Note 4 — Chapter VII · THE MARCH OF SCIENCE

A like caution will, however, teach us to restrain our expectations from the new knowledge which radium appears to be gradually unfolding, not because there is any doubt that radio-activity will ultimately bring priceless gifts to civilisation, but because in our present ignorance of all but a few facts concerning it we can form no possible conjecture as to the lines these gifts will follow. Already we seem to have seen in some of the radium experiments one “element” turn into another. If this should develop until we acquire the power which used to be dreamed of as transmutation, the social and economic upheavals which would result beggar imagination.4