"Transmutation" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the episcopal church on Sundays, and sat where he could see Mysie—sat longing and thirsting ever till the music returned. Yet the music he never heard; he watched only its transmutation into form, never taking his eyes off Mysie's face. Reflected thence in a metamorphosed echo, he followed all its changes. Never was one powerless to produce it more strangely responsive to its influence. She had no voice; she had ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... equilibrium with its surroundings. Not only is this struggle manifest among living forms, among birds and beasts and insects in their competition for food and habitat, but—if we may believe the revelations of the science of radio-activity—a process of transmutation, of disintegration of the atoms of one element with simultaneous formation of another element, is taking place in every fragment of inanimate matter, a process which parallels in character the more transitory processes of life and death in organisms and is probably a representation of the primary ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... a philosophy deeper than that of transmutation!" said the doctor. "I give it up. But what is the philosophy in this case?—" and he ...
— Say and Seal, Volume II • Susan Warner
... remains unanswerable; 'The Age of Chivalry is gone,' and could not but go, having now produced the still more indomitable Age of Hunger. Altars enough, of the Dubois-Rohan sort, changing to the Gobel-and-Talleyrand sort, are faring by rapid transmutation to, shall we say, the right Proprietor of them? French Game and French Game-Preservers did alight on the Cliffs of Dover, with cries of distress. Who will say that the end of much is not come? A set of mortals has risen, ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... ship Arcot gave to an official of the city who had appeared. The Venonian looked at the thing skeptically, and half expecting it to vanish like the tools that made it, gingerly entered the port. Powered as it was by lead burning cosmic ray generators, the lead alone having been made by transmutation of natural matter, it was powerful, and speedy. The official entered it, and finding it still existing, tried it out. Much to his amazement it ...
— Invaders from the Infinite • John Wood Campbell
... the body, our perceptions can continue; but almost the only thing we are really conscious of is our own identity, our sharp separation from the mass of phenomena that are not ourselves. And, if an emotion can survive the transmutation of the entire frame, may it not also survive ...
— The Thread of Gold • Arthur Christopher Benson
... would imply that the mind exists as a force, independent of the brain; but the mind is produced by the brain substance; and intellectual force, if we may term the intellect a force, can be produced only by the transmutation of a certain amount of matter; there can be no intelligence without ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... that which we have just dealt with. In radio-active elements, such as uranium for example, the element is breaking down; in what we call radio-activity we have a manifestation of the spontaneous change of elements. What is really taking place is a transmutation of one element into another, from a heavier to a lighter. The element uranium spontaneously becomes radium, and radium passes through a number of other stages until it, in turn, becomes lead. Each descending ...
— The Outline of Science, Vol. 1 (of 4) - A Plain Story Simply Told • J. Arthur Thomson
... the public for some thirty years, Lyell, though the keenest and most formidable of the opponents of the transmutation theory, as it was formulated by Lamarck, was of the greatest possible service in facilitating the reception of the sounder doctrines of a later day. And, in like fashion, another vehement opponent of the transmutation of species, the elder Agassiz, ...
— The Advance of Science in the Last Half-Century • T.H. (Thomas Henry) Huxley
... filiation that the Son by generation should attain to the possession of the perfection of the nature which is in the Father, in the same way as it is in the Father Himself. But since in men generation is a certain kind of transmutation of one proceeding from potentiality to act, it follows that a man is not equal at first to the father who begets him, but attains to equality by due growth, unless owing to a defect in the principle of generation it should happen otherwise. From what precedes (Q. 27, A. 2; ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I (Prima Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas
... his father's old weather-beaten farmhouse. The exterior was of marble, so dazzlingly white that it seemed as though the whole structure might melt away in the sunshine, like those humbler ones which Mr. Gathergold, in his young play-days, before his fingers were gifted with the touch of transmutation, had been accustomed to build of snow. It had a richly ornamented portico supported by tall pillars, beneath which was a lofty door, studded with silver knobs, and made of a kind of variegated wood that had been brought from beyond the sea. The windows, ...
— The Great Stone Face - And Other Tales Of The White Mountains • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... of rivers, and of the power of cataracts, tides, and winds, into vito-magnetic or electrical fluid; the transportation of this fluid to any locality through wire or cable; and its final transmutation into light, heat, or mechanical force sufficient for all work, are ...
— New and Original Theories of the Great Physical Forces • Henry Raymond Rogers
... present from the very beginning as the condition of becoming conscious of anything, yet remains in constant change. Impressions pour in through the senses, enter the Whole that is already present; they drop their content into that Whole by means of the senses, and the miracle of transmutation, entirely mysterious, takes place. ...
— An Interpretation of Rudolf Eucken's Philosophy • W. Tudor Jones
... which suggests itself all the more forcibly when we find him, a few years later, setting about the composition of a conventional lament in this mode on a young college acquaintance, and producing, through his power of alchemical transmutation, one of the greatest works of art ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... "Transmutation," remarked Prescott, "was, as you know, finally declared to be a scientific absurdity in the eighteenth century. But I may say that it is no longer so regarded. I do not ask you to believe anything until you have seen; all I ask is that you maintain ...
