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Updated: May 9, 2025
Like him, he disbelieved in the existence of any thing immaterial, for even a human soul is formed out of matter. We breathe it; all things are sustained by it. It is Life that is pregnant with vital energy, and capable of infinite transmutations. All things are produced by it; all is again resolved into it; it supports all things; it surrounds the world; it has infinitude; it has eternal motion.
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 the cerebral process. The luminous undulation and the sound-wave must both produce transmutation of the cerebral Energy in order to affect Consciousness.
Its intellectual suggestiveness is a development. The system or stream of transmutations in which my volitional activity principally takes part is that represented by the operation of the forces of Gravitation and Cohesion; the system which influences my visual sensations is a quite different series.
They are eternal, spiritual verities of human nature, and record, not only the history of the human race, its mutations and transmutations, but of the individual man and the suffering and delusive joys of his material life. Aye, more! It is the record of all his past existence and a type of his eternal destiny in the future.
I can fancy the wee sprites of earth in whatever form they happen to dwell at the moment, beetle or bumblebee, eft or elve, gathering these eagerly by scent and by sight, to store them away below ground for slow transmutations of their own.
Transmutations of the cerebral Energy may be stimulated not only from without, but by subjective impulse from within; but in either case the laws of these transmutations are the necessary form of experience, and it is the possibility of transmutation upon an internal and subjective impulse which makes possible the formation of synthetical judgments a priori.
The apex is reached when we are told that all these transmutations are effected by chance, that is, without purpose or intention. Taking all these things into consideration, we think it may, with moderation, be said, that a more absolutely incredible theory was never propounded for acceptance among men. There is no pretence that the theory can be proved. Mr. Darwin does not pretend to prove it.
It must he admitted that the alchemists could cite many instances of transmutations which seemed to lead to the conclusion, that there is no difference of kind between the metals and other substances such as water, acids, oils, resins, and wood. We are able to-day to effect a vast number of transformations wherein one substance is exchanged for another, or made to take the place of another.
Even though this partial explanation of what Professor Cope calls the "origin of the fittest" be accepted, there still remains one great life problem which the doctrine of evolution does not touch. The origin of species, genera, orders, and classes of beings through endless transmutations is in a sense explained; but what of the first term of this long series?
Here, he thought, he had discovered one of the secrets of true magic; this was the key to the symbolic transmutations of the Eastern tales. The adept could, in truth, change those who were obnoxious to him into harmless and unimportant shapes, not as in the letter of the old stories, by transforming the enemy, but by transforming himself.
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