Philosopher's Stone

The Philosopher's Stone is a legendary alchemical substance that appears in the early intellectual formation of Victor Frankenstein, representing the occult and discredited tradition of natural philosophy that he first embraced before turning to the modern science that would lead to his ruin. As a boy of thirteen, Victor chanced upon a volume of Cornelius Agrippa, and his father's dismissive remark—"Ah! Cornelius Agrippa! My dear Victor, do not waste your time upon this; it is sad trash"—only deepened his fascination. He soon procured the works of Paracelsus and Albertus Magnus, and under the guidance of these "new preceptors" he entered with the greatest diligence into the search for the philosopher's stone and the elixir of life. Wealth was an inferior object to him; what glory would attend the discovery if he could banish disease from the human frame and render man invulnerable to any but a violent death! These were the dreams of a self-taught youth, guided by an ardent imagination and childish reasoning, until a violent thunderstorm near Belrive shattered an old oak and a visiting natural philosopher's explanation of electricity and galvanism overthrew the lords of his imagination, making him set down natural history as a deformed and abortive creation.

The Philosopher's Stone as a Symbol of Outmoded Knowledge

The Philosopher's Stone functions in the novel as the emblem of an entire system of thought that Victor must reject before he can pursue the dangerous knowledge that will define his life. When he arrives at the University of Ingolstadt, Professor M. Krempe, a squat man with a gruff voice, asks him about his progress in natural philosophy. Victor carelessly mentions the names of his alchemists, and the professor stares in disbelief: "Have you," he said, "really spent your time in studying such nonsense?" He tells Victor that every minute wasted on those books is utterly and entirely lost, that he has burdened his memory with exploded systems and useless names. "I little expected, in this enlightened and scientific age, to find a disciple of Albertus Magnus and Paracelsus." Victor is not disappointed, for he had long considered those authors useless, but he is not inclined to recur to these studies. It is only when he hears Professor M. Waldman's lecture—a panegyric upon modern chemistry—that Victor's soul is seized with a new purpose. Waldman says that the ancient teachers of this science promised impossibilities and performed nothing, while the modern masters, whose hands seem only made to dabble in dirt, have indeed performed miracles. Victor's mind is filled with one thought, one conception, one purpose: "So much has been done," exclaimed the soul of Frankenstein—"more, far more, will I achieve." The Philosopher's Stone, with its promise of transmutation and immortality, is thus superseded by the real, practical powers of modern chemistry, yet the ambition it once kindled in Victor never dies—it merely finds a new, more terrible object.

The Stone's Legacy in Victor's Character

Though Victor abandons the search for the Philosopher's Stone, the pattern of thought it represents—the desire to penetrate the secrets of nature, to achieve what no one has achieved before, to transcend the ordinary limits of human power—remains the driving force of his life. The alchemists' quest for the stone and the elixir of life was a quest for wealth and immortality; Victor's quest for the principle of life is a quest for godlike creative power. He says of his early studies: "I read and studied the wild fancies of these writers with delight; they appeared to me treasures known to few besides myself." This sense of possessing a secret knowledge, of being set apart from ordinary men, is exactly what he feels when he discovers the secret of bestowing animation upon lifeless matter. The Philosopher's Stone, then, is not merely a discarded object of youthful folly; it is the prototype of Victor's entire scientific enterprise, the first expression of that ambition which, swelling as it proceeded, became the torrent that swept away all his hopes and joys. The stone's promise of unlimited power and transcendence is the same promise that leads Victor to create the monster, and the same promise that destroys him. In this sense, the Philosopher's Stone is the ghost that haunts Victor's entire career—the dream of power without responsibility, of knowledge without wisdom, that is the true subject of Mary Shelley's cautionary tale.