— The Poisoned Pen • Arthur B. Reeve
... superior. Now these transmutations and conversions are symbolized in the wheel of metamorphosis, where man sits on the upper part, a beast lies at the bottom, a half-man, half-beast descends from the left, and a half-beast, half-man ascends from the right. This transmutation is shown where Jove, according to the diversity of the affections and the behaviour of those towards inferior things, invests himself with divers figures, entering into the form of beasts; and so also the other gods transmigrate into base ...
— The Heroic Enthusiasts,(1 of 2) (Gli Eroici Furori) - An Ethical Poem • Giordano Bruno
... poverty and hunger-pinched dejection? Little aid from theatrical costume: the clothes seemed the same, only to have grown wondrous aged and rusty. The face, the figure, the man,—these had undergone a transmutation beyond the art of the mere stage wardrobe, be it ever so amply stored, to effect. But for the patch over the eye, you could not have recognized Mr. Chapman. There was, indeed, about him, still, an air of dignity; but it was the dignity of woe,—a dignity, too, not of an affable civilian, ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... connect themselves with other men; and though this is carrying delicacy far indeed, it reads to Christian wives a lesson not unworthy of their attention; for, though it is not desirable that their bodies should be turned into handfuls of ashes, even that transmutation were preferable to that infidelity which fixes the brand of shame on the cheeks of their parents, their children, and on those of all who ...
— Advice to Young Men • William Cobbett
... of uncommon powers, from the confidence of those, who having already done much, are easily persuaded that they can do more. When Rowley had completed the orrery, he attempted the perpetual motion; when Boyle had exhausted the secrets of vulgar chymistry, he turned his thoughts to the work of transmutation[1]. ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... were at first those of his family. But be, like Harley, became, merely from the vehemence of his Whiggism, an ally of the Tories, and might, perhaps, like Harley, have been completely metamorphosed into a Tory, if the process of transmutation had not been interrupted by death. Foley's abilities were highly respectable, and had been improved by education. He was so wealthy that it was unnecessary for him to follow the law as a profession; but he had studied it carefully as a science. His morals were ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... exquisite things," said Lucian to himself. He could almost imagine the magic transmutation of the senses accomplished, the strong sunlight was an odor in his nostrils; it poured down in the white marble and the palpitating roses like a flood. The sky was a glorious blue, making the heart joyous, and the eyes could rest in the dark ...
— The Hill of Dreams • Arthur Machen
... a God so immersed in nature as to be not its intelligent guide, but only its unconscious soul; the whole universe proceeding according to an order which is just as much above God's knowledge as above ours. Now, the best geologists assure us that there is no evidence in support of the transmutation of species. Mr. Darwin's theory of the formation of species by natural selection is this: In the struggle for life, the strongest and best adapted animal lives, the rest die. This animal transmits to its offspring its own superior ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke
... were."[421] The reader, whose curiosity may lead him to consult the authorities collected by Cudworth (pp. 185-188), will find in the doctrine of Anaximander a rude anticipation of the modern theories of "spontaneous generation" and "the transmutation of species." In the fragments of Anaximander that remain we find no recognition of an ordering Mind, and his philosophy is the dawn ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... in which whole groups of species suddenly appear in certain formations, has been urged by several palaeontologists—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 ...
— On the Origin of Species - 6th Edition • Charles Darwin
... being put into a Pudding, and convey'd away in a Tinker's Budget; which is design'd by our Author to prove, if it is understood literally, That the greatest Men are subject to Misfortunes. But it is thought by Dr. B—tly to be all Mythology, and to contain the Doctrine of the Transmutation of Metals, and is design'd to shew, that all Matter is the same, tho' very differently Modified. He tells me, he intends to publish a distinct Treatise of this Canto; and I don't question, but he'll manage the Dispute ...
— Parodies of Ballad Criticism (1711-1787) • William Wagstaffe
... progress in the transmutation of nitrous air, in these circumstances, less remarkable. For when it has been brought to the state last mentioned, the agitation of it in fresh water almost instantly takes off that peculiar kind of inflammability, so that it extinguishes a candle, retaining its noxious quality. ...
— Experiments and Observations on Different Kinds of Air • Joseph Priestley
... evolution theory, on the ground that "species, genera, families, &c., exist as thoughts, individuals as facts,"[288] and he offers the dilemma, "If species do not exist at all, as the supporters of the transmutation theory maintain, how can they vary? and if individuals alone exist, how can the differences which may be observed among them ...
— On the Genesis of Species • St. George Mivart
... republic, every great industry is to be a democratic republic within the State; our community is to become a conflict of inter-woven governments of workers, incapable of progressive changes of method or of extension or transmutation of function, the whole being of a man is to lie within his industrial specialisation, and, upon lines of causation not made clear, wages are to go on rising and hours of work are to go on falling.... There ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... Hindus, very far. But they apparently felt no interest in the poets, orators, and historians of antiquity. In the study of Aristotle, and in metaphysical philosophy, they were proficients. Medicine, also, they cultivated with success. They delved in Alchemy in the search for the transmutation of metals. ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... told you a portion of his history. But he did not tell you that his continued failures in his search after the secret of metallic transmutation nearly killed him. Two years ago he was on the verge of the grave, working every day at his mad pursuit, and every day growing weaker and more emaciated. I saw that if his mind was not relieved in some way he would die. The thought ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... furnace were all melted, to find them converted into a mass of solid gold, which proved, on assay, to be of the purest quality. Every one was questioned as to what he had cast into the furnace, when there appeared no reason to suppose the transmutation could have been effected by such an accidental mixture of metals. At length it was remarked, that a dervish, accompanying the barber's son, had cast in a lump of ore, and immediately disappeared. Upon ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... how it dissolves some, and hardens others; how it can consume almost all, or convert them into ashes and smoak: and last of all, how of those ashes, by the only violence of its action, it forms glass. For this transmutation of ashes into glass, seeming to me to be as admirable as any other operation in Nature, I particularly took ...
