him only in Alchemy, and among his predecessors there were two at least whom he seems to have held in esteem and from whom he derived something. These were the Dutch Isaac, who is called the Hollander, and his son, followers in the path of Geber and of whom it has been said that their alchemical experiments are among the most explicit in the whole range of Hermetic literature. It is said also that their lives are almost unknown, for, “buried in the obscurity necessary to adepts …, their study or laboratory was the daily scene of their industrious existence”. 1 They are said in fine to have been placed by conjecture in the fifteenth century, because they cite no authorities later than Arnold, while they were acquainted with aqua fortis and aqua regia, discovered in the previous century.
