It was curious to see
this heavy man, whose seriousness was always problematical, caught up by
a curious excitement.
'You've been talking of Paracelsus,' he said. 'There is one of his
experiments which the doctor has withheld from you. You will find it
neither mean nor mercenary, but it is very terrible. I do not know
whether the account of it is true, but it would be of extraordinary
interest to test it for oneself.'
He looked round at the four persons who watched him intently. There was
a singular agitation in his manner, as though the thing of which he spoke
was very near his heart.
'The old alchemists believed in the possibility of spontaneous
generation. By the combination of psychical powers and of strange
essences, they claim to have created forms in which life became
manifest. Of these, the most marvellous were those strange beings,
male and female, which were called _homunculi_. The old philosophers
doubted the possibility of this operation, but Paracelsus asserts
positively that it can be done. I picked up once for a song on a barrow
at London Bridge a little book in German.
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