MODERN ALCHEMY 87 



it appear improbable that what occurred so suddenly 

 and mysteriously in the past few centuries of re- 

 corded history may not have occurred before, not 

 once but perhaps many times during the vastly 

 longer period of which no record has yet been in- 

 terpreted. It is only right to consider the possibility 

 that the command exercised over Nature in the 

 twentieth century may have been attained, possibly 

 exceeded, previously. 



However that may be, however slender may be 

 the justification for such a view, and still more how- 

 ever fanciful it may seem to seek that justification 

 in the rigmarole of alchemical charlatans of the 

 Middle Ages, the fact remains that science to-day 

 would ascribe to the problem of the ultimate con- 

 stitution of matter, and the practical achievement of 

 the problem of the transmutation of the elements, 

 an importance and significance that cannot but be 

 flattering to the instincts of the human mind over 

 which these problems have for so long exerted a 

 most powerful fascination. 



Twenty years ago not a single valid fact was 

 known to science about transmutation. To-day we 

 may watch it going on, in the case of certain 

 elements, spontaneously before our eyes, as it 

 seems to have been going on, all unsuspected, from 

 the beginning of time. 



But till 1896 the universal experience of physical 

 and chemical science was that the atoms of the 

 chemical elements are the ultimate constituents out 

 of which matter is built up and, in all processes 

 then known and in every kind of change that 

 matter undergoes, these remain unchanged and 

 unchangeable. What did Clerk Maxwell say? 

 The words of his British Association address at 

 Bradford in 1873 have often been quoted, but they 

 are so true, not only of the knowledge of his day, 



