186 SUPER-ORGANIC EVOLUTION 



Lamarck, Bory de Saint- Vincent, and, above all, 

 Darwin, who reproduced and made complete the 

 idea of his predecessors, entirely modified the idea 

 of species, admitting, according to the theory of 

 transformism, that all beings come from one simple 

 ancestral form. To-day the denomination of species 

 is admitted into natural history as a conventional 

 and relative value. 



In chemistry the same thing is going on with the 

 so-called elements or simple bodies, which, until a 

 short time ago, were considered the definitive term 

 of matter. As things are going, there will soon 

 happen in chemistry what has happened in natural 

 history : we shall return to the old conception of 

 the transmutation of bodies. The transformation 

 and equilibrium of force includes, as a necessary 

 corollary, the transformation and equilibrium of 

 matter, since force and matter form one unity, are 

 two complementary terms. 



Evolution, in coming to consider matter in all its 

 varieties as proceeding from one and the same 

 substance, has already its predecessors, as in 

 zoology and botany before the complete theory of 

 transformism appeared. 



See what Sir William Crookes says of this in 

 The Genesis of the Elements : 



"When I venture to state that the elements 

 generally accepted as such are not simple and 



