ON THE PRINCIPLE OF THE CONSERVATION OF ENERGY.

[39]
In a popular lecture, distinguished for its charming simplicity and clearness, which Joule delivered in the
year 1847,[40] that famous physicist declares that the living force which a heavy body has acquired by its
descent through a certain height and which it carries with it in the form of the velocity with which it is
impressed, is the equivalent of the attraction of gravity through the space fallen through, and that it
would be "absurd" to assume that this living force could be destroyed without some restitution of that
equivalent. He then adds: "You will therefore be surprised to hear that until very recently the universal
opinion has been that living force could be absolutely and irrevocably destroyed at any one's option."
Let us add that to-day, after forty-seven years, the law of the conservation of energy, wherever
civilisation exists, is accepted as a fully established truth and receives the widest applications in all
domains of natural science.
[Pg 138]
The fate of all momentous discoveries is similar. On their first appearance they are regarded by the
majority of men as errors. J. R. Mayer's work on the principle of energy (1842) was rejected by the first
physical journal of Germany; Helmholtz's treatise (1847) met with no better success; and even Joule, to
judge from an intimation of Playfair, seems to have encountered difficulties with his first publication
(1843). Gradually, however, people are led to see that the new view was long prepared for and ready for
enunciation, only that a few favored minds had perceived it much earlier than the rest, and in this way the
opposition of the majority is overcome. With proofs of the fruitfulness of the new view, with its success,
confidence in it increases. The majority of the men who employ it cannot enter into a deep-going analysis
of it; for them, its success is its proof. It can thus happen that a view which has led to the greatest
discoveries, like Black's theory of caloric, in a subsequent period in a province where it does not apply
may actually become an obstacle to progress by its blinding our eyes to facts which do not fit in with our
favorite conceptions. If a theory is to be protected from this dubious rôle, the grounds and motives of its
evolution and existence must be examined from time to time with the utmost care.
The most multifarious physical changes, thermal,
[Pg 139]
electrical, chemical, and so forth, can be brought about by mechanical work. When such alterations are
reversed they yield anew the mechanical work in exactly the quantity which was required for the
production of the part reversed. This is the principle of the conservation of energy; "energy" being the
term which has gradually come into use for that "indestructible something" of which the measure is
mechanical work.
How did we acquire this idea? What are the sources from which we have drawn it? This question is not
only of interest in itself, but also for the important reason above touched upon. The opinions which are
held concerning the foundations of the law of energy still diverge very widely from one another. Many
trace the principle to the impossibility of a perpetual motion, which they regard either as sufficiently
proved by experience, or as self-evident. In the province of pure mechanics the impossibility of a
perpetual motion, or the continuous production of work without some permanent alteration, is easily
demonstrated. Accordingly, if we start from the theory that all physical processes are purely mechanical
processes, motions of molecules and atoms, we embrace also, by this mechanical conception of
physics, the impossibility of a perpetual motion in the whole physical domain. At present this view
probably counts the most adherents. Other inquirers, however, are for accepting only a purely
experimental establishment of the law of energy.
[Pg 140]
It will appear, from the discussion to follow, that all the factors mentioned have co-operated in the
development of the view in question; but that in addition to them a logical and purely formal factor,
hitherto little considered, has also played a very important part.

I. THE PRINCIPLE OF THE EXCLUDED PERPETUAL MOTION.

The law of energy in its modern form is not identical with the principle of the excluded perpetual motion,
but it is very closely related to it. The latter principle, however, is by no means new, for in the province of
mechanics it has controlled for centuries the thoughts and investigations of the greatest thinkers. Let us
convince ourselves of this by the study of a few historical examples.

Fig. 41.

S. Stevinus, in his famous work Hypomnemata mathematica, Tom. IV, De statica, (Leyden, 1605, p. 34),
treats of the equilibrium of bodies on inclined planes.
Over a triangular prism ABC, one side of which, AC, is horizontal, an endless cord or chain is slung, to
which at equal distances apart fourteen balls of equal weight are attached, as represented in
cross-section in Figure 41. Since we can imagine the lower
[Pg 141]
symmetrical part of the cord ABC taken away, Stevinus concludes that the four balls on AB hold in
equilibrium the two balls on BC. For if the equilibrium were for a moment disturbed, it could never
subsist: the cord would keep moving round forever in the same direction,—we should have a perpetual
motion. He says:
"But if this took place, our row or ring of balls would come once more into their original
position, and from the same cause the eight globes to the left would again be heavier than
the six to the right, and therefore those eight would sink a second time and these six rise,
and all the globes would keep up, of themselves, a continuous and unending motion,
which is false."[41]
Stevinus, now, easily derives from this principle the laws of equilibrium on the inclined plane and
numerous other fruitful consequences.
In the chapter "Hydrostatics" of the same work, page 114, Stevinus sets up the following principle:
"Aquam datam, datum sibi intra aquam locum servare,"—a given mass of water preserves within water
its given place.

Fig. 42.

This principle is demonstrated as follows (see Fig. 42):

 "For, assuming it to be possible by natural means, let us suppose that A does not preserve
the place assigned to it, but sinks down to D. This being posited, the water which succeeds
A will, for the same reason, also flow down to D; A will be forced out of its place in D; and
thus this body of water, for the conditions in it are everywhere the same, will set up a
perpetual motion, which is absurd."[42]
[Pg 142]
From this all the principles of hydrostatics are deduced. On this occasion Stevinus also first develops
the thought so fruitful for modern analytical mechanics that the equilibrium of a system is not destroyed
by the addition of rigid connexions. As we know, the principle of the conservation of the centre of gravity
is now sometimes deduced from D'Alembert's principle with the help of that remark. If we were to
reproduce Stevinus's demonstration to-day, we should have to change it slightly. We find no difficulty in
imagining the cord on the prism possessed of unending uniform motion if all hindrances are thought
away, but we should protest against the assumption of an accelerated motion or even against that of a
uniform motion, if the resistances were not removed. Moreover, for greater precision of proof, the string
of balls might be replaced by a heavy homogeneous cord of infinite flexibility. But all this does not affect
in the least the historical value of Stevinus's thoughts. It is a fact, Stevinus deduces apparently much
simpler truths from the principle of an impossible perpetual motion.
[Pg 143]
In the process of thought which conducted Galileo to his discoveries at the end of the sixteenth century,
the following principle plays an important part, that a body in virtue of the velocity acquired in its descent
can rise exactly as high as it fell. This principle, which appears frequently and with much clearness in
Galileo's thought, is simply another form of the principle of excluded perpetual motion, as we shall see it
is also in Huygens.
Galileo, as we know, arrived at the law of uniformly accelerated motion by a priori considerations, as that
law which was the "simplest and most natural," after having first assumed a different law which he was
compelled to reject. To verify his law he executed experiments with falling bodies on inclined planes,
measuring the times of descent by the weights of the water which flowed out of a small orifice in a large
vessel. In this experiment he assumes as a fundamental principle, that the velocity acquired in descent
down an inclined plane always corresponds to the vertical height descended through, a conclusion
which for him is the immediate outcome of the fact that a body which has fallen down one inclined plane
can, with the velocity it has acquired, rise on another plane of any inclination only to the same vertical
height. This principle of the height of ascent also led him, as it seems, to the law of inertia. Let us hear
his own masterful words in the Dialogo terzo (Opere, Padova, 1744, Tom. III). On page 96 we read:
[Pg 144]
"I take it for granted that the velocities acquired by a body in descent down planes of
different inclinations are equal if the heights of those planes are equal."[43]
Then he makes Salviati say in the dialogue:[44]
"What you say seems very probable, but I wish to go further and by an experiment so to
increase the probability of it that it shall amount almost to absolute demonstration.
Suppose this sheet of paper to be a vertical wall, and from a nail driven in it a ball of lead
weighing two or three ounces to hang by a very fine thread AB four or five feet long. (Fig.
43.) On the wall mark a horizontal line DC perpendicular to the vertical AB, which latter
ought to hang about two inches from the wall. If now the thread AB with the ball attached
take the position AC and the ball be let go, you will see the ball first descend through the
arc CB and passing beyond B rise through the arc BD almost to the level of the line CD,
being prevented from reaching it exactly by the resistance of the air and of the thread.
From this we may truly conclude that its impetus at the point B, acquired by its descent
through the arc CB, is sufficient to urge it through a similar arc BD to the same height.
Having performed this experiment and repeated it several times, let us drive in the wall, in
the projection of the vertical AB, as at E or at F, a nail five or six inches long, so that the
thread AC, carrying as before the ball through the arc CB, at the moment it reaches the
position AB, shall strike the nail E, and the ball be thus compelled to move up the arc BG
described about E as centre. Then we shall see what the same impetus will here
accomplish, acquired now as before at the same point B, which then drove the same
 moving body through the arc BD to the height of the horizontal CD. Now gentlemen, you
will be pleased to see the ball rise to the horizontal line at the point G, and the same thing
also happen if the nail be placed lower as at F, in which case the ball would describe the
arc BJ, always terminating its ascent precisely at the line CD. If the nail be placed so low
that the length of thread below it does not reach to the height of CD (which would happen if
F were nearer B than to the intersection of AB with the horizontal CD), then the thread will
wind itself about the nail. This experiment leaves no room for doubt as to the truth of the
supposition. For as the two arcs CB, DB are equal and similarly situated, the momentum
acquired in the descent of the arc CB is the same as that acquired in the descent of the arc
DB; but the momentum acquired at B by the descent through the arc CB is capable of
driving up the same moving body through the arc BD; hence also the momentum acquired
in the descent DB is equal to that which drives the same moving body through the same
arc from B to D, so that in general every momentum acquired in the descent of an arc is
equal to that which causes the same moving body to ascend through the same arc; but all
the momenta which cause the ascent of all the arcs BD, BG, BJ, are equal since they are
made by the same momentum acquired in the descent CB, as the experiment shows:
therefore all the momenta acquired in the descent of the arcs DB, GB, JB are equal."
[Pg 145]

