Archchemic

When the soul tells and tests by its own archchemic power.

[...] with one vertuous touch Th' Arch-chimic Sun ſo farr from us remote Produces with Terreſtrial Humor mixt Here in the dark ſo many precious things

We do not propose to discuss the nature of light. Newton’s theory that light consisted of infinitesimal particles of matter, afterwards gave place to the theory that light is propagated like sound by infinitesimal waves. The spectroscope upsets all these speculations, and throws new light so to speak on sunshine. We are not quite ready to agree with Steinmetz that “light is metallic, that sunshine consists of a metallic shower, and bathes us with elementary iron, rodium, magnesium, calcium, chromium, nickel, barium, copper, and sine,” but we do agree with him that all animal and vegetable life can be traced to the “archchemic sun.”

In Metaphysical Points, here is what I guess about pure and positive truths. I guess that after all reasoning and analogy, and their most palpable demonstrations of anything, we have the real satisfaction when the soul tells and tests by its own archchemic power — superior to the learnedest proofs as one glance of living sight is more than quarto volumes of description and of maps.

A fine gallery of pictures is a sort of illustration of Berkeley's Theory of Matter and Spirit. It is like a palace of thought — another universe, built of air, of shadows, of colours. Every thing seems "palpable to feeling as to sight." Substances turn to shadows by the painter's archchemic touch; shadows harden into substances. " The eye is made the fool of the other senses, or else worth all the rest.'* The material is in some sense embodied in the immaterial, or, at least, we see all things in a sort of intellectual mirror.)