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LEFT TRANCE 461 TRANSFOBMISM tion and profound insensibility to ex- ternal impressions. Death trance is, ac- cording to Dr. Mayo, a positive status; a period of repose, the duration of which is sometimes definite and predetermined, though unknown. "The basis of death trance is suspension of the action of the heart, of breathing, and of voluntary mo- tion; generally, likewise, of feeling and intelligence; and the vegetative changes in the body are suspended. With these phenoinena is joined loss of external warmth, so that the usual evidence of life is gone." There are no well-authen- ticated cases on record in which trance has simulated death for any length of time. See Catalepsy: Hysteria. TRANI, a town of South Italy, in the province of Bari; on the Adriatic; 95 miles W. N. W. of Brindisi. It is an archbishop's see, has a cathedral, built about 1100, with a Romanesque portal and bronze doors of 1175, the fine church Sta. Maria Immaculata, several convents, a castle, a theater, an orphanage, a high school, a technical school, and a priests' college. Trani has important fisheries, and considerable trade in oil, corn, almonds, figs, and excellent wine. Trani is the ancient Turenum of the Peucetii, and was in the Middle Ages an impor- tant seaport. It was taken and burnt by the French in 1779. Pop. about 35,000. TRANSCAUCASIA, the tract of ter- ritory formerly belonging to Russia, and extending between the Caucasus on the N. and Turkey in Asia and Persia on the S. The provinces on both sides of the Caucasus, with the added Armenian dis- tricts, constitute Caucasus or Caucasia in the widest sense, and are under one central authority, with 10 minor prov- inces; but the territory is sometimes divided into North Caucasus, Transcau- casia, and Armenia. Transcaucasia com- prises several provinces; total area, 94,405 square miles; pop. 7,500,000. In February, 1918, the Republic of Trans- caucasia was formed, but lasted only five weeks. The Tartans, Georgians and Ar- menians comprising the population were unable to agree, and the two latter peo- ples set up republics of their own. TRANSCENDENTALISM, in philos- ophy, a term applied to the Kantian philosophy from the frequent use of the term transcendental by Kant, who gave it a meaning quite distinct from that which it till then bore. The Transcen- dentalism of Kant inquires into, and then denies, the possibility of knowledge re- specting what lies beyond the range of experience. Kant distinguished knowl- edge into a py-iori (not originating from experience) and a posteriori (derived from experience), thus giving to the phrase a jyriori knowledge a meaning dif- ferent from that which it had borne in philosophy since the days of Aristotle; and he applied the epithet transcendental to the knowledge that certain intuitions (such as time and space) and concep- tions, to which he gave the Aristotelian name of categories, were independent of experience. Necessity and strict uni- versality are for Kant the sure signs of non-empirical cognition. Transcendental philosphy is a philosophy of the merely speculative pure reason; for all moral practice, so far as it involves motive, refers to the feeling, and feeling is al- ways empirical. The word is applied also to the philoso- phy of Schelling and Hegel, who assert the identity of the subject and object. In theology, the name given to a re- ligious movement in New England in 1839, in which Emei'son and Channing took a prominent part. TRANSEPT, in architecture, that part of a church which is placed between the nave and the choir, extending transverse- ly on each side, so as to give to the build- ing the form of a cross. The transept was not originally symbolical, but was derived from the transverse hall or gal- lery in the ancient basilicas, at the up- per end of the nave, its length being equal to the united breadth of the nave and aisles. This accidental approxima- tion to the form of a cross was perceived by later architects, who accordingly lengthened the transept on each side so as to make the ground plan of the church completely cruciform. TRANSFIGURATION, FEAST OF THE, a festival instituted in honor of the Transfiguration of Christ (Matt. xvii:2); is one of the 12 great feasts which come next after Easter in dignity. In the Anglican church it is only a black- letter feast. It is commonly said to have been instituted in the West by Pope Calixtus III. (1455-1458), but is men- tioned in the 9th century. Both Greeks and Westerns keep it on Aug. 6. TRANSFORMATION MYTH, a myth which represents a human being as changed into an animal, a tree or plant, or some inanimate being. TRANSFORMISM, in biology, the hypothesis that all existing species are the product of the metamorphosis of others forms of living beings; and that the biological phenomena which they ex- hibit are the results of the interaction, through past time,, of two series of fac- tors: (1) a process of morphological and Cyc. Vol. IX