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philosophers' stone
[tr. med.L. lapis philosophorum, the stone of the philosophers (see philosopher 2), also lapis philosophicus, -icalis; in F. pierre philosophale, Ger. der Stein der Weisen. See Note below.]
1. A reputed solid substance or preparation supposed by the alchemists to possess the property of changing other metals into gold or silver, the discovery of which was the supreme object of alchemy. Being identified with the elixir, it had also, according to some, the power of prolonging life indefinitely, and of curing all wounds and diseases.
c1386Chaucer Can. Yeom. Prol. & T. 309 The Philosophres stoon, Elixer clept, we sechen faste echoon. 1590Nashe Pasquil's Apol. Wks. (Grosart) I. 219 The Philosophers stone to turne mettles into gold is yet to seeke. 1611Bible Transl. Pref. 3 Men talke..of the Philosophers stone, that it turneth copper into gold. 1670Pettus Fodinæ Reg. 44 Henry VI..did then grant 4 successive Patents and Commissions to several Knights..and Mass-priests..to find out the Philosophers stone. 1706Phillips, Transmutation of Metals, among Alchymists, is what they call the Grand Operation or Secret of finding the Philosophers-Stone, which they give out to be so curious an Universal Seed of all Metals, That if any Metal be melted in a Crucible, and then a little of this Stone or Powder of Projection, be put into the melted Metal, 'twill immediately change it into Gold or Silver. 1768–74Tucker Lt. Nat. (1834) II. 79 How many profitable discoveries in chymistry have taken birth from that whimsical notion of finding the philosopher's stone? 1864Burton Scot Abr. I. iii. 145 He was in search of the philosopher's stone.
b. transf. and fig.
1610B. Jonson Alch. i. i, I will haue A booke, but barely reckoning thy impostures Shall proue a true philosophers stone, to printers. 1643Sir T. Browne Relig. Med. i. §46, I am half of opinion that Antichrist is the Philosopher's Stone in Divinity. 1856R. A. Vaughan Mystics (1860) II. 94 [Behmen] declared that the true Philosopher's Stone..was ‘the new life in Christ Jesus’.
2. An artificial gem so called.
1879Cassell's Techn. Educ. IV. 310/1 France is clever at producing..shams, and a perfect thing called the philosopher's-stone which..has a very beautiful and gem-like appearance, is imported from there.
[Note. Lapis philosophorum occurs in works attributed to Raymund Lully (1234–1315), and in those of Arnoldus de Villa Nova (1240–1314). Probably it was used earlier; it appears in various mediæval works of uncertain age or doubtful authenticity; e.g. in the Clavis Majoris Sapientiæ attributed to Artefius or Artesius, whose date has been put by some c 1130. In some of these also we find lapis philosophicus, l. philosophicalis. But the earlier works (e.g. the mediæval Latin De Investigatione Perfecti Magisterii), passing as translated from Geber (Abu Musa Ja'far al-Sufi), usually refer to it simply as Lapis ‘the Stone’, or noster lapis ‘our stone’. Albertus Magnus (1205–82), who doubted the transmutation of metals, refers to it as lapis quem philosophi laudant ubique, ‘the stone which the philosophers everywhere laud’, and lapis quem honorant philosophi. It is thus possible that philosophorum originated later, as an identifying adjunct to lapis, as if ‘the Stone, of which all the philosophers speak’, ‘the Stone of the philosophers’, and that the descriptive phrase grew at length into a specific name or title. It will be seen that the correct form is not philosopher's, but philosophers' stone.] |