LeBon-G: central claims
No source gap: all three documents have extractable text. The Evolution of Matter is OCR throughout (488 of 489 pages), so numbers in tables were checked against page images only for the pages listed in deep/. The Vassilatos review is a secondary source from an interested party (BSRF sells the books it recommends).
- Matter is perishable. All atoms slowly dissociate into particles intermediate between matter and ether, in every body, spontaneously or when provoked (Matter Book I; Forces Part I principles 1-8).
- Atoms are reservoirs of "intra-atomic energy". This energy is enormous (Le Bon: about 6,800 million horse-power if one gram of dissociated particles were stopped in a second) and is the source of radioactivity, electricity and solar heat; conservation of energy is therefore, in his words, a dogma that survives by inventing "potential energy" (Matter Book II; Forces Part I, pp.157-159). Le Bon's own experimental support in Forces is electrification by influence: an aluminium strip held motionless under a charged body while throwing out sparks, which he says would 'in several centuries' disappear, 'the complete transformation of matter into energy' (Forces pp.140-143; no charge, mass, energy or control measurement is reported). Le Bon himself proposes over-unity: a hand-worked static machine of 50,000 V and 2 A "can be considered possible" as 'an apparatus giving forth a power extremely superior to that expended' (Matter p.231), and matter's emitted energy 'may far exceed that which it has received' (Forces p.38); no device, trial or energy accounting is given.
- Light, heat and chemistry release this energy in ordinary bodies. Any electrified body leaks charge under light of any spectral region, positive and negative alike and with strong dependence on the metal; extreme ultra-violet ionizes air; flame gases, quinine hydration, phosphorus oxidation and gas-evolving reactions show radioactive-like conductivity; ordinary metals hold a limited "emanation" that warming releases and rest renews (Matter Second Part, ch.V-X). Le Bon's chemical theory of radioactivity (Matter pp.207-216) underlies this: radioactivity arises from special chemical reactions between a body and an infinitesimal trace of another, so 'an absolutely pure body cannot be radio-active'; he therefore predicted that metallic radium 'will never be isolated' and that if isolated it 'will have lost all the properties which render its combinations so interesting' (pp.212-214; metallic radium was isolated in 1910 [memory, high; reviewers to verify]). Instrument baseline: an electroscope is acceptable if it loses at most one angular degree per hour when capped (Matter p.354); the 8-day dark cylinder (1-2 degrees per minute) is 60-120 times that, but no blank run in the same geometry is reported. Le Bon says other observers failed to repeat his earlier experiments because they omitted a 10 cm receiving plate (p.381).
- "Black light": a sulphide phosphor charged by seconds of sunlight emits an invisible, photographically detectable afterglow for about 18 months and keeps a residue that infra-red (about 0.8-3 microns) can release for years; this infra-red action is distinct from heat, and near-infra-red passes opaque-looking ebonite, Japan varnish and black paper, allowing objects in opaque boxes to be seen and photographed in the dark with a zinc sulphide screen (Forces Book IV, PDF pp.317-368).
- Le Bon was first and was resisted. He claims priority for universal dissociation and for radioactivity of ordinary bodies, ahead of Becquerel, Rutherford, J. J. Thomson and Lenard, and says the French scientific hierarchy received his notes badly; the translator's footnotes record both confirmations and objections (Matter Introduction, ch.XIV and Legge's notes). The reception record includes favourable and unfavourable items: P. D. Innes (Cavendish, 1907) 'a great store of energy in the atom seems now beyond question' (Forces pp.14-15); Kelvin's 1904 statement on radium's heat and his later withdrawal (Matter p.86 note); two Cambridge critics who 'admitted the theory was in the main correct' while contesting the experiments and priority (Matter p.27); Le Bon's note that 'many observers' could not repeat his leak experiments (Matter p.381, no observers named).
- Moray connection (secondary claim, mostly not in Le Bon's books). Vassilatos asserts Thomas Moray studied these two books as sourcebooks, that they hold "very deep secrets" on releasing intra-atomic energy, and that Le Bon's high-frequency (Tesla-coil-like) bombardment experiments pre-date Moray's transmutation work; he also relays, on hearsay, a third book under the name "Girard Le Beau". No Moray statement is quoted and neither Le Bon book mentions Moray (BSRF review, pp.1-2). Checked against the books: the idea that a small trigger can release more energy is Le Bon's own conditional projection (Matter p.231; Forces p.38), not shown by any device. The review's radium statements do not match the book: Le Bon reports (from others, unnamed in the passage) that heated radium keeps about a quarter of its activity (alpha only) and regains it 'entirely in twenty days or so', and that the emanation halves in four days (Matter pp.168-169); no 'week' and no altered half-life appear.
- Effluves pass through thin insulators and make X-rays in an electrodeless vessel (Matter pp.235-237, 444-447). Brushes from an Oudin resonator at 'several hundred thousand volts' traverse glass or ebonite plates up to 1/2 mm without piercing them, and Legge's Tesla-transformer repeat passed 1/2 cm discs of ebonite, glass, sulphur and shellac and 1 cm of paraffin; Le Bon reads these as positive ions of dissociated matter passing through matter, and says the same effluves make X-rays in an evacuated glass vessel with no electrodes. Frequency, plate size, distances and controls are not reported (deep read: the reported details are what a displacement-current or surface-discharge reading predicts, but the text excludes neither that reading nor the particle reading).
Deep-read status (after QE remediation, 2026-10-08)
Deep reads now exist for: the Vassilatos review (whole); Forces PDF pp.137-153, 178-196, 317-368, 369-391, 392-402 and 415-420; Matter PDF pp.159-176, 201-216, 227-243, 350-432 and 444-447. The reviewers read Matter pp.66-82, 99-108 and 433-443. Still digest only (peripheral or theory chapters): Forces Part I cosmology and principles, the heat and light chapters, and the diamond, thermoluminescence and Nova Persei passages (pp.118, 268-272, 290-293); Matter Chapter XIV (priority documents) and the Introduction.