Fig. 43.
[Pg 146]
The remark relative to the pendulum may be applied to the inclined plane and leads to the law of inertia.
We read on page 124:[45]
[Pg 147]
"It is plain now that a movable body, starting from rest at A and descending down the
inclined plane AB, acquires a velocity proportional to the increment of its time: the velocity
possessed at B is the greatest of the velocities acquired, and by its nature immutably
impressed, provided all causes of new acceleration or retardation are taken away: I say
acceleration, having in view its possible further progress along the plane extended;
retardation, in view of the possibility of its being reversed and made to mount the
ascending plane BC. But in the horizontal plane GH its equable motion, according to its
velocity as acquired in the descent from A to B, will be continued ad infinitum." (Fig. 44.)
 Fig. 44.
Huygens, upon whose shoulders the mantel of Galileo fell, forms a sharper conception of the law of
inertia and generalises the principle respecting the heights of ascent which was so fruitful in Galileo's
hands. He employs the latter principle in the solution of the problem of the centre of oscillation and is
perfectly clear in the statement that the principle respecting the heights of ascent is identical with the
principle of the excluded perpetual motion.
The following important passages then occur (Hugenii, Horologium oscillatorium, pars secunda).
Hypotheses:
[Pg 148]
"If gravity did not exist, nor the atmosphere obstruct the motions of bodies, a body would
keep up forever the motion once impressed upon it, with equable velocity, in a straight
line."[46]
In part four of the Horologium de centro oscillationis we read:
"If any number of weights be set in motion by the force of gravity, the common centre of
gravity of the weights as a whole cannot possibly rise higher than the place which it
occupied when the motion began.
"That this hypothesis of ours may arouse no scruples, we will state that it simply imports,
what no one has ever denied, that heavy bodies do not move upwards.—And truly if the
devisers of the new machines who make such futile attempts to construct a perpetual
motion would acquaint themselves with this principle, they could easily be brought to see
their errors and to understand that the thing is utterly impossible by mechanical means."[47]
There is possibly a Jesuitical mental reservation contained in the words "mechanical means." One might
be led to believe from them that Huygens held a non-mechanical perpetual motion for possible.
The generalisation of Galileo's principle is still more clearly put in Prop. IV of the same chapter:
"If a pendulum, composed of several weights, set in motion from rest, complete any part of
its full oscillation, and from that point onwards, the individual weights, with their common
connexions dissolved, change their acquired velocities upwards and ascend as far as they
can, the common centre of gravity of all will be carried up to the same altitude with that
which it occupied before the beginning of the oscillation."[48]
[Pg 149]
On this last principle now, which is a generalisation, applied to a system of masses, of one of Galileo's
ideas respecting a single mass and which from Huygens's explanation we recognise as the principle of
excluded perpetual motion, Huygens grounds his theory of the centre of oscillation. Lagrange
characterises this principle as precarious and is rejoiced at James Bernoulli's successful attempt, in
1681, to reduce the theory of the centre of oscillation to the laws of the lever, which appeared to him
clearer. All the great inquirers of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries broke a lance on this problem,
and it led ultimately, in conjunction with the principle of virtual velocities, to the principle enunciated by
D'Alembert in 1743 in his Traité de dynamique, though previously employed in a somewhat different form
by Euler and Hermann.
Furthermore, the Huygenian principle respecting the heights of ascent became the foundation of the "law
of the conservation of living force," as that was enunciated by John and Daniel Bernoulli and employed
[Pg 150]
 with such signal success by the latter in his Hydrodynamics. The theorems of the Bernoullis differ in
form only from Lagrange's expression in the Analytical Mechanics.
The manner in which Torricelli reached his famous law of efflux for liquids leads again to our principle.
Torricelli assumed that the liquid which flows out of the basal orifice of a vessel cannot by its velocity of
efflux ascend to a greater height than its level in the vessel.
Let us next consider a point which belongs to pure mechanics, the history of the principle of virtual
motions or virtual velocities. This principle was not first enunciated, as is usually stated, and as
Lagrange also asserts, by Galileo, but earlier, by Stevinus. In his Trochleostatica of the above-cited work,
page 72, he says:
"Observe that this axiom of statics holds good here:
"As the space of the body acting is to the space of the body acted upon, so is the power of
the body acted upon to the power of the body acting."[49]
Galileo, as we know, recognised the truth of the principle in the consideration of the simple machines,
and also deduced the laws of the equilibrium of liquids from it.
Torricelli carries the principle back to the properties of the centre of gravity. The condition controlling
[Pg 151]
equilibrium in a simple machine, in which power and load are represented by weights, is that the
common centre of gravity of the weights shall not sink. Conversely, if the centre of gravity cannot sink
equilibrium obtains, because heavy bodies of themselves do not move upwards. In this form the
principle of virtual velocities is identical with Huygens's principle of the impossibility of a perpetual
motion.
John Bernoulli, in 1717, first perceived the universal import of the principle of virtual movements for all
systems; a discovery stated in a letter to Varignon. Finally, Lagrange gives a general demonstration of
the principle and founds upon it his whole Analytical Mechanics. But this general demonstration is based
after all upon Huygens and Torricelli's remarks. Lagrange, as is known, conceives simple pulleys
arranged in the directions of the forces of the system, passes a cord through these pulleys, and appends
to its free extremity a weight which is a common measure of all the forces of the system. With no
difficulty, now, the number of elements of each pulley may be so chosen that the forces in question shall
be replaced by them. It is then clear that if the weight at the extremity cannot sink, equilibrium subsists,
because heavy bodies cannot of themselves move upwards. If we do not go so far, but wish to abide by
Torricelli's idea, we may conceive every individual force of the system replaced by a special weight
suspended from a cord passing over a pulley in the direction of the force and attached
[Pg 152]
at its point of application. Equilibrium subsists then when the common centre of gravity of all the
weights together cannot sink. The fundamental supposition of this demonstration is plainly the
impossibility of a perpetual motion.
Lagrange tried in every way to supply a proof free from extraneous elements and fully satisfactory, but
without complete success. Nor were his successors more fortunate.
The whole of mechanics, thus, is based upon an idea, which, though unequivocal, is yet unwonted and
not coequal with the other principles and axioms of mechanics. Every student of mechanics, at some
stage of his progress, feels the uncomfortableness of this state of affairs; every one wishes it removed;
but seldom is the difficulty stated in words. Accordingly, the zealous pupil of the science is highly
rejoiced when he reads in a master like Poinsot (Théorie générale de l'équilibre et du mouvement des
systèmes) the following passage, in which that author is giving his opinion of the Analytical Mechanics:
"In the meantime, because our attention in that work was first wholly engrossed with the
consideration of its beautiful development of mechanics, which seemed to spring complete
from a single formula, we naturally believed that the science was completed or that it only
remained to seek the demonstration of the principle of virtual velocities. But that quest
brought back all the difficulties that we had overcome by the principle itself. That law so
general, wherein are mingled the vague and unfamiliar ideas of infinitely small movements
and of perturbations of equilibrium, only grew
 [Pg 153]
obscure upon examination; and the work of Lagrange supplying nothing clearer than the
march of analysis, we saw plainly that the clouds had only appeared lifted from the course
of mechanics because they had, so to speak, been gathered at the very origin of that
science.
"At bottom, a general demonstration of the principle of virtual velocities would be
equivalent to the establishment of the whole of mechanics upon a different basis: for the
demonstration of a law which embraces a whole science is neither more nor less than the
reduction of that science to another law just as general, but evident, or at least more
simple than the first, and which, consequently, would render that useless."[50]
According to Poinsot, therefore, a proof of the principle of virtual movements is tantamount to a total
rehabilitation of mechanics.
Another circumstance of discomfort to the mathematician is, that in the historical form in which
mechanics at present exists, dynamics is founded on statics, whereas it is desirable that in a science
which pretends to deductive completeness the more special statical theorems should be deducible from
the more general dynamical principles.
[Pg 154]
In fact, a great master, Gauss, gave expression to this desire in his presentment of the principle of least
constraint (Crelle's Journal für reine und angewandte Mathematik, Vol. IV, p. 233) in the following words:
"Proper as it is that in the gradual development of a science, and in the instruction of individuals, the
easy should precede the difficult, the simple the complex, the special the general, yet the mind, when
once it has reached a higher point of view, demands the contrary course, in which all statics shall appear
simply as a special case of mechanics." Gauss's own principle, now, possesses all the requisites of
universality, but its difficulty is that it is not immediately intelligible and that Gauss deduced it with the
help of D'Alembert's principle, a procedure which left matters where they were before.
Whence, now, is derived this strange part which the principle of virtual motion plays in mechanics? For
the present I shall only make this reply. It would be difficult for me to tell the difference of impression
which Lagrange's proof of the principle made on me when I first took it up as a student and when I
subsequently resumed it after having made historical researches. It first appeared to me insipid, chiefly
on account of the pulleys and the cords which did not fit in with the mathematical view, and whose action
I would much rather have discovered from the principle
[Pg 155]
itself than have taken for granted. But now that I have studied the history of the science I cannot imagine
a more beautiful demonstration.
In fact, through all mechanics it is this self-same principle of excluded perpetual motion which
accomplishes almost all, which displeased Lagrange, but which he still had to employ, at least tacitly, in
his own demonstration. If we give this principle its proper place and setting, the paradox is explained.
The principle of excluded perpetual motion is thus no new discovery; it has been the guiding idea, for
three hundred years, of all the great inquirers. But the principle cannot properly be based upon
mechanical perceptions. For long before the development of mechanics the conviction of its truth
existed and even contributed to that development. Its power of conviction, therefore, must have more
universal and deeper roots. We shall revert to this point.