— A Discourse of a Method for the Well Guiding of Reason - and the Discovery of Truth in the Sciences • Rene Descartes
... Darwinian Theory of the Transmutation of Species examined by a Graduate of the University of Cambridge. Second ...
— Life of Charles Darwin • G. T. (George Thomas) Bettany
... is inconceivable that Congress should for long content itself with an abode which, without being venerable, is simply out of date. The main architectural proportions of the interior are dignified enough. What is wanted is merely the transmutation of stucco into marble, painted pine into oak, and pseudo-Italian arabesques into American frescoes and mosaics. Why should Congress itself be more meanly housed than ...
— America To-day, Observations and Reflections • William Archer
... affirmative ought at least to mark the boundary between authorized and usurped innovations; between that degree of change which lies within the compass of ALTERATIONS AND FURTHER PROVISIONS, and that which amounts to a TRANSMUTATION of the government. Will it be said that the alterations ought not to have touched the substance of the Confederation? The States would never have appointed a convention with so much solemnity, nor described its objects with so much ...
— The Federalist Papers • Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison
... late Washington preached to his overseers the value of fertilization; in one case, when looking for a new overseer, he said the man must be, "above all, Midas like, one who can convert everything he touches into manure, as the first transmutation towards gold;—in a word one who can bring worn out and gullied Lands into good tilth in the shortest time." Equally emphatic was his urging of constant ploughing and grubbing, and he even invented a deep soil plough, which he used till he found a better one in the ...
— The True George Washington [10th Ed.] • Paul Leicester Ford
... nourishment by vapours and exhalations, wherewith Heraclitus said, the Stoics proved, Cicero maintained, they were cherished and alimented. There would likewise be in such a world no manner of symbolization, alteration, nor transmutation amongst the elements; for the one will not esteem itself obliged to the other, as having borrowed nothing at all from it. Earth then will not become water, water will not be changed into air, of air will be made no fire, and fire will afford no heat unto the ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... the ocean, were afterwards increased to that amazing height by the snow that fell upon them*. But that all frozen sea-water would thaw into fresh, had either never been asserted, or had met with little credit. This is certain that Captain Cook expected no such transmutation, and therefore was agreeably surprised to find he had one difficulty less to encounter, that of preserving the health of his men so long on salt-provisions, with a scanty allowance of corrupted water, or what he could procure by distillation ...
— A Voyage Towards the South Pole and Round the World Volume 2 • James Cook
... extensively diffused through different lichen species." Dr. L. entered somewhat minutely on the chemical reactions of the better known colorific and coloring principles, and their derivatives, so far at least as these throw any light on the production and transmutation of the red or purple colors extracted from what may be termed par excellence, the dye-lichens. After a few remarks on the chemical constitution of orchil and litmus, as given by Kane, Gelis, Pereira, and others, he discussed the subject ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds
... saw Him look up when He had placed the crown on His Mother's head; she heard Him sing a few notes, and then the saints began to sing. The window filled up with song and colour, and all along the window there was a continual transmutation of colour and song. The figures grew taller, and they breathed extraordinary life. It sang like a song within them, and it flowed about them and out of them in a sort of pearl-coloured mist. The vision clove the church along and across, and through it she could see ...
— The Untilled Field • George Moore
... yet, working backwards, it is perfect." F-1 floated motionless on its anti-gravity drive. Suddenly, force shafts gleamed out, tentacles became writhing masses of rubber-covered metal, weaving in some infinite pattern, weaving in flashing speed, while the whirr of air sucked into a transmutation field, whined and howled about the writhing mass. Fierce beams of force drove and pushed at a rapidly materializing something, while the hum of the powerful generators within the shining cylinder of ...
— The Last Evolution • John Wood Campbell
... fashions of their day, their stuff, though artistic rubbish, would now be an historical gold-mine. If only they had been Friths instead of being Alma Tademas! But photography has made impossible any such transmutation of modern rubbish. Therefore it must be confessed that pictures in the Frith tradition are grown superfluous; they merely waste the hours of able men who might be more profitably employed in works of a wider beneficence. Still, they are not unpleasant, ...
— Art • Clive Bell
... down to table, but was so occupied with her grief for the blighted roses that she did not even notice the wonderful transmutation of her china bowl. Perhaps this was all the better; for Marygold was accustomed to take pleasure in looking at the queer figures, and strange trees and houses, that were painted on the circumference of the bowl; and these ornaments were now entirely ...
