ABSTRACT
The Alchemist is ostensibly about magic, though its magic does not seriously undertake to harness the occult power of the natural world, except in a satirical sense. Jonson represents the magic as a con-game which profits from the hidden desires and fantasies of natural fools. As for alchemy itself, he is sceptical of its claims as a scientific or pseudo-scientific study. Unlike the verifiable and repeatable experimentation that Bacon defines as the scientific method, the alchemical process promises to unlock the mystery of creation through ritualised experiments that depend on the practitioner's subjective quirks, rather than on objective criteria. In theory, if the alchemist can release the naturally occurring spirit or soul in matter, he can intensify its power through distillation and crystallisation until it achieves quintessence, a purer component of matter impervious to corruption and time. This potent powder is the philosopher's stone. With its immediate perfectibility of matter, the alchemist in his laboratory can imitate God, and re-create the prelapsarian universe, but without the allowance for free will, and hence without prospective flaw. All base metals 'would be gold, if they had time' (2.3.136); all life would be free of disease, struggle, and famine, all people would be good, and their dreams would come true, if only they had time to achieve perfection. With a grain of the philosopher's stone, the transformation is instant.