II. MECHANICAL PHYSICS.

It cannot be denied that an unmistakable tendency has prevailed, from Democritus to the present day, to
explain all physical events mechanically. Not to mention earlier obscure expressions of that tendency we
read in Huygens the following:[51]
"There can be no doubt that light consists of the motion of a certain substance. For if we
examine its production, we find that here on earth it is principally fire and flame which
engender it, both of which contain beyond doubt bodies which are in rapid movement,
since they dissolve and destroy many other bodies more solid than they: while if we regard
its effects, we see that when light is accumulated, say by concave mirrors, it has the
 property of combustion just as fire has, that is to say, it disunites the parts of bodies,
which is assuredly a proof of motion, at least in the true philosophy, in which the causes of
all natural effects are conceived as mechanical causes. Which in my judgment must be
accomplished or all hope of ever understanding physics renounced."[52]
[Pg 156]
S. Carnot,[53] in introducing the principle of excluded perpetual motion into the theory of heat, makes the
following apology:
"It will be objected here, perhaps, that a perpetual motion proved impossible for purely
mechanical actions, is perhaps not so when the influence of heat or of electricity is
employed. But can phenomena of heat or electricity be thought of as due to anything else
than to certain motions of bodies, and as such must they not be subject to the general laws
of mechanics?"[54]
[Pg 157]
These examples, which might be multiplied by quotations from recent literature indefinitely, show that a
tendency to explain all things mechanically actually exists. This tendency is also intelligible. Mechanical
events as simple motions in space and time best admit of observation and pursuit by the help of our
highly organised senses. We reproduce mechanical processes almost without effort in our imagination.
Pressure as a circumstance that produces motion is very familiar to us from daily experience. All
changes which the individual personally produces in his environment, or humanity brings about by
means of the arts in the world, are effected through the instrumentality of motions. Almost of necessity,
therefore, motion appears to us as the most important physical factor. Moreover, mechanical properties
may be discovered in all physical events. The sounding bell trembles, the heated body expands, the
electrified body attracts other bodies. Why, therefore, should we not attempt to grasp all events under
their mechanical aspect, since that is so easily apprehended and most accessible to observation and
measurement? In fact, no objection is to be made to the attempt to elucidate the properties of physical
events by mechanical analogies.
But modern physics has proceeded very far in this direction. The point of view which Wundt represents
in his excellent treatise On the Physical Axioms is probably
[Pg 158]
shared by the majority of physicists. The axioms of physics which Wundt sets up are as follows:
1. All natural causes are motional causes.
2. Every motional cause lies outside the object moved.
3. All motional causes act in the direction of the straight line of junction, and so forth.
4. The effect of every cause persists.
5. Every effect involves an equal countereffect.
6. Every effect is equivalent to its cause.
These principles might be studied properly enough as fundamental principles of mechanics. But when
they are set up as axioms of physics, their enunciation is simply tantamount to a negation of all events
except motion.
According to Wundt, all changes of nature are mere changes of place. All causes are motional causes
(page 26). Any discussion of the philosophical grounds on which Wundt supports his theory would lead
us deep into the speculations of the Eleatics and the Herbartians. Change of place, Wundt holds, is the
only change of a thing in which a thing remains identical with itself. If a thing changed qualitatively, we
should be obliged to imagine that something was annihilated and something else created in its place,
which is not to be reconciled with our idea of the identity of the object observed and of the
indestructibility of matter. But we have only to remember that the Eleatics encountered difficulties of
exactly the same sort
[Pg 159]
 in motion. Can we not also imagine that a thing is destroyed in one place and in another an exactly
similar thing created? After all, do we really know more why a body leaves one place and appears in
another, than why a cold body grows warm? Granted that we had a perfect knowledge of the mechanical
processes of nature, could we and should we, for that reason, put out of the world all other processes
that we do not understand? On this principle it would really be the simplest course to deny the existence
of the whole world. This is the point at which the Eleatics ultimately arrived, and the school of Herbart
stopped little short of the same goal.
Physics treated in this sense supplies us simply with a diagram of the world, in which we do not know
reality again. It happens, in fact, to men who give themselves up to this view for many years, that the
world of sense from which they start as a province of the greatest familiarity, suddenly becomes, in their
eyes, the supreme "world-riddle."
Intelligible as it is, therefore, that the efforts of thinkers have always been bent upon the "reduction of all
physical processes to the motions of atoms," it must yet be affirmed that this is a chimerical ideal. This
ideal has often played an effective part in popular lectures, but in the workshop of the serious inquirer it
has discharged scarcely the least function. What has really been achieved in mechanical physics is
either the elucidation of physical processes by more
[Pg 160]
familiar mechanical analogies, (for example, the theories of light and of electricity,) or the exact
quantitative ascertainment of the connexion of mechanical processes with other physical processes, for
example, the results of thermodynamics.

III. THE PRINCIPLE OF ENERGY IN PHYSICS.

We can know only from experience that mechanical processes produce other physical transformations,
or vice versa. The attention was first directed to the connexion of mechanical processes, especially the
performance of work, with changes of thermal conditions by the invention of the steam-engine, and by its
great technical importance. Technical interests and the need of scientific lucidity meeting in the mind of
S. Carnot led to the remarkable development from which thermodynamics flowed. It is simply an accident
of history that the development in question was not connected with the practical applications of
electricity.
In the determination of the maximum quantity of work that, generally, a heat-machine, or, to take a special
case, a steam-engine, can perform with the expenditure of a given amount of heat of combustion, Carnot
is guided by mechanical analogies. A body can do work on being heated, by expanding under pressure.
But to do this the body must receive heat from a hotter body. Heat, therefore, to do work, must pass from
a hotter body to a colder body, just as water must fall from a higher level to a lower level to put a
mill-wheel
[Pg 161]
in motion. Differences of temperature, accordingly, represent forces able to do work exactly as do
differences of height in heavy bodies. Carnot pictures to himself an ideal process in which no heat flows
away unused, that is, without doing work. With a given expenditure of heat, accordingly, this process
furnishes the maximum of work. An analogue of the process would be a mill-wheel which scooping its
water out of a higher level would slowly carry it to a lower level without the loss of a drop. A peculiar
property of the process is, that with the expenditure of the same work the water can be raised again
exactly to its original level. This property of reversibility is also shared by the process of Carnot. His
process also can be reversed by the expenditure of the same amount of work, and the heat again brought
back to its original temperature level.
Suppose, now, we had two different reversible processes A, B, such that in A a quantity of heat, Q,
flowing off from the temperature t1 to the lower temperature t2 should perform the work W, but in B under
the same circumstances it should perform a greater quantity of work W + W'; then, we could join B in the
sense assigned and A in the reverse sense into a single process. Here A would reverse the
transformation of heat produced by B and would leave a surplus of work W', produced, so to speak, from
nothing. The combination would present a perpetual motion.
With the feeling, now, that it makes little difference
[Pg 162]
 whether the mechanical laws are broken directly or indirectly (by processes of heat), and convinced of
the existence of a universal law-ruled connexion of nature, Carnot here excludes for the first time from
the province of general physics the possibility of a perpetual motion. But it follows, then, that the
quantity of work W, produced by the passage of a quantity of heat Q from a temperature t1 to a
temperature t2, is independent of the nature of the substances as also of the character of the process, so
far as that is unaccompanied by loss, but is wholly dependent upon the temperature t1, t2.
This important principle has been fully confirmed by the special researches of Carnot himself (1824), of
Clapeyron (1834), and of Sir William Thomson (1849), now Lord Kelvin. The principle was reached
without any assumption whatever concerning the nature of heat, simply by the exclusion of a perpetual
motion. Carnot, it is true, was an adherent of the theory of Black, according to which the sum-total of the
quantity of heat in the world is constant, but so far as his investigations have been hitherto considered
the decision on this point is of no consequence. Carnot's principle led to the most remarkable results. W.
Thomson (1848) founded upon it the ingenious idea of an "absolute" scale of temperature. James
Thomson (1849) conceived a Carnot process to take place with water freezing under pressure and,
therefore, performing work. He discovered, thus, that the freezing point is lowered 0·0075° Celsius by
every additional atmosphere
[Pg 163]
of pressure. This is mentioned merely as an example.
About twenty years after the publication of Carnot's book a further advance was made by J. R. Mayer and
J. P. Joule. Mayer, while engaged as a physician in the service of the Dutch, observed, during a process
of bleeding in Java, an unusual redness of the venous blood. In agreement with Liebig's theory of animal
heat he connected this fact with the diminished loss of heat in warmer climates, and with the diminished
expenditure of organic combustibles. The total expenditure of heat of a man at rest must be equal to the
total heat of combustion. But since all organic actions, even the mechanical actions, must be set down to
the credit of the heat of combustion, some connexion must exist between mechanical work and
expenditure of heat.
Joule started from quite similar convictions concerning the galvanic battery. A heat of association
equivalent to the consumption of the zinc can be made to appear in the galvanic cell. If a current is set
up, a part of this heat appears in the conductor of the current. The interposition of an apparatus for the
decomposition of water causes a part of this heat to disappear, which on the burning of the explosive
gas formed, is reproduced. If the current runs an electromotor, a portion of the heat again disappears,
which, on the consumption of the work by friction, again makes its appearance. Accordingly, both the
heat
[Pg 164]
produced and the work produced, appeared to Joule also as connected with the consumption of
material. The thought was therefore present, both to Mayer and to Joule, of regarding heat and work as
equivalent quantities, so connected with each other that what is lost in one form universally appears in
another. The result of this was a substantial conception of heat and of work, and ultimately a substantial
conception of energy. Here every physical change of condition is regarded as energy, the destruction of
which generates work or equivalent heat. An electric charge, for example, is energy.
In 1842 Mayer had calculated from the physical constants then universally accepted that by the
disappearance of one kilogramme-calorie 365 kilogramme-metres of work could be performed, and vice
versa. Joule, on the other hand, by a long series of delicate and varied experiments beginning in 1843
ultimately determined the mechanical equivalent of the kilogramme-calorie, more exactly, as 425
kilogramme-metres.
If we estimate every change of physical condition by the mechanical work which can be performed upon
the disappearance of that condition, and call this measure energy, then we can measure all physical
changes of condition, no matter how different they may be, with the same common measure, and say:
the sum-total of all energy remains constant. This is the form that the principle of excluded perpetual
motion received at
[Pg 165]
the hands of Mayer, Joule, Helmholtz, and W. Thomson in its extension to the whole domain of physics.
After it had been proved that heat must disappear if mechanical work was to be done at its expense,
Carnot's principle could no longer be regarded as a complete expression of the facts. Its improved form
was first given, in 1850, by Clausius, whom Thomson followed in 1851. It runs thus: "If a quantity of heat
Q' is transformed into work in a reversible process, another quantity of heat Q of the absolute[55]
temperature T1 is lowered to the absolute temperature T2." Here Q' is dependent only on Q, T1, T2, but is
independent of the substances used and of the character of the process, so far as that is unaccompanied
by loss. Owing to this last fact, it is sufficient to find the relation which obtains for some one well-known
physical substance, say a gas, and some definite simple process. The relation found will be the one that
holds generally. We get, thus,
Q'/(Q' + Q) = (T1-T2)/T1 (1)
that is, the quotient of the available heat Q' transformed into work divided by the sum of the transformed
and transferred heats (the total sum used), the so-called economical coefficient of the process, is,
(T1-T2)/T1.
[Pg 166]