— Myths That Every Child Should Know - A Selection Of The Classic Myths Of All Times For Young People • Various
... and others have negatived the theory of Lamarcke as to the transmutation of species. The "nisus formativus" is admitted, but admitted with limits, "quos ultra citraque ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844 • Various
... letters of the alphabet, that they are not even syllables. The way in which the so-called elements are built up out of molecules corresponding in their configuration to the regular solids, and the explanations of their transmutation into one another based on the geometrical construction of these figures, is apt to strike the average reader as fantastic, but one of the most distinguished living mathematicians and physicists has stated that he is struck most of all by ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... they say that he responds better to their fiendish practices when the body is well-nigh reduced to a shadow. Oh, I hear them talk! My father is a dabbler in mystic arts. They are luring him on to think he will one day learn the secret of the transmutation of metals, whilst I know they do but seek to make of him a tool, to subdue his will, and to do with him what they will. They will strive to practise next on me — they have tried it already; but I resist them, and they are powerless, ...
— In the Days of Chivalry • Evelyn Everett-Green
... and woefull Tragedie, Of the Rhodian feareful oppugnation, To all estates complaining ruthfully Of thine estate, and sudden transmutation: Excusing me if in thy translation Ought be amisse in language or in werke, I me submit with their supportation, To be correct, that am so ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, - and Discoveries of The English Nation, v5 - Central and Southern Europe • Richard Hakluyt
... shown that the Pterichthys which once lived and moved on this ancient globe of ours ever either rose or sunk into the Pterichthys of Mr. Dinkel, freely and fully to confess, not only the possibility, but also the actuality, of the transmutation of both species and genera. I am first, however, prepared to demonstrate, before any competent jury of Palaeontologists in the world, that not a single plate or scale of Mr. Dinkel's restoration represents those of the fish which he professed to restore; that the same ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... to Colchis is by some supposed to have been the name of the ship in which he embarked. The fleece of gold is thought to represent the immense treasures he bore away from Thebes. The alchemists of the fifteenth century were firmly convinced that the Golden Fleece was a treatise on the transmutation of metals, ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... Philosophers, if e're you made A transmutation it was through mine aid, Ye silver Smiths, your Ure I do refine What mingled lay with Earth I cause to shine, But let me leave these things, my fame aspires To match on high with the Celestial fires; The Sun an Orb of fire was held of old, Our Sages new another tale have told; ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell
... enchanted us with his violin. But Italy knows him as an expert in the plastic arts, and Germany admires in him a master in chemical science. In France, where he was supposed to possess the secret of the transmutation of metals, the police for two years sought and failed to find any normal source of his opulence. A lady of forty-five once swallowed a whole bottle of his elixir. Nobody recognised her, for she had become a girl of sixteen without ...
— Historical Mysteries • Andrew Lang
... naturalists have left speculations on the origin of species to such dreamers as the author of the 'Vestiges', by whose well-intentioned efforts the Lamarckian theory received its final condemnation in the minds of all sound thinkers. Notwithstanding this silence, however, the transmutation theory, as it has been called, has been a "skeleton in the closet" to many an honest zoologist and botanist who had a soul above the mere naming of dried plants and skins. Surely, has such an one thought, nature is a mighty and consistent whole, and the providential ...
— The Darwinian Hypothesis • Thomas H. Huxley
... system of vibrations, just as every other metal is, and the one can be changed into the other. But if you knew how to do it, would you dare? Can you conceive what would happen to the world if it were common knowledge, or even if it were known to a few, how the transmutation may ...
— Caves of Terror • Talbot Mundy
... remain the same whether they are kept in the Executive Mansion or deposited in the Departments. There is no mysterious power of transmutation in departmental custody, nor is there magic in the undefined and sacred solemnity of Department files. If the presence of these papers in the public offices is a stumbling block in the way of the performance of Senatorial duty, it ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 3 (of 3) of Volume 8: Grover Cleveland, First Term. • Grover Cleveland
... doubted even less—that if Satan pleased, they should finally find this powder which would load them with riches and even render them almost immortal—for at that epoch the philosopher's stone passed not only for an agent in the transmutation of base metals, such as tin, lead, copper, into noble metals like silver and gold, but also for a panacea curing all ailments and prolonging life, without infirmities, beyond the limits formerly assigned ...
— La-bas • J. K. Huysmans
... to come in suddenly and in full perfection, remain substantially unchanged during the term of their existence, and pass away in full perfection. Other species take their places apparently by substitution, not by transmutation." ...
— Evolution - An Investigation and a Critique • Theodore Graebner
... had its place in the earliest versions. But in each and all these cases the solution proposed has no relation to other features of the story; it is consequently of value in, and per se, only, and cannot be regarded as valid evidence for the source of the legend as a whole. In the process of transmutation from Ritual to Romance, the kernel, the Grail legend proper, may be said to have formed for itself a shell composed of accretions of widely differing provenance. It is the legitimate task of criticism to analyse ...
— From Ritual to Romance • Jessie L. Weston
... as you know, the transmutation of species by variation and natural selection—selection accomplished mainly, if not solely, by the struggle for existence. Now this doctrine of organic development and change or metamorphic evolution, which was, with its originators, Wallace and Darwin, a purely biological doctrine, ...
