22 SCIENCE AND LIFE 



energy on the same scale as uranium, thorium and 

 radium. Such transmutations are still beyond the 

 power of man to effect, but he would be a bold 

 prophet who would declare for how long a time this 

 may remain true. 



If the ancient legend of a philosopher's stone 

 ever becomes reality, and if means are found for 

 artificially transmuting the elements, or artificially 

 increasing to a sufficient extent the natural rate of 

 their disintegration, the transmutation of the material 

 would be of little significance compared with the 

 liberation of a source of energy immensely more 

 abundant and powerful than any now available. 

 As foretold of the philosopher's stone, transmutation 

 would be, in a physical sense, the veritable elixir 

 of life. 



The gulf of ignorance which alone divides us 

 from the use and application of the new source of 

 energy would have been bridged. Exhaustion of 

 the coal-supply would no longer have any terrors, 

 for fuel and fuel-fed machines would be superseded, 

 as they in their turn have displaced animal labour. 

 The Ship of Life would have drawn out for ever from 

 the shallows and backwaters wherein it took its 

 origin, and, fairly launched on the primal tide, the 

 flood would bear it far. The story of the struggle 

 for existence on a daily modicum of sunlight, the 

 fevered existence of the moment on ever-increasing 

 draughts from a dwindling store, the meaning of 

 which was no sooner realised than it was in danger 

 of exhaustion, would become as the nightmare of 

 the past. Reality and myth would exchange places. 

 For, in sober truth, if one attempted to forecast, 

 from the experience of the past, the future of a 

 world able to draw at will upon a virtually infinite 

 supply of energy, one would be compelled to depict 

 it simply as a veritable Garden of Eden. 