IV. THE CONCEPTIONS OF HEAT.

When a cold body is put in contact with a warm body it is observed that the first body is warmed and that
the second body is cooled. We may say that the first body is warmed at the expense of the second body.
This suggests the notion of a thing, or heat-substance, which passes from the one body to the other. If
two masses of water m, m', of unequal temperatures, be put together, it will be found, upon the rapid
equalisation of the temperatures, that the respective changes of temperatures u and u' are inversely
proportional to the masses and of opposite signs, so that the algebraical sum of the products is,
mu + m'u' = 0.
Black called the products mu, m'u', which are decisive for our knowledge of the process, quantities of
heat. We may form a very clear picture of these products by conceiving them with Black as measures of
the quantities of some substance. But the essential thing is not this picture but the constancy of the sum
of these products in simple processes of conduction. If a quantity of heat disappears at one point, an
equally large quantity will make its appearance at some other point. The retention of this idea leads to the
discovery of specific heat. Black, finally, perceives that also something else may appear for a vanished
quantity of heat, namely: the fusion or vaporisation of a definite quantity
[Pg 167]
of matter. He adheres here still to this favorite view, though with some freedom, and considers the
vanished quantity of heat as still present, but as latent.
The generally accepted notion of a caloric, or heat-stuff, was strongly shaken by the work of Mayer and
Joule. If the quantity of heat can be increased and diminished, people said, heat cannot be a substance,
but must be a motion. The subordinate part of this statement has become much more popular than all the
rest of the doctrine of energy. But we may convince ourselves that the motional conception of heat is
now as unessential as was formerly its conception as a substance. Both ideas were favored or impeded
solely by accidental historical circumstances. It does not follow that heat is not a substance from the fact
that a mechanical equivalent exists for quantity of heat. We will make this clear by the following question
which bright students have sometimes put to me. Is there a mechanical equivalent of electricity as there
is a mechanical equivalent of heat? Yes, and no. There is no mechanical equivalent of quantity of
electricity as there is an equivalent of quantity of heat, because the same quantity of electricity has a
very different capacity for work, according to the circumstances in which it is placed; but there is a
mechanical equivalent of electrical energy.
Let us ask another question. Is there a mechanical equivalent of water? No, there is no mechanical
equivalent of quantity of water, but there is a mechanical
[Pg 168]
equivalent of weight of water multiplied by its distance of descent.
When a Leyden jar is discharged and work thereby performed, we do not picture to ourselves that the
quantity of electricity disappears as work is done, but we simply assume that the electricities come into
different positions, equal quantities of positive and negative electricity being united with one another.
What, now, is the reason of this difference of view in our treatment of heat and of electricity? The reason
is purely historical, wholly conventional, and, what is still more important, is wholly indifferent. I may be
allowed to establish this assertion.
In 1785 Coulomb constructed his torsion balance, by which he was enabled to measure the repulsion of
electrified bodies. Suppose we have two small balls, A, B, which over their whole extent are similarly
electrified. These two balls will exert on one another, at a certain distance r of their centres, a certain
repulsion p. We bring into contact with B now a ball C, suffer both to be equally electrified, and then
measure the repulsion of B from A and of C from A at the same distance r. The sum of these repulsions
is again p. Accordingly something has remained constant. If we ascribe this effect to a substance, then
we infer naturally its constancy. But the essential point of the exposition is the divisibility of the electric
force p and not the simile of substance.
In 1838 Riess constructed his electrical air-thermometer
[Pg 169]
(the thermoelectrometer). This gives a measure of the quantity of heat produced by the discharge of jars.
This quantity of heat is not proportional to the quantity of electricity contained in the jar by Coulomb's
measure, but if Q be this quantity and C be the capacity, is proportional to Q2/2C, or, more simply still, to
the energy of the charged jar. If, now, we discharge the jar completely through the thermometer, we
obtain a certain quantity of heat, W. But if we make the discharge through the thermometer into a second
jar, we obtain a quantity less than W. But we may obtain the remainder by completely discharging both
jars through the air-thermometer, when it will again be proportional to the energy of the two jars. On the
first, incomplete discharge, accordingly, a part of the electricity's capacity for work was lost.
When the charge of a jar produces heat its energy is changed and its value by Riess's thermometer is
decreased. But by Coulomb's measure the quantity remains unaltered.
Now let us imagine that Riess's thermometer had been invented before Coulomb's torsion balance,
which is not a difficult feat, since both inventions are independent of each other; what would be more
natural than that the "quantity" of electricity contained in a jar should be measured by the heat produced
in the thermometer? But then, this so-called quantity of electricity would decrease on the production of
heat or on the performance of work, whereas it now remains unchanged;
[Pg 170]
in that case, therefore, electricity would not be a substance but a motion, whereas now it is still a
substance. The reason, therefore, why we have other notions of electricity than we have of heat, is purely
historical, accidental, and conventional.
This is also the case with other physical things. Water does not disappear when work is done. Why?
Because we measure quantity of water with scales, just as we do electricity. But suppose the capacity of
water for work were called quantity, and had to be measured, therefore, by a mill instead of by scales;
then this quantity also would disappear as it performed the work. It may, now, be easily conceived that
many substances are not so easily got at as water. In that case we should be unable to carry out the one
kind of measurement with the scales whilst many other modes of measurement would still be left us.
In the case of heat, now, the historically established measure of "quantity" is accidentally the work-value
of the heat. Accordingly, its quantity disappears when work is done. But that heat is not a substance
follows from this as little as does the opposite conclusion that it is a substance. In Black's case the
quantity of heat remains constant because the heat passes into no other form of energy.
If any one to-day should still wish to think of heat as a substance, we might allow that person this liberty
with little ado. He would only have to assume that that which we call quantity of heat was the energy of
[Pg 171]
a substance whose quantity remained unaltered, but whose energy changed. In point of fact we might
much better say, in analogy with the other terms of physics, energy of heat, instead of quantity of heat.
When we wonder, therefore, at the discovery that heat is motion, we wonder at something that was never
discovered. It is perfectly indifferent and possesses not the slightest scientific value, whether we think of
heat as a substance or not. The fact is, heat behaves in some connexions like a substance, in others not.
Heat is latent in steam as oxygen is latent in water.