— Socialism: Positive and Negative • Robert Rives La Monte
... be to adopt morbidness at once. Perhaps he would have been a sad man if he had been an ordinary one. Genius can make charming presences of characters that really are gloomy and savage, being so magical in its transmutation of dry fact. People were glad to be scolded by Carlyle, and shot down by Dr. Johnson. But I am persuaded by reason that those who called Hawthorne sad would have complained of the tears of Coriolanus or Othello; and, with ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... the crudely materialistic theories of the real presence which were then prevalent. He protested against the statement that the transmutation of the elements takes place "vere et sensualiter," and that "portiunculae" of the body of Christ lie upon the altar. "The mouth," he said, "receives the sacrament, the inner man ...
— Christian Mysticism • William Ralph Inge
... it observed, that the theory of a continuous transmutation of species is not logically bound to furnish a full explanation of all the natural causes which it may suppose to have been at work. The radical distinction between the two theories consists in the ...
— Darwin, and After Darwin (Vol. 1 and 3, of 3) • George John Romanes
... that so much of the so-called science of education is very crude and impractical. Much of it is materialistic, and does not recognize the self-activity of mind; but makes it out to be a correlation of physical energies—derived from the transmutation of food by the process of digestion, and then by the brain ...
— Pedagogics as a System • Karl Rosenkranz
... from Babylonia and Chaldea, are actually the symbols of our most modern science. Catholicism itself does not as yet recognise this. Like a blind child stumbling towards the light it has FELT the discoveries of science long before discovery. In our sacraments there are the hints of the transmutation of elements,—the 'Sanctus' bell suggests wireless telegraphy or telepathy, that is to say, communication between ourselves and the divine Unseen,—and if we are permitted to go deeper, we shall unravel the mystery of that 'rising from the dead' which means renewed life. I am a 'prejudiced' ...
— The Secret Power • Marie Corelli
... Theosophists generally. From a long familiarity with the stars, in conjunction with the inevitable creative and anthropomorphic sensibility of youth, I began to think that this reincarnation did not occur on the earth, but had its stages of transmutation placed elsewhere. In short, I amused myself incessantly with placing the poets in one star, the novelists in another, the scientists in a third, the mechanicians in a fourth, and in each I imagined a Utopia. A very little mature thought and the most ordinary ...
— The Certainty of a Future Life in Mars • L. P. Gratacap
... liberty of prophesying. The air was filled with the enthusiasm of a new cry; but the cause was still the same. It became a boast that religion was the mother of freedom, that freedom was the lawful off spring of religion; and this transmutation, this subversion of established forms of political life by the development of religious thought, brings us to the heart of my subject, to the significant and central feature of the historic cycle before ...
— A Lecture on the Study of History • Lord Acton
... her sailing-power is another branch of the equipment of a screw-ship, which requires the most earnest, patient, and intelligent consideration. Prepared to endure all the wear and tear of a sail-ship, she should at the same time be ready for transmutation into a steam-ship; namely, when, for any urgent service, her best powers of steaming are required, she should be able to divest herself speedily of yards and top-masts, and, the special service completed, resume all ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... of fighters did the Carmagnoles ultimately become; but France ran a fearful risk in being obliged to rely on them when the process of their transmutation had ...
— The Fifteen Decisive Battles of The World From Marathon to Waterloo • Sir Edward Creasy, M.A.
... to catch the ears of women, appeared incomprehensible to her, if not adverse. She would not burn the world for him; she would not, though a purer poetry is little imaginable, reduce herself to ashes, or incense, or essence, in honour of him, and so, by love's transmutation, literally be the man she was to marry. She preferred to be herself, with the egoism of women. She said it: she said: "I must be myself to be of any value to you, Willoughby." He was indefatigable in his lectures on the ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... enjoyed profound tranquillity, internal and external, and our annalists find leisure to advert to various circumstances of domestic history. They mention a corporation formed for the transmutation of iron into copper by the method of one Medley an alchemist, of which the learned but credulous sir Thomas Smith, secretary of state, was a principal promoter, and in which both Leicester and Burleigh embarked some capital. The master of the Mint ventured to express ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... writers, but Pope accepts the particular modification presented by Bolingbroke.[21] Pope's manipulation of these materials causes much of the Essay on Man to resemble (as Mr. Pattison puts it) an exquisite mosaic work. A detailed examination of his mode of transmutation would be a curious study in the technical secrets of literary execution. A specimen or two will sufficiently indicate the general character of Pope's method ...
— Alexander Pope - English Men of Letters Series • Leslie Stephen
... but probably it proved of use to him when he had to discuss in the "Origin of Species" the principles of a natural classification. From September, 1854, and during the four ensuing years, Darwin devoted himself to observing and experimenting in relation to the transmutation of species, and in arranging a huge pile of notes upon the subject. As early as October, 1838, it had occurred to him as probable, or at least possible, that amid the struggle for existence which ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIV • John Lord
... five chapters of the book are devoted to the discussion of certain subjects of vital interest and great moment just now in the scientific world—the theories of progression, development, transmutation, and variation of species. It seems, however, to be the intention of the author to give us, not so much his own views as a general resume or outline of the tendencies and conclusions of the scientific world upon these subjects. ...
