§ =103.= We have shown that modern science indicates the essential truth of alchemistic doctrine, and our task is ended. Writing in 1904, Sir William Ramsay said: “If these hypotheses [concerning the possibility of causing the atoms of ordinary elements to absorb energy] are just, then the transmutations of the elements no longer appears an idle dream. The philosopher’s stone will have been discovered, and it is not beyond the bounds of possibility that it may lead to that other goal of the philosophers of the dark ages--the _elixir vitæ_. For the action of living cells is also dependent on the nature and direction of the energy which they contain; and who can say that it will be impossible to control their action, when the means of imparting and controlling energy shall have been investigated?”[131] Whatever may be the final verdict concerning his own experiments, those of Sir Ernest Rutherford, referred to in the Preface to the present edition, demonstrate the fact of transmutation; and it is worth noticing how many of the alchemists’ obscure descriptions of their Magistery well apply to that marvellous something which we call Energy, the true “First Matter” of the Universe. And of the other problem, the _Elixir Vitæ_, who knows?
[131] Sir WILLIAM RAMSAY: “Radium and its Products,” _Harper’s Magazine_ (December 1904), vol. xlix. (European Edition), p. 57.
_Works by H. STANLEY REDGROVE, B.Sc. (Lond.), F.C.S._
=ON THE CALCULATION OF THERMO-CHEMICAL CONSTANTS.= (Arnold, 1909, 6s. net.)
=MATTER, SPIRIT AND THE COSMOS: Some Suggestions towards a better Understanding of the Whence and Why of their Existence.= (Rider, Popular Edition, 1916, 1s. net.)
=A MATHEMATICAL THEORY OF SPIRIT.= Being an Attempt to employ certain Mathematical Principles in the Elucidation of some Metaphysical Problems. (Rider, 1912, 2s. 6d. net.)
=EXPERIMENTAL MENSURATION.= An Elementary Text-Book of Inductive Geometry. (Heinemann, 1912, 2s. 6d. net.)
=THE MAGIC OF EXPERIENCE.= A Contribution to the Theory of Knowledge. With an Introduction by Sir WILLIAM F. BARRETT, F.R.S. (Dent, 1916. _Out of print._)
=BYGONE BELIEFS.= A Series of Excursions in the Byways of Thought. (Rider, 1920, 10s. 6d. net.)
=PURPOSE AND TRANSCENDENTALISM.= An Exposition of Swedenborg’s Philosophical Doctrine in Relation to Modern Thought. (Kegan Paul, 1920, 5s. net.)