TRANSMUTATION AND THE EXPERI- 

 MENTS OF RAMSAY 



THE word transmutation evokes in our mind 

 the speculations of the alchemists, the philoso- 

 pher's stone, Raymond Lully's quinta essentia, 

 the alcahest of Paracelsus, and all the mysterious 

 elixirs which the triumphant reason of modern 

 times thinks it can condemn beyond appeal. 

 For this reason the pursuit of transmutation 

 appears to many minds, opposed to inconsequent 

 dreaming, as vain as the quest of perpetual 

 motion or of the squaring of the circle. But a 

 distinction must be drawn! If the mathe- 

 matician has the right to say " never," the 

 physicist and the chemist must be satisfied with 

 less absolute and less ambitious formulae if they 

 desire to avoid unpleasant contradictions from 

 experience. A few years ago the question of the 

 unity of matter and of the transformation of one 

 element into another was one which no one would 



dare to raise. And yet it has for some time been 



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