Transmutation

“ The other, the so-called "transmutation" hypothesis, considers that all existing species are the result of the modification of pre-existing species, and those of their predecessors, by agencies similar to those which at the present day produce varieties and races, and therefore in an altogether natural way; and it is a probable, though not a necessary consequence of this hypothesis, that all living beings have arisen from a single stock. ”

“ How far the Doctrine of Independent Creation is opposed to the Laws now governing the Migration of Species. CHAP. 22. OBJECTIONS TO THE HYPOTHESIS OF TRANSMUTATION CONSIDERED. Statement of Objections to the Hypothesis of Transmutation founded on the Absence of Intermediate Forms. Genera of which the Species are closely allied. Occasional Discovery of the missing Links in a Fossil State. Davidson's Monograph on the Brachiopoda. Why the Gradational Forms, when found, are not accepted as Evidence of Transmutation. ”

“ The physical theory of transmutation is based on the composite character of the metals, on their generation in the bowels of the earth, and on the existence in nature of a pure and penetrating matter which applied to any substance exalts and perfects it after its own kind. ”

“ It may be thought almost paradoxical that writers who are most in favour of transmutation (Mr. C. Darwin and Dr. J. Hooker, for example) are nevertheless among those who are most cautious, and one would say timid, in their mode of espousing the doctrine of progression; while, on the other hand, the most zealous advocates of progression are oftener than not very vehement opponents of transmutation. We might have anticipated a contrary leaning on the part of both, for to what does the theory of progression point? ”

“ Yet nowhere can be found a single instance of transmutation of species. For example, if we should trace the pedigree of a horse backwards through a thousand generations we should find that the original animal was also a horse, though probably a very inferior animal. Of all the living animals and fossil remains of extinct ones, though thousands of specimens have been discovered, yet of land animals and the higher orders of creation not a single instance of transmutation can be found. ”

“ Those holding to the theory of descent, evolution, or transmutation, look upon varieties, species, subgenera, genera, families, orders, classes, and sub-kingdoms, as distinctions of merely transient importance, corresponding to the state of our information at the present time; it being assumed that by means of gradual transmutation during the course of ages all organisms have become evolved from a single primitive cell, or from a few primitive types. ”

“ These changes inconsistent with the theory of transmutation.—Lamarck, when speculating on the transmutation of species, supposed every modification in organization and instinct to be brought about slowly and insensibly in an indefinite lapse of ages. But he does not appear to have sufficiently considered how much every alteration in the physical condition of the habitable surface changes the relations of a great number of co-existing species, and that some of these would be ready instantly to avail themselves of the slightest change in their favor, and to multiply to the injury of others. ”

“ Adaptation, or transmutation is, on the other hand, essentially the consequence of material influences, which the substance of the organism experiences from the material surrounding it,—in the widest sense of the word from the160 conditions of life. The external influences of the latter are communicated to the individual parts of the body by the molecular processes of nutrition. In every act of Adaptation the individual molecular motion of the protoplasm, peculiar to each part, disturbs and modifies the whole individual, or part of it, by mechanical, physical, or chemical influences. ”

“ And although I do not yet know what it can perform in the transmutation of Metals, yet I am perswaded, that if it were fixed and rendered constant in the Fire, and made to have ingress into metals, that it would effect something in transmutation. It sufficeth me at this time to have indicated the way by which a universal Remedy against all curable Diseases, is to be prepared of the remaining scoria. He that desires to know more, let him set to his hand, and search farther ”

“ Transmutation of species.The doctrine of the transmutation of species has met with no little resistance. They who have refused to receive it as one of the truths of Nature have perhaps not given full weight to physiological evidence. When they ask, Has any one ever witnessed such an event as the transmutation of one species into another? ”

“ In the first place, that there must be a certain substratum to bodies different from themselves, is demonstrated by the transmutation of the elements into one another. For that which is changed is not altogether consumed, or, if it is, a substance is changed into a non-entity. And neither has that which is born come into existence from nothing, but it has undergone a change from one form into another. ”

“ It is precisely under this aspect that transmutation is of such inestimable value to morphology; it enables us to rise from the bare empirical knowledge of numberless isolated facts to a philosophical conception of their efficient causes. ”

“ Assuming the truth of this strange string of laboratory facts, we appear to be face to face with a phenomenon quite new in the history of the world. No one has hitherto observed the transition from one form of matter to another: though throughout the Middle Ages such a transmutation was looked for. The transmutation of elements has been suspected in modern times on evidence vaguely deducible by skilled observers from the spectroscopic details of solar and stellar appearances. ”

“ Eimer's theory, consequently, asserts that: "The essential cause of transmutation is organic growth, a definite variation, which, during long periods of time proceeds unswervingly and without reference to utility, in but few directions and is conditioned by the action of external influences, of climate and nourishment." In consequence of an interruption of orthogenesis a stoppage ensues in certain stages of the development, and this stoppage is the great cause of the arrangement of forms in different species. ”

“ Along with these observations we have to remark upon an attendant conclusion, which has an important bearing on all speculation concerning the destiny of the universe. I refer to the fact that transmutation of energy involves a deterioration and dissipation of energy. As in the history of energy, improved position adds to the advantage for the doing of work, so transmutation tends to diminish the advantage or utility of the energy for human purposes. ”

“ Lamarck, Treviranus, Erasmus Darwin, Goethe, and Saint-Hilaire preached to deaf ears, for they advanced the theory that living beings had developed by a stow process of transmutation in successive generations from simpler ancestors, and in the beginning from simplest formless matter, without being able to demonstrate any existing mechanical causes by which such development must necessarily be brought about. ”