V. THE CONFORMITY IN THE DEPORTMENT OF THE ENERGIES.

The foregoing reflexions will gain in lucidity from a consideration of the conformity which obtains in the
behavior of all energies, a point to which I called attention long ago.[56]
A weight P at a height H1 represents an energy W1 = PH1. If we suffer the weight to sink to a lower height
H2, during which work is done, and the work done is employed in the production of living force, heat, or
an electric charge, in short, is transformed, then the energy W2 = PH2 is still left. The equation subsists
[Pg 172]
W1/H1 = W2/H2, (2) or, denoting the transformed energy by W' = W1-W2 and the transferred energy, that
transported to the lower level, by W = W2,
W'/(W' + W) = (H1-H2)/H1, (3)
an equation in all respects analogous to equation (1) at page 165. The property in question, therefore, is
by no means peculiar to heat. Equation (2) gives the relation between the energy taken from the higher
level and that deposited on the lower level (the energy left behind); it says that these energies are
proportional to the heights of the levels. An equation analogous to equation (2) may be set up for every
form of energy; hence the equation which corresponds to equation (3), and so to equation (1), may be
regarded as valid for every form. For electricity, for example, H1, H2 signify the potentials.
When we observe for the first time the agreement here indicated in the transformative law of the
energies, it appears surprising and unexpected, for we do not perceive at once its reason. But to him
who pursues the comparative historical method that reason will not long remain a secret.
Since Galileo, mechanical work, though long under a different name, has been a fundamental concept of
mechanics, as also a very important notion in the applied sciences. The transformation of work into
living
[Pg 173]
force, and of living force into work, suggests directly the notion of energy—the idea having been first
fruitfully employed by Huygens, although Thomas Young first called it by the name of "energy." Let us
add to this the constancy of weight (really the constancy of mass) and we shall see that with respect to
mechanical energy it is involved in the very definition of the term that the capacity for work or the
potential energy of a weight is proportional to the height of the level at which it is, in the geometrical
sense, and that it decreases on the lowering of the weight, on transformation, proportionally to the height
of the level. The zero level here is wholly arbitrary. With this, equation (2) is given, from which all the
other forms follow.
When we reflect on the tremendous start which mechanics had over the other branches of physics, it is
not to be wondered at that the attempt was always made to apply the notions of that science wherever
this was possible. Thus the notion of mass, for example, was imitated by Coulomb in the notion of
quantity of electricity. In the further development of the theory of electricity, the notion of work was
likewise immediately introduced in the theory of potential, and heights of electrical level were measured
by the work of unit of quantity raised to that level. But with this the preceding equation with all its
consequences is given for electrical energy. The case with the other energies was similar.
[Pg 174]
Thermal energy, however, appears as a special case. Only by the peculiar experiments mentioned could
it be discovered that heat is an energy. But the measure of this energy by Black's quantity of heat is the
outcome of fortuitous circumstances. In the first place, the accidental slight variability of the capacity for
heat c with the temperature, and the accidental slight deviation of the usual thermometrical scales from
the scale derived from the tensions of gases, brings it about that the notion "quantity of heat" can be set
up and that the quantity of heat ct corresponding to a difference of temperature t is nearly proportional to
the energy of the heat. It is a quite accidental historical circumstance that Amontons hit upon the idea of
measuring temperature by the tension of a gas. It is certain in this that he did not think of the work of the
heat.[57] But the numbers standing for temperature, thus, are made proportional to the tensions of gases,
that is, to the work done by gases, with otherwise equal changes of volume. It thus happens that
temperature heights and level heights of work are proportional to one another.
If properties of the thermal condition varying greatly from the tensions of gases had been chosen, this
relation would have assumed very complicated forms, and the agreement between heat and the other
energies above considered would not subsist. It is
[Pg 175]
very instructive to reflect upon this point. A natural law, therefore, is not implied in the conformity of the
behavior of the energies, but this conformity is rather conditioned by the uniformity of our modes of
conception and is also partly a matter of good fortune.

VI. THE DIFFERENCES OF THE ENERGIES AND THE LIMITS OF THE PRINCIPLE OF ENERGY.
Of every quantity of heat Q which does work in a reversible process (one unaccompanied by loss)
between the absolute temperatures T1, T2, only the portion
(T1-T2)/T1
is transformed into work, while the remainder is transferred to the lower temperature-level T2. This
transferred portion can, upon the reversal of the process, with the same expenditure of work, again be
brought back to the level T1. But if the process is not reversible, then more heat than in the foregoing
case flows to the lower level, and the surplus can no longer be brought back to the higher level T2
without some special expenditure. W. Thomson (1852), accordingly, drew attention to the fact, that in all
non-reversible, that is, in all real thermal processes, quantities of heat are lost for mechanical work, and
that accordingly a dissipation or waste of mechanical energy is taking place. In all cases, heat is only
partially transformed into work, but frequently work is wholly transformed
[Pg 176]
into heat. Hence, a tendency exists towards a diminution of the mechanical energy and towards an
increase of the thermal energy of the world.
For a simple, closed cyclical process, accompanied by no loss, in which the quantity of heat Q_{1} is
taken from the level T_{1}, and the quantity Q_{2} is deposited upon the level T_{2}, the following
relation, agreeably to equation (2), exists,
-(Q1/T1) + (Q2/T2) = 0.
Similarly, for any number of compound reversible cycles Clausius finds the algebraical sum
ΣQ/T = 0,
and supposing the temperature to change continuously,
∫dQ/T = 0 (4)
Here the elements of the quantities of heat deducted from a given level are reckoned negative, and the
elements imparted to it, positive. If the process is not reversible, then expression (4), which Clausius
calls entropy, increases. In actual practice this is always the case, and Clausius finds himself led to the
statement:
1. That the energy of the world remains constant.
2. That the entropy of the world tends toward a maximum.
Once we have noted the above-indicated conformity in the behavior of different energies, the peculiarity
[Pg 177]
of thermal energy here mentioned must strike us. Whence is this peculiarity derived, for, generally every
energy passes only partly into another form, which is also true of thermal energy? The explanation will
be found in the following.
Every transformation of a special kind of energy A is accompanied with a fall of potential of that
particular kind of energy, including heat. But whilst for the other kinds of energy a transformation and
therefore a loss of energy on the part of the kind sinking in potential is connected with the fall of the
potential, with heat the case is different. Heat can suffer a fall of potential without sustaining a loss of
energy, at least according to the customary mode of estimation. If a weight sinks, it must create perforce
kinetic energy, or heat, or some other form of energy. Also, an electrical charge cannot suffer a fall of
potential without loss of energy, i. e., without transformation. But heat can pass with a fall of temperature
to a body of greater capacity and the same thermal energy still be preserved, so long as we regard every
quantity of heat as energy. This it is that gives to heat, besides its property of energy, in many cases the
character of a material substance, or quantity.
If we look at the matter in an unprejudiced light, we must ask if there is any scientific sense or purpose in
still considering as energy a quantity of heat that can no longer be transformed into mechanical work,
(for example, the heat of a closed equably warmed
[Pg 178]
material system). The principle of energy certainly plays in this case a wholly superfluous rôle, which is
assigned to it only from habit.[58] To maintain the principle of energy in the face of a knowledge of the
dissipation or waste of mechanical energy, in the face of the increase of entropy is equivalent almost to
the liberty which Black took when he regarded the heat of liquefaction as still present but latent.[59] It is to
be remarked further, that the expressions "energy of the world" and "entropy of the world" are slightly
permeated with scholasticism. Energy and entropy are metrical notions. What meaning can there be in
applying these notions to a case in which they are not applicable, in which their values are not
determinable?
If we could really determine the entropy of the world it would represent a true, absolute measure of time.
In this way is best seen the utter tautology of a statement that the entropy of the world increases with the
time. Time, and the fact that certain changes take place only in a definite sense, are one and the same
thing.
[Pg 179]

VII. THE SOURCES OF THE PRINCIPLE OF ENERGY.

We are now prepared to answer the question, What are the sources of the principle of energy? All
knowledge of nature is derived in the last instance from experience. In this sense they are right who look
upon the principle of energy as a result of experience.
Experience teaches that the sense-elements αβγδ... into which the world may be decomposed, are
subject to change. It tells us further, that certain of these elements are connected with other elements, so
that they appear and disappear together; or, that the appearance of the elements of one class is
connected with the disappearance of the elements of the other class. We will avoid here the notions of
cause and effect because of their obscurity and equivocalness. The result of experience may be
expressed as follows: The sensuous elements of the world (αβγδ...) show themselves to be
interdependent. This interdependence is best represented by some such conception as is in geometry
that of the mutual dependence of the sides and angles of a triangle, only much more varied and complex.
As an example, we may take a mass of gas enclosed in a cylinder and possessed of a definite volume (α),
which we change by a pressure (β) on the piston, at the same time feeling the cylinder with our hand and
[Pg 180]
receiving a sensation of heat (γ). Increase of pressure diminishes the volume and increases the
sensation of heat.
The various facts of experience are not in all respects alike. Their common sensuous elements are
placed in relief by a process of abstraction and thus impressed upon the memory. In this way the
expression is obtained of the features of agreement of extensive groups of facts. The simplest sentence
which we can utter is, by the very nature of language, an abstraction of this kind. But account must also
be taken of the differences of related facts. Facts may be so nearly related as to contain the same kind of
a αβγ..., but the relation be such that the αβγ... of the one differ from the αβγ... of the other only by the
number of equal parts into which they can be divided. Such being the case, if rules can be given for
deducing from one another the numbers which are the measures of these αβγ..., then we possess in
such rules the most general expression of a group of facts, as also that expression which corresponds to
all its differences. This is the goal of quantitative investigation.
If this goal be reached what we have found is that between the αβγ... of a group of facts, or better,
between the numbers which are their measures, a number of equations exists. The simple fact of change
brings it about that the number of these equations must be smaller than the number of the αβγ.... If the
former be smaller by one than the latter, then one
[Pg 181]
portion of the αβγ... is uniquely determined by the other portion.
The quest of relations of this last kind is the most important function of special experimental research,
because we are enabled by it to complete in thought facts that are only partly given. It is self-evident that
only experience can ascertain that between the αβγ... relations exist and of what kind they are. Further,
only experience can tell that the relations that exist between the αβγ... are such that changes of them can
be reversed. If this were not the fact all occasion for the enunciation of the principle of energy, as is
easily seen, would be wanting. In experience, therefore, is buried the ultimate well-spring of all
knowledge of nature, and consequently, in this sense, also the ultimate source of the principle of energy.
But this does not exclude the fact that the principle of energy has also a logical root, as will now be
shown. Let us assume on the basis of experience that one group of sensuous elements αβγ... determines
uniquely another group λμν.... Experience further teaches that changes of αβγ... can be reversed. It is
then a logical consequence of this observation, that every time that αβγ... assume the same values this is
also the case with λμν.... Or, that purely periodical changes of αβγ... can produce no permanent changes
of λμν.... If the group λμν... is a mechanical group, then a perpetual motion is excluded.
[Pg 182]
It will be said that this is a vicious circle, which we will grant. But psychologically, the situation is
essentially different, whether I think simply of the unique determination and reversibility of events, or
whether I exclude a perpetual motion. The attention takes in the two cases different directions and
diffuses light over different sides of the question, which logically of course are necessarily connected.
Surely that firm, logical setting of the thoughts noticeable in the great inquirers, Stevinus, Galileo, and
the rest, which, consciously or instinctively, was supported by a fine feeling for the slightest
contradictions, has no other purpose than to limit the bounds of thought and so exempt it from the
possibility of error. In this, therefore, the logical root of the principle of excluded perpetual motion is
given, namely, in that universal conviction which existed even before the development of mechanics and
co-operated in that development.
It is perfectly natural that the principle of excluded perpetual motion should have been first developed in
the simple domain of pure mechanics. Towards the transference of that principle into the domain of
general physics the idea contributed much that all physical phenomena are mechanical phenomena. But
the foregoing discussion shows how little essential this notion is. The issue really involved is the
recognition of a general interconnexion of nature. This once established, we see with Carnot that it is
indifferent
[Pg 183]
whether the mechanical laws are broken directly or circuitously.
The principle of the excluded perpetual motion is very closely related to the modern principle of energy,
but it is not identical with it, for the latter is to be deduced from the former only by means of a definite
formal conception. As may be seen from the preceding exposition, the perpetual motion can be excluded
without our employing or possessing the notion of work. The modern principle of energy results
primarily from a substantial conception of work and of every change of physical condition which by
being reversed produces work. The strong need of such a conception, which is by no means necessary,
but in a formal sense is very convenient and lucid, is exhibited in the case of J. R. Mayer and Joule. It
was before remarked that this conception was suggested to both inquirers by the observation that both
the production of heat and the production of mechanical work were connected with an expenditure of
substance. Mayer says: "Ex nihilo nil fit," and in another place, "The creation or destruction of a force
(work) lies without the province of human activity." In Joule we find this passage: "It is manifestly absurd
to suppose that the powers with which God has endowed matter can be destroyed."
Some writers have observed in such statements the attempt at a metaphysical establishment of the
doctrine of energy. But we see in them simply the formal need of a simple, clear, and living grasp of the
facts, which
[Pg 184]
receives its development in practical and technical life, and which we carry over, as best we can, into the
province of science. As a fact, Mayer writes to Griesinger: "If, finally, you ask me how I became involved
in the whole affair, my answer is simply this: Engaged during a sea voyage almost exclusively with the
study of physiology, I discovered the new theory for the sufficient reason that I vividly felt the need of it."
The substantial conception of work (energy) is by no means a necessary one. And it is far from true that
the problem is solved with the recognition of the need of such a conception. Rather let us see how Mayer
gradually endeavored to satisfy that need. He first regards quantity of motion, or momentum, mv, as the
equivalent of work, and did not light, until later, on the notion of living force (mv2/2). In the province of
electricity he was unable to assign the expression which is the equivalent of work. This was done later by
Helmholtz. The formal need, therefore, is first present, and our conception of nature is subsequently
gradually adapted to it.
The laying bare of the experimental, logical, and formal root of the present principle of energy will
perhaps contribute much to the removal of the mysticism which still clings to this principle. With respect
to our formal need of a very simple, palpable, substantial conception of the processes in our
environment, it remains an open question how far nature corresponds to that need, or how far we can
satisfy it. In one
[Pg 185]
phase of the preceding discussions it would seem as if the substantial notion of the principle of energy,
like Black's material conception of heat, has its natural limits in facts, beyond which it can only be
artificially adhered to.