— Continental Monthly, Volume 5, Issue 4 • Various
... pink, and orange—changing into nameless hues as they climbed into the great clefts and veiled the rolling domes and swathed the pinnacles and furrowed the deep passes and put the horizon infinitely far away. The transmutation from conditions in which Nature herself seemed for once to be barbaric, alien, hostile to civilized man, painted with Cheyenne war-paint and girdled with a belt of scalps, to this breaking up of glory into glory, of color into color, and of form into form, rising, mingling, melting, fading, ...
— The Side Of The Angels - A Novel • Basil King
... years are but as yesterday, knows no such "law of variability" as our materialistic friends have been spinning for us in their unverified theories of evolution, natural selection, selection of the fittest, rejection of the unfit—force-correlations, molecular machinery, transmutation of physical forces, differentiation, dynamical aggregates, molA(C)cules organiques, potentiated sky-mist, undifferentiated "life-stuff," and other hylotheistic and purely hypothetical formulA|, with which the average mind has been well-nigh crazed ...
— Life: Its True Genesis • R. W. Wright
... With him a poem is a melody rather than a manuscript. Not since Prospero commanded songs from his attendant spirits has there been singing heard like the Hymn of Pan and The Indian Serenade. The Cloud is the most magical transmutation of things seen into things heard in the English language. Not that Shelley misses the wonder of things seen. But he sees ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd
... sat down to table, but was so occupied with her grief for the blighted roses that she did not even notice the wonderful transmutation of her China bowl. Perhaps this was all the better; for Marygold was accustomed to take pleasure in looking at the queer figures, and strange trees and houses, that were painted on the circumference of the bowl; and these ornaments ...
— The Children's Hour, Volume 3 (of 10) • Various
... is the same relationship here that alchemy holds to physics. The old boys with their frog guts and awful offal knew a bit about things like distilling and smelting. But there was no real order to their knowledge, and it was all an unconsidered by-product of their single goal, the whole nonsense of transmutation." ...
— The K-Factor • Harry Harrison (AKA Henry Maxwell Dempsey)
... at Riga that you would like me to give you the secret by which I transmuted iron into copper; I never did so, but now I shall teach you how to make a much more marvellous transmutation. I should point out to you, however, that you are not at present in a suitable place for the operation, although all the materials are easily procurable. The operation necessitates my presence for the construction of a furnace, and for the great ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... of this transmutation lies fundamentally in the nature of representation. Representation can never be identical with its object. Helmholtz has made this most clear: "Our visions and representations are effects; objects seen and represented have worked on our nervous system and on our consciousness. The nature ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... vitae, or the philosopher's stone, chanced upon this infernal synthesis and fusion. For him, no doubt, it proved a philosopher's stone in earnest, for the Borgia always extended a generous hand to those who could assist their damnable activities. Transmutation—so a skilled friend assures me—is now proved to be a fact, and another generation will be able perhaps to make gold, if the desire for that accursed mineral continues much longer ...
— The Grey Room • Eden Phillpotts
... than progress; it is transmutation. Between the ancient and the present sewer there is a revolution. ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... had been holding in his left hand. I recognised the fat little paper duodecimo with amusement, and some wonder. The only other copy I had ever laid my eyes on is in the Astor Library. It is somewhat of a rarity, called The Secret of Alchemy, or the Grand Doctrine of Transmutation Fully Explained, and was written by a Dr. Edward Duvall,—a most extraordinary volume to have fallen ...
— The Mystery • Stewart Edward White and Samuel Hopkins Adams
... fact which the universe has been slowly manufacturing for millions of years. Our attitude implies that we want eternity to roll back and begin again, in such wise that we at any rate shall not be disturbed. Though we have a machine for the transmutation of facts into food for our growth, we do not dream of using it. But, we say, he is doing us harm! Where? In our minds. He has robbed us of our peace, our comfort, our happiness, our good temper. Even if he has, we might just as well inveigh against a shower. But has he? What was our brain doing ...
— The Human Machine • E. Arnold Bennett
... the first two parts of his autobiographical dream-play, "Toward Damascus"—all of which were finished between May, 1897, and some time in the latter part of 1898. And back of these again lay that period of mental crisis, when, at Paris, in 1895 and 1896, he strove to make gold by the transmutation of baser metals, while at the same time his spirit was travelling through all the seven hells in its search for the heaven promised by the great ...
— Plays by August Strindberg, Second series • August Strindberg
... nearly as much fatigued as if I had been climbing among the rocks; but I had wrought and been useful, and had yet enjoyed the day fully as much as usual. It was no small matter, too, that the evening, converted by a rare transmutation into the delicious "blink of rest," which Burns so truthfully describes, was all my own. I was as light of heart next morning as any of my fellow-workmen. There had been a smart frost during the night, and the rime lay white on ...
— MacMillan's Reading Books - Book V • Anonymous
... by the Jesuits of their miracles in the Indies. I could wish it were true, or had any other testimony than their own pens. They may easily believe those miracles abroad, who daily conceive a greater at home —the transmutation of those visible elements into the body and blood of our Saviour;—for the conversion of water into wine, which he wrought in Cana, or, what the devil would have had him done in the wilderness, of stones into bread, compared to this, ...