“ T.H. Huxley.
The fixity and definite limitation of species, genera, and larger groups appear to me to be perfectly consistent with the theory of transmutation. In other words, I think TRANSMUTATION may take place without transition.
Suppose that external conditions acting on species A give rise to a new species, B ”

“ In this sense I agree with Askenasy’s “fixed” direction of variation; but not if another new physical force directing variation itself is thereby intended.57 The explanation of the phenomena does not appear to me to require such an admission, and, if unnecessary, it is certainly not legitimate. According to my view, transmutation by purely internal causes is not to be entertained. If we could absolutely suspend the changes of the external conditions of life, existing species would remain stationary. ”

“ The abrupt manner in which whole groups of species suddenly appear in certain formations, has been urged by several palæontologists — for instance, by Agassiz, Pictet, and Sedgwick — as a fatal objection to the belief in the transmutation of species. If numerous species, belonging to the same genera or families, have really started into life at once, the fact would be fatal to the theory of evolution through natural selection. For the development by this means of a group of forms, all of which are descended from some one progenitor, must have been an extremely slow process; ”

“ Transmutation therefore is, when a thing loseth its form, and is so altered, that it is altogether unlike to its former substance, and form, but assumes ano [Pg 62] ther form, another essence, another colour, another vertue, another nature, or property, as if a Metall bee made glasse, or stone: if a stone bee made a coale: if wood be made a coal: clay be made a stone, or a brick: a skin bee made glew: cloth bee made paper, and many such like things. All these are Transmutations of Naturall things. ”

“ The transmutations of the real Energy of the world beyond my organism never enter my Consciousness. Transmutations arising beyond my body only enter the presentation by influencing [99] the cerebral process. The luminous undulation and the sound-wave must both produce transmutation of the cerebral Energy in order to affect Consciousness. Yet the various characters of the transmitted impulses are distinguishable in the resultant cerebral transmutations. Thus I feel sensations of hardness, roughness, pain, colour, sound, etc. ”

“ Our scientists no longer believe that we have some eighty different elements, essentially different kinds of matter, that cannot by any chance or process be changed one {110} into another. We have seen one form of elementary matter changing into another, helium emanations becoming radium, have heard of Professor Ramsay's transmutation of various elements, and have about come to the conclusion that in the radio-active substances we have a wonderful transmuting power. ”

“ Yet the evidence of the natural transmutation of species, is, in one respect, much stronger than that of the natural transmutation of languages—in respect, namely, of there being a vastly greater number of cases all bearing testimony to the fact of genetic relationship. ”

“ Mere graduated resemblance of isolated forms does not necessarily imply such transmutation, as we see for example in the methodical progression of shape, exhibited by various crystals, and even more remarkably in the affinities which we can recognize among what we know as elementary substances. ”

“ But the true explanation of the seeming anomaly is this, that no one can believe in transmutation who is not profoundly convinced that all we know in paleontology is as nothing compared to what we have yet to learn, and they who regard the record as so fragmentary, and our acquaintance with the fragments which are extant as so rudimentary, are apt to be astounded at the confidence placed by the progressionists in data which must be defective in the extreme. But exactly in proportion as the completeness of the record and our knowledge of it are overrated, in that same degree are many progressionists unconscious of the goal towards which they are drifting. ”

“ He thought it was intolerant to say he was not on scientific grounds because he was not falling into the path which was occupied by those who maintain that all organized beings have been derived from a few original progenitors. Other supporters of the transmutation doctrine assume that they can demonstrate the changes to have taken place by showing certain degrees of resemblance; but what they never touch is the quality and condition of those few first progenitors from which they were evolved. They assume that they contained all that is necessary to evolve what exists now. ”

“ With respect to the origin of this primitive stock, or stocks, the doctrine of the origin of species is obviously not necessarily concerned. The transmutation hypothesis, for example, is perfectly consistent either with the conception of a special creation of the primitive germ, or with the supposition of its having arisen, as a modification of inorganic matter, by natural causes.
The doctrine of special creation owes its existence very largely to the supposed necessity of making science accord with the Hebrew cosmogony ”

“ The discoveries which we have attempted to describe in the preceding pages have seemed to lead to the startling conclusion that in the case of certain elements at least, the dreams of the ancient alchemists are true, for the radio-active elements all appear to be slowly but spontaneously transmuting themselves into other elements. The present indications seem to be that this transmutation which is going on in nature is a change from the heavier atoms to the lighter ones. ”

“ The theory of the origin of new species by variation will also explain why a species which has once died out never reappears, and why the fossil fauna and flora recede farther and farther from the living type in proportion as we trace it back to remoter ages. It would also account for the fact, that when we have to intercalate a new set of fossiliferous strata between two groups previously known, the newly discovered fossils serve to fill up gaps between specific or generic types previously familiar to us, supplying often the missing links of the chain, which, if transmutation is accepted, must once have been continuous. ”

“ But as the anti-transmutationists are persuaded that such limits do exist, they regard the hypothesis as simply a provisional one, and expect that it will one day be superseded by another cognate theory, which will not require us to assume the former continuousness of the links which have connected the past and present states of the organic world, or the outgoing with the incoming species. ”

“ The elements themselves are now recognised to be transmutable through simplification and rearrangement of their electronic structure, and to be evolved out of one primordial electronic unit, a unit of energy, unknowable in nature, out of the groupings and transmutations of which arise all manner of living and non-living forms, the apparently indestructible stable materials being no less in a state of flux and evolution than the most unstable. ”