[Pg 186]

THE ECONOMICAL NATURE OF PHYSICAL INQUIRY.[60]

When the human mind, with its limited powers, attempts to mirror in itself the rich life of the world, of
which it is itself only a small part, and which it can never hope to exhaust, it has every reason for
proceeding economically. Hence that tendency, expressed in the philosophy of all times, to compass by
a few organic thoughts the fundamental features of reality. "Life understands not death, nor death life."
So spake an old Chinese philosopher. Yet in his unceasing desire to diminish the boundaries of the
incomprehensible, man has always been engaged in attempts to understand death by life and life by
death.
Among the ancient civilised peoples, nature was filled with demons and spirits having the feelings and
desires of men. In all essential features, this animistic view of nature, as Tylor[61] has aptly termed it, is
shared in common by the fetish-worshipper of modern Africa and the most advanced nations of
antiquity. As a theory of the world it has never completely disappeared. The monotheism of the
Christians never fully overcame it, no more than did that of the Jews. In the belief in witchcraft and in the
superstitions of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the centuries of the rise of natural science, it
assumed frightful pathological dimensions. Whilst Stevinus, Kepler, and Galileo were slowly rearing the
fabric of modern physical science, a cruel and relentless war was waged with firebrand and rack against
the devils that glowered from every corner. To-day even, apart from all survivals of that period, apart from
the traces of fetishism which still inhere in our physical concepts,[62] those very ideas still covertly lurk in
the practices of modern spiritualism.
[Pg 187]
By the side of this animistic conception of the world, we meet from time to time, in different forms, from
Democritus to the present day, another view, which likewise claims exclusive competency to
comprehend the universe. This view may be characterised as the physico-mechanical view of the world.
To-day, that view holds, indisputably, the first place in the thoughts of men, and determines the ideals
and the character of our times. The coming of the mind of man into the full consciousness of its powers,
in the eighteenth century, was a period of genuine disillusionment. It produced the splendid precedent of
a life
[Pg 188]
really worthy of man, competent to overcome the old barbarism in the practical fields of life; it created
the Critique of Pure Reason, which banished into the realm of shadows the sham-ideas of the old
metaphysics; it pressed into the hands of the mechanical philosophy the reins which it now holds.
The oft-quoted words of the great Laplace,[63] which I will now give, have the ring of a jubilant toast to the
scientific achievements of the eighteenth century: "A mind to which were given for a single instant all the
forces of nature and the mutual positions of all its masses, if it were otherwise powerful enough to
subject these problems to analysis, could grasp, with a single formula, the motions of the largest masses
as well as of the smallest atoms; nothing would be uncertain for it; the future and the past would lie
revealed before its eyes." In writing these words, Laplace, as we know, had also in mind the atoms of the
brain. That idea has been expressed more forcibly still by some of his followers, and it is not too much to
say that Laplace's ideal is substantially that of the great majority of modern scientists.
Gladly do we accord to the creator of the Mécanique céleste the sense of lofty pleasure awakened in him
by the great success of the Enlightenment, to which we too owe our intellectual freedom. But to-day, with
minds undisturbed and before new tasks, it
[Pg 189]
becomes physical science to secure itself against self-deception by a careful study of its character, so
that it can pursue with greater sureness its true objects. If I step, therefore, beyond the narrow precincts
of my specialty in this discussion, to trespass on friendly neighboring domains, I may plead in my
excuse that the subject-matter of knowledge is common to all domains of research, and that fixed, sharp
lines of demarcation cannot be drawn.
The belief in occult magic powers of nature has gradually died away, but in its place a new belief has
arisen, the belief in the magical power of science. Science throws her treasures, not like a capricious
fairy into the laps of a favored few, but into the laps of all humanity, with a lavish extravagance that no
legend ever dreamt of! Not without apparent justice, therefore, do her distant admirers impute to her the
power of opening up unfathomable abysses of nature, to which the senses cannot penetrate. Yet she
who came to bring light into the world, can well dispense with the darkness of mystery, and with
pompous show, which she needs neither for the justification of her aims nor for the adornment of her
plain achievements.
The homely beginnings of science will best reveal to us its simple, unchangeable character. Man
acquires his first knowledge of nature half-consciously and automatically, from an instinctive habit of
mimicking and forecasting facts in thought, of supplementing sluggish experience with the swift wings
of thought,
[Pg 190]
at first only for his material welfare. When he hears a noise in the underbrush he constructs there, just
as the animal does, the enemy which he fears; when he sees a certain rind he forms mentally the image
of the fruit which he is in search of; just as we mentally associate a certain kind of matter with a certain
line in the spectrum or an electric spark with the friction of a piece of glass. A knowledge of causality in
this form certainly reaches far below the level of Schopenhauer's pet dog, to whom it was ascribed. It
probably exists in the whole animal world, and confirms that great thinker's statement regarding the will
which created the intellect for its purposes. These primitive psychical functions are rooted in the
economy of our organism not less firmly than are motion and digestion. Who would deny that we feel in
them, too, the elemental power of a long practised logical and physiological activity, bequeathed to us as
an heirloom from our forefathers?
Such primitive acts of knowledge constitute to-day the solidest foundation of scientific thought. Our
instinctive knowledge, as we shall briefly call it, by virtue of the conviction that we have consciously and
intentionally contributed nothing to its formation, confronts us with an authority and logical power which
consciously acquired knowledge even from familiar sources and of easily tested fallibility can never
possess. All so-called axioms are such instinctive knowledge. Not consciously gained knowledge alone,
but powerful
 [Pg 191]
intellectual instinct, joined with vast conceptive powers, constitute the great inquirer. The greatest
advances of science have always consisted in some successful formulation, in clear, abstract, and
communicable terms, of what was instinctively known long before, and of thus making it the permanent
property of humanity. By Newton's principle of the equality of pressure and counterpressure, whose truth
all before him had felt, but which no predecessor had abstractly formulated, mechanics was placed by a
single stroke on a higher level. Our statement might also be historically justified by examples from the
scientific labors of Stevinus, S. Carnot, Faraday, J. R. Mayer, and others.
All this, however, is merely the soil from which science starts. The first real beginnings of science appear
in society, particularly in the manual arts, where the necessity for the communication of experience
arises. Here, where some new discovery is to be described and related, the compulsion is first felt of
clearly defining in consciousness the important and essential features of that discovery, as many writers
can testify. The aim of instruction is simply the saving of experience; the labor of one man is made to
take the place of that of another.
The most wonderful economy of communication is found in language. Words are comparable to type,
which spare the repetition of written signs and thus serve a multitude of purposes; or to the few sounds
of which our numberless different words are composed.
[Pg 192]
Language, with its helpmate, conceptual thought, by fixing the essential and rejecting the unessential,
constructs its rigid pictures of the fluid world on the plan of a mosaic, at a sacrifice of exactness and
fidelity but with a saving of tools and labor. Like a piano-player with previously prepared sounds, a
speaker excites in his listener thoughts previously prepared, but fitting many cases, which respond to
the speaker's summons with alacrity and little effort.
The principles which a prominent political economist, E. Hermann,[64] has formulated for the economy of
the industrial arts, are also applicable to the ideas of common life and of science. The economy of
language is augmented, of course, in the terminology of science. With respect to the economy of written
intercourse there is scarcely a doubt that science itself will realise that grand old dream of the
philosophers of a Universal Real Character. That time is not far distant. Our numeral characters, the
symbols of mathematical analysis, chemical symbols, and musical notes, which might easily be
supplemented by a system of color-signs, together with some phonetic alphabets now in use, are all
beginnings in this direction. The logical extension of what we have, joined with a use of the ideas which
the Chinese ideography furnishes us, will render the special invention and promulgation of a Universal
Character wholly superfluous.
The communication of scientific knowledge always
[Pg 193]
involves description, that is, a mimetic reproduction of facts in thought, the object of which is to replace
and save the trouble of new experience. Again, to save the labor of instruction and of acquisition,
concise, abridged description is sought. This is really all that natural laws are. Knowing the value of the
acceleration of gravity, and Galileo's laws of descent, we possess simple and compendious directions for
reproducing in thought all possible motions of falling bodies. A formula of this kind is a complete
substitute for a full table of motions of descent, because by means of the formula the data of such a table
can be easily constructed at a moment's notice without the least burdening of the memory.
No human mind could comprehend all the individual cases of refraction. But knowing the index of
refraction for the two media presented, and the familiar law of the sines, we can easily reproduce or fill
out in thought every conceivable case of refraction. The advantage here consists in the disburdening of
the memory; an end immensely furthered by the written preservation of the natural constants. More than
this comprehensive and condensed report about facts is not contained in a natural law of this sort. In
reality, the law always contains less than the fact itself, because it does not reproduce the fact as a whole
but only in that aspect of it which is important for us, the rest being either intentionally or from necessity
omitted. Natural laws may be likened to intellectual type of a
[Pg 194]
 higher order, partly movable, partly stereotyped, which last on new editions of experience may become
downright impediments.
When we look over a province of facts for the first time, it appears to us diversified, irregular, confused,
full of contradictions. We first succeed in grasping only single facts, unrelated with the others. The
province, as we are wont to say, is not clear. By and by we discover the simple, permanent elements of
the mosaic, out of which we can mentally construct the whole province. When we have reached a point
where we can discover everywhere the same facts, we no longer feel lost in this province; we
comprehend it without effort; it is explained for us.
Let me illustrate this by an example. As soon as we have grasped the fact of the rectilinear propagation
of light, the regular course of our thoughts stumbles at the phenomena of refraction and diffraction. As
soon as we have cleared matters up by our index of refraction we discover that a special index is
necessary for each color. Soon after we have accustomed ourselves to the fact that light added to light
increases its intensity, we suddenly come across a case of total darkness produced by this cause.
Ultimately, however, we see everywhere in the overwhelming multifariousness of optical phenomena the
fact of the spatial and temporal periodicity of light, with its velocity of propagation dependent on the
medium and the period. This tendency of obtaining a survey of a given province
[Pg 195]
with the least expenditure of thought, and of representing all its facts by some one single mental
process, may be justly termed an economical one.
The greatest perfection of mental economy is attained in that science which has reached the highest
formal development, and which is widely employed in physical inquiry, namely, in mathematics. Strange
as it may sound, the power of mathematics rests upon its evasion of all unnecessary thought and on its
wonderful saving of mental operations. Even those arrangement-signs which we call numbers are a
system of marvellous simplicity and economy. When we employ the multiplication-table in multiplying
numbers of several places, and so use the results of old operations of counting instead of performing the
whole of each operation anew; when we consult our table of logarithms, replacing and saving thus new
calculations by old ones already performed; when we employ determinants instead of always beginning
afresh the solution of a system of equations; when we resolve new integral expressions into familiar old
integrals; we see in this simply a feeble reflexion of the intellectual activity of a Lagrange or a Cauchy,
who, with the keen discernment of a great military commander, substituted for new operations whole
hosts of old ones. No one will dispute me when I say that the most elementary as well as the highest
mathematics are economically-ordered experiences of counting, put in forms ready for use.
[Pg 196]
In algebra we perform, as far as possible, all numerical operations which are identical in form once for
all, so that only a remnant of work is left for the individual case. The use of the signs of algebra and
analysis, which are merely symbols of operations to be performed, is due to the observation that we can
materially disburden the mind in this way and spare its powers for more important and more difficult
duties, by imposing all mechanical operations upon the hand. One result of this method, which attests its
economical character, is the construction of calculating machines. The mathematician Babbage, the
inventor of the difference-engine, was probably the first who clearly perceived this fact, and he touched
upon it, although only cursorily, in his work, The Economy of Manufactures and Machinery.
The student of mathematics often finds it hard to throw off the uncomfortable feeling that his science, in
the person of his pencil, surpasses him in intelligence,—an impression which the great Euler confessed
he often could not get rid of. This feeling finds a sort of justification when we reflect that the majority of
the ideas we deal with were conceived by others, often centuries ago. In great measure it is really the