— Religio Medici, Hydriotaphia, and the Letter to a Friend • Sir Thomas Browne
... designated as the Occult School—vere adepti. They discern no beauties but what are concealed from superficial eyes, and overlook all that are obvious to the vulgar part of mankind. Their art is the transmutation of styles. By happy alchemy of mind they convert dross into gold—and gold into tinsel. They see farther into a millstone than most others. If an author is utterly unreadable, they can read him for ever: his intricacies ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... "Cirripede" book, that he began to settle down seriously to the great work of his life—the investigation of the origin of the species, of plants and animals. Briefly, it may be stated here that he seems to have been first led to ponder over the question of the transmutation of species, by facts that had come under his notice during the South American part of the voyage in the Beagle—such as the discovery of the fossil remains of huge animals akin to, but yet very distinct from, ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 4 of 8 • Various
... man who loved her and failed to win her, is musing upon the transmutation of all values in his picture of life which has been made by the tidings. Not till now had he fully realised his absorption in the thought of her: "the woman I loved so well, who married the other." He had been wont to "sit and look at his life." That life, until he met her, ...
— Browning's Heroines • Ethel Colburn Mayne
... passed, except that Crosbie pleased him much by talking learnedly of alchymy, as to which Johnson was not a positive unbeliever, but rather delighted in considering what progress had actually been made in the transmutation of metals, what near approaches there had been to the making of gold; and told us that it was affirmed, that a person in the Russian dominions had discovered the secret, but died without revealing it, as imagining it would be prejudicial to society. He added, that it was not impossible but it ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... essays contain a masterly and luminous survey of the vicissitudes undergone by the songs and legends of Western and Northern nations in the course of transmutation from the primitive heroic stage into deliberate literary composition. The original material never attained the grand epical form; the process was interrupted by the advancement of learning, by ecclesiastical influences, and by vast ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... following Monday, Esther Van Guilder returned her friend's call, in response to an urgent invitation, despatched by mail. Louise Latimer's great bare room was incapable of transmutation into a cosy nest of a boudoir. There was too much of its heavy raw silk furniture—too much of its vast, sarcophagus-like bed—too much of its upholsterer's elegance, regardless of cost—and taste. An enlargement from an ambrotype of the original ...
— Americans All - Stories of American Life of To-Day • Various
... that he loved her and that she had escaped him. This was now, strangely enough, his dominating thought: the consciousness that he and she had passed through the fusion of love and had emerged from it as incommunicably apart as though the transmutation had never taken place. Every other passion, he mused, left some mark upon the nature; but love passed like the flight of a ...
— The Touchstone • Edith Wharton
... attempts of sufficient importance to be mentioned have been made. The first one was made by Lamarck, who, taking the really different ideas of descent and evolution as one, made use of the hypothesis of transmutation; thus becoming the pioneer of Darwinism. The other attempt was made by Darwin in his theory of natural selection, or struggle, for existence, and is called the "Theory ...
— The Theories of Darwin and Their Relation to Philosophy, Religion, and Morality • Rudolf Schmid
... which now it is difficult even to imagine.... "Karelin's Dream" has suggested to me similar thoughts, and to-day I willingly believe Buckle, who saw in Hamlet's musings on the dust of Alexander the Great, Shakespeare's knowledge of the law of the transmutation of substance— i.e., the power of the artist to run ahead of the men of science.... Sleep is a subjective phenomenon, and the inner aspect of it one can only observe in oneself. But since the process ...
— Letters of Anton Chekhov • Anton Chekhov
... This transmutation of the reproductive energy gives more vitality to those practising it. They will be filled with great vital force, which will radiate from them and will manifest in what has been called "personal magnetism." The energy thus transmuted ...
— The Doctrine and Practice of Yoga • A. P. Mukerji
... a single sin, poured their distracting babble into any ears they could lay hold of, at the reception of Monseigneur. Unbelieving Philosophers who were remodelling the world with words, and making card-towers of Babel to scale the skies with, talked with Unbelieving Chemists who had an eye on the transmutation of metals, at this wonderful gathering accumulated by Monseigneur. Exquisite gentlemen of the finest breeding, which was at that remarkable time—and has been since—to be known by its fruits of indifference ...
— A Tale of Two Cities - A Story of the French Revolution • Charles Dickens
... these larger animals of a higher type, admitted to have been denizens of the earth only since the latest geological epochs, and therefore of comparatively recent origin? Here we come to another point in our author's theory,—the transmutation of species, or the successive development of higher and higher orders of being out of the species immediately below them, through the accidental or natural fulfilment of certain conditions, in the course of ...