intelligence of other people that confronts us in science. The moment we look at matters in this light, the
uncanniness and magical character of our impressions cease, especially when we remember that we can
think over again at will any one of those alien thoughts.
[Pg 197]
Physics is experience, arranged in economical order. By this order not only is a broad and
comprehensive view of what we have rendered possible, but also the defects and the needful alterations
are made manifest, exactly as in a well-kept household. Physics shares with mathematics the advantages
of succinct description and of brief, compendious definition, which precludes confusion, even in ideas
where, with no apparent burdening of the brain, hosts of others are contained. Of these ideas the rich
contents can be produced at any moment and displayed in their full perceptual light. Think of the swarm
of well-ordered notions pent up in the idea of the potential. Is it wonderful that ideas containing so much
finished labor should be easy to work with?
Our first knowledge, thus, is a product of the economy of self-preservation. By communication, the
experience of many persons, individually acquired at first, is collected in one. The communication of
knowledge and the necessity which every one feels of managing his stock of experience with the least
expenditure of thought, compel us to put our knowledge in economical forms. But here we have a clue
which strips science of all its mystery, and shows us what its power really is. With respect to specific
results it yields us nothing that we could not reach in a sufficiently long time without methods. There is
no problem in all mathematics that cannot be solved by direct counting. But with the present implements
of mathematics
[Pg 198]
many operations of counting can be performed in a few minutes which without mathematical methods
would take a lifetime. Just as a single human being, restricted wholly to the fruits of his own labor, could
never amass a fortune, but on the contrary the accumulation of the labor of many men in the hands of
one is the foundation of wealth and power, so, also, no knowledge worthy of the name can be gathered
up in a single human mind limited to the span of a human life and gifted only with finite powers, except
by the most exquisite economy of thought and by the careful amassment of the economically ordered
experience of thousands of co-workers. What strikes us here as the fruits of sorcery are simply the
rewards of excellent housekeeping, as are the like results in civil life. But the business of science has
this advantage over every other enterprise, that from its amassment of wealth no one suffers the least
loss. This, too, is its blessing, its freeing and saving power.
The recognition of the economical character of science will now help us, perhaps, to understand better
certain physical notions.
Those elements of an event which we call "cause and effect" are certain salient features of it, which are
important for its mental reproduction. Their importance wanes and the attention is transferred to fresh
characters the moment the event or experience in question becomes familiar. If the connexion of such
features strikes us as a necessary one, it is simply because
[Pg 199]
the interpolation of certain intermediate links with which we are very familiar, and which possess,
therefore, higher authority for us, is often attended with success in our explanations. That ready
experience fixed in the mosaic of the mind with which we meet new events, Kant calls an innate concept
of the understanding (Verstandesbegriff).
The grandest principles of physics, resolved into their elements, differ in no wise from the descriptive
principles of the natural historian. The question, "Why?" which is always appropriate where the
explanation of a contradiction is concerned, like all proper habitudes of thought, can overreach itself and
be asked where nothing remains to be understood. Suppose we were to attribute to nature the property
of producing like effects in like circumstances; just these like circumstances we should not know how to
find. Nature exists once only. Our schematic mental imitation alone produces like events. Only in the
mind, therefore, does the mutual dependence of certain features exist.
All our efforts to mirror the world in thought would be futile if we found nothing permanent in the varied
changes of things. It is this that impels us to form the notion of substance, the source of which is not
different from that of the modern ideas relative to the conservation of energy. The history of physics
furnishes numerous examples of this impulse in almost all fields, and pretty examples of it may be traced
back to the nursery. "Where does the light go to when it is put
[Pg 200]
out?" asks the child. The sudden shrivelling up of a hydrogen balloon is inexplicable to a child; it looks
everywhere for the large body which was just there but is now gone.
Where does heat come from? Where does heat go to? Such childish questions in the mouths of mature
men shape the character of a century.
In mentally separating a body from the changeable environment in which it moves, what we really do is
to extricate a group of sensations on which our thoughts are fastened and which is of relatively greater
stability than the others, from the stream of all our sensations. Absolutely unalterable this group is not.
Now this, now that member of it appears and disappears, or is altered. In its full identity it never recurs.
Yet the sum of its constant elements as compared with the sum of its changeable ones, especially if we
consider the continuous character of the transition, is always so great that for the purpose in hand the
former usually appear sufficient to determine the body's identity. But because we can separate from the
group every single member without the body's ceasing to be for us the same, we are easily led to believe
that after abstracting all the members something additional would remain. It thus comes to pass that we
form the notion of a substance distinct from its attributes, of a thing-in-itself, whilst our sensations are
regarded merely as symbols or indications of the properties of this thing-in-itself. But it would be much
better to
[Pg 201]
say that bodies or things are compendious mental symbols for groups of sensations—symbols that do
not exist outside of thought. Thus, the merchant regards the labels of his boxes merely as indexes of
their contents, and not the contrary. He invests their contents, not their labels, with real value. The same
economy which induces us to analyse a group and to establish special signs for its component parts,
parts which also go to make up other groups, may likewise induce us to mark out by some single symbol
a whole group.
On the old Egyptian monuments we see objects represented which do not reproduce a single visual
impression, but are composed of various impressions. The heads and the legs of the figures appear in
profile, the head-dress and the breast are seen from the front, and so on. We have here, so to speak, a
mean view of the objects, in forming which the sculptor has retained what he deemed essential, and
neglected what he thought indifferent. We have living exemplifications of the processes put into stone on
the walls of these old temples, in the drawings of our children, and we also observe a faithful analogue of
them in the formation of ideas in our own minds. Only in virtue of some such facility of view as that
indicated, are we allowed to speak of a body. When we speak of a cube with trimmed corners—a figure
which is not a cube—we do so from a natural instinct of economy, which prefers to add to an old familiar
conception a correction
[Pg 202]
instead of forming an entirely new one. This is the process of all judgment.
The crude notion of "body" can no more stand the test of analysis than can the art of the Egyptians or
that of our little children. The physicist who sees a body flexed, stretched, melted, and vaporised, cuts up
this body into smaller permanent parts; the chemist splits it up into elements. Yet even an element is not
unalterable. Take sodium. When warmed, the white, silvery mass becomes a liquid, which, when the heat
is increased and the air shut out, is transformed into a violet vapor, and on the heat being still more
increased glows with a yellow light. If the name sodium is still retained, it is because of the continuous
character of the transitions and from a necessary instinct of economy. By condensing the vapor, the
white metal may be made to reappear. Indeed, even after the metal is thrown into water and has passed
into sodium hydroxide, the vanished properties may by skilful treatment still be made to appear; just as a
moving body which has passed behind a column and is lost to view for a moment may make its
appearance after a time. It is unquestionably very convenient always to have ready the name and thought
for a group of properties wherever that group by any possibility can appear. But more than a
compendious economical symbol for these phenomena, that name and thought is not. It would be a mere
empty word for one in whom it did not awaken a large group of well-ordered
[Pg 203]
sense-impressions. And the same is true of the molecules and atoms into which the chemical element is
still further analysed.
True, it is customary to regard the conservation of weight, or, more precisely, the conservation of mass,
as a direct proof of the constancy of matter. But this proof is dissolved, when we go to the bottom of it,
into such a multitude of instrumental and intellectual operations, that in a sense it will be found to
constitute simply an equation which our ideas in imitating facts have to satisfy. That obscure, mysterious
lump which we involuntarily add in thought, we seek for in vain outside the mind.
It is always, thus, the crude notion of substance that is slipping unnoticed into science, proving itself
constantly insufficient, and ever under the necessity of being reduced to smaller and smaller
world-particles. Here, as elsewhere, the lower stage is not rendered indispensable by the higher which is
built upon it, no more than the simplest mode of locomotion, walking, is rendered superfluous by the
most elaborate means of transportation. Body, as a compound of light and touch sensations, knit
together by sensations of space, must be as familiar to the physicist who seeks it, as to the animal who
hunts its prey. But the student of the theory of knowledge, like the geologist and the astronomer, must be
permitted to reason back from the forms which are created before his eyes to others which he finds
ready made for him.
[Pg 204]
All physical ideas and principles are succinct directions, frequently involving subordinate directions, for
the employment of economically classified experiences, ready for use. Their conciseness, as also the
fact that their contents are rarely exhibited in full, often invests them with the semblance of independent
existence. Poetical myths regarding such ideas,—for example, that of Time, the producer and devourer of
all things,—do not concern us here. We need only remind the reader that even Newton speaks of an
absolute time independent of all phenomena, and of an absolute space—views which even Kant did not
shake off, and which are often seriously entertained to-day. For the natural inquirer, determinations of
time are merely abbreviated statements of the dependence of one event upon another, and nothing more.
When we say the acceleration of a freely falling body is 9·810 metres per second, we mean the velocity of
the body with respect to the centre of the earth is 9·810 metres greater when the earth has performed an
additional 86400th part of its rotation—a fact which itself can be determined only by the earth's relation
to other heavenly bodies. Again, in velocity is contained simply a relation of the position of a body to the
position of the earth.[65] Instead of referring events to the earth we may refer them to a clock, or even to
our internal sensation of time. Now, because all are connected, and each may be made the measure of
the rest, the illusion easily arises that time has significance independently of all.[66]
[Pg 205]
The aim of research is the discovery of the equations which subsist between the elements of
phenomena. The equation of an ellipse expresses the universal conceivable relation between its
co-ordinates, of which only the real values have geometrical significance. Similarly, the equations
between the elements of phenomena express a universal, mathematically conceivable relation. Here,
however, for many values only certain directions of change are physically admissible. As in the ellipse
only certain values satisfying the equation are realised, so in the physical world only certain changes of
value occur. Bodies are always accelerated towards the earth. Differences of temperature, left to
themselves, always grow less; and so on. Similarly, with respect to space, mathematical and
physiological researches have shown that the space of experience is simply an actual case of many
conceivable cases, about whose peculiar properties experience alone can instruct us. The elucidation
which this idea diffuses cannot be questioned, despite the absurd uses to which it has been put.
Let us endeavor now to summarise the results of
[Pg 206]
our survey. In the economical schematism of science lie both its strength and its weakness. Facts are
always represented at a sacrifice of completeness and never with greater precision than fits the needs of
the moment. The incongruence between thought and experience, therefore, will continue to subsist as
long as the two pursue their course side by side; but it will be continually diminished.
In reality, the point involved is always the completion of some partial experience; the derivation of one
portion of a phenomenon from some other. In this act our ideas must be based directly upon sensations.
We call this measuring.[67] The condition of science, both in its origin and in its application, is a great
relative stability of our environment. What it teaches us is interdependence. Absolute forecasts,
consequently, have no significance in science. With great changes in celestial space we should lose our
co-ordinate systems of space and time.
When a geometer wishes to understand the form of a curve, he first resolves it into small rectilinear
elements. In doing this, however, he is fully aware that these elements are only provisional and arbitrary
devices for comprehending in parts what he cannot comprehend as a whole. When the law of the curve is
found he no longer thinks of the elements. Similarly, it would not become physical science to see in its
self-created,
 [Pg 207]
changeable, economical tools, molecules and atoms, realities behind phenomena, forgetful of the lately
acquired sapience of her older sister, philosophy, in substituting a mechanical mythology for the old
animistic or metaphysical scheme, and thus creating no end of suppositious problems. The atom must
remain a tool for representing phenomena, like the functions of mathematics. Gradually, however, as the
intellect, by contact with its subject-matter, grows in discipline, physical science will give up its mosaic
play with stones and will seek out the boundaries and forms of the bed in which the living stream of
phenomena flows. The goal which it has set itself is the simplest and most economical abstract
expression of facts.
[Pg 208]

The question now remains, whether the same method of research which till now we have tacitly
restricted to physics, is also applicable in the psychical domain. This question will appear superfluous to
the physical inquirer. Our physical and psychical views spring in exactly the same manner from
instinctive knowledge. We read the thoughts of men in their acts and facial expressions without knowing
how. Just as we predict the behavior of a magnetic needle placed near a current by imagining Ampère's
swimmer in the current, similarly we predict in thought the acts and behavior of men by assuming
sensations, feelings, and wills similar to our own connected with their bodies. What we here instinctively
perform would appear to us as one of the subtlest achievements of science, far outstripping in
significance and ingenuity Ampère's rule of the swimmer, were it not that every child unconsciously
accomplished it. The question simply is, therefore, to grasp scientifically, that is, by conceptional
thought, what we are already familiar with from other sources. And here much is to be accomplished. A
long sequence of facts is to be disclosed between the physics of expression and movement and feeling
and thought.
We hear the question, "But how is it possible to explain feeling by the motions of the atoms of the
brain?" Certainly this will never be done, no more than light or heat will ever be deduced from the law of
refraction. We need not deplore, therefore, the lack of ingenious solutions of this question. The problem
is not a problem. A child looking over the walls of a city or of a fort into the moat below sees with
astonishment living people in it, and not knowing of the portal which connects the wall with the moat,
cannot understand how they could have got down from the high ramparts. So it is with the notions of
physics. We cannot climb up into the province of psychology by the ladder of our abstractions, but we
can climb down into it.
Let us look at the matter without bias. The world consists of colors, sounds, temperatures, pressures,
spaces, times, and so forth, which now we shall not call sensations, nor phenomena, because in either
term an arbitrary, one-sided theory is embodied, but simply elements. The fixing of the flux of these
elements, whether mediately or immediately, is the real object of physical research. As long as,
neglecting our own body, we employ ourselves with the interdependence of those groups of elements
which, including men and animals, make up foreign bodies, we are physicists. For example, we
investigate the change of the red color of a body as produced by a change of illumination. But the
moment we consider the special influence on the red of the elements constituting our body, outlined by
the well-known perspective with head invisible, we are at work in the domain of physiological
psychology. We close our eyes, and the red together with the whole visible world disappears. There
exists, thus, in the perspective field of every sense a portion which exercises on all the rest a different
and more powerful influence than the rest upon one another. With this, however, all is said. In the light of
this remark, we call all elements, in so far as we regard them as dependent on this special part (our
body), sensations. That the world is our sensation, in this sense, cannot be