— A Theory of Creation: A Review of 'Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation' • Francis Bowen
... restlessness along with inactivity; may there not? And there is no such restlessness as the restlessness of compulsory idleness. That is the main idea that is in the Psalmist's mind. He knows little about retribution, he knows still less about transmutation into a glorious likeness to that which is most glorious and divine. But he conceives a great, dim, lonely land, wherein are prisoned and penned all the lives that have been foamed away vainly on earth, and are now settled into a dreary ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... infrequency of these phenomena in this meridian; they being common both in Eastern Bengal, and in Western India beyond the Ganges.] Originally built of gold, the sins of the inhabitants were punished by its transmutation into stone, and latterly into mud and thatch: whoever enters it, and especially visits its principal idol (Siva fossilised) ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... any who are likely to apply; and your interest would be strengthened by the opportunity of placing some good friend in Selkirkshire, besides converting the Minstrel of the Clan into a Baron,—a transmutation worthy of so powerful and kind a chief. But if your Grace thinks I ought to drop thoughts of this preferment, I am bound to say, that I think myself as well provided for by my friends and the public as I have the least title to expect, and that I am perfectly ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume V (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... having a particular regard for it as something lent to him, and belonging to you; while, in another sense, it is lent to you, and belongs to him; and he and you are to regard the child agreeably to this beautiful transmutation of ownership and loan. The baptism itself cannot save the child, any more than the Lord's Supper can save you; but it is among the first of means to promote the salvation of the child, not merely through its effect ...
— Bertha and Her Baptism • Nehemiah Adams
... substances of the three kingdoms of nature, tried the distinction and affinities of alcalis and acids, and converted the poisonous minerals into soft and salutary medicines. But the most eager search of Arabian chemistry was the transmutation of metals, and the elixir of immortal health: the reason and the fortunes of thousands were evaporated in the crucibles of alchemy, and the consummation of the great work was promoted by the worthy aid ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon
... shall always be glad of this year with the Corystons. How much longer will this rich, leisurely, aristocratic class with all its still surviving power and privileges exist among us? It is something that obviously is in process of transmutation and decay; though in a country like England the process will be a very slow one. Personally I greatly prefer this landlord stratum to the top stratum of the trading and manufacturing world. There ...
— The Coryston Family • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... novitiate and culture; he yearns for action. His masters tell him that the world is coy, must be approached cautiously, and with something substantial in the hand. The old bird will not be caught with chaff. He does not yet understand the process of accumulation and transmutation. The fate of the Danaides is his, and he draws long with a bottomless bucket. But at last his incompetency can no further be concealed. Then he either submits to the suggestions of despair and oblivion or bravely begins his work. The exhilaration and satisfaction which ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... and love and hate. With Circe's wand it can change men into beasts of the field, and to them it can give a monstrous humanity. Life and death are in the right hand and in the left of him who knows its secrets. It confers wealth by the transmutation of metals and immortality ...
— The Magician • Somerset Maugham
... 'Alchemy, transmutation of metals, and the like have been set aside by true science,' remarked the taller officer. 'Even old Sir Thomas Browne of Norwich, who is ever ready to plead the cause of the ancients, can find nothing to say in favour of it. From Trismegistus downwards ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... subtlety; *ignorant Fie! speak not thereof, for it will not be. And *conne he letterure,* or conne he none, *if he knows learning* As in effect, he shall it find all one; For bothe two, by my salvation, Concluden in multiplication* *transmutation by alchemy Alike well, when they have all y-do; This is to say, they faile bothe two. Yet forgot I to make rehearsale Of waters corrosive, and of limaile,* *metal filings And of bodies' mollification, And also of their induration, Oiles, ablutions, metal fusible, ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... existed as a part. Thou shalt disappear in that which produced thee; but rather thou shalt be received back into its seminal principle by transmutation. ...
— Thoughts of Marcus Aurelius Antoninus • Marcus Aurelius Antoninus
... real problem was the terms upon which they were to stay in each other's lives. Close association had brought them to the point of being, in the completest sense, lovers; that could not be; and the real problem was the transmutation of their relationship to some form compatible with his honour and her happiness. A word, an idea, from some recent reading floated into Sir Richmond's head. "Sublimate," he whispered. "We have to sublimate this affair. We ...
— The Secret Places of the Heart • H. G. Wells
... prevailed. It was arbitrary, rococo, unrelated to current conditions as a tradition sung down in a ballad, an anachronism of the heart, cherished through long rude lifetimes for the beauty and poetry of it—when you consider, beauty and poetry can be thought of in this. Here was no Court aiding the transmutation of the middle class, no King spending money; here were no picturesque contacts of Royalty and the people, no pageantry, no blazonry of the past, nothing to lift the heart but an occasional telegram from ...
— The Imperialist • (a.k.a. Mrs. Everard Cotes) Sara Jeannette Duncan
... fanciful and poetic in the notion of this change taking place mysteriously in the darkness, when all the doors are locked and barred—for the atmosphere about the vats is death—as if nature would suffer no idle prying into her mystic operations, and as if the grand transmutation and projection from juice to wine had in it something of a secret and solemn and awful nature—fenced round, as it were, and protected from vulgar curiosity by the ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 434 - Volume 17, New Series, April 24, 1852 • Various
... passions of the sensitive appetite may either be venial sins in themselves, or incline the soul to mortal sin. And since the sensitive appetite has a bodily organ, it follows that on account of some bodily transmutation a man becomes apt to commit some particular sin. Hence it may happen that certain sins may become more insistent, through certain bodily transmutations occurring at certain fixed times. Now all bodily effects, of themselves, ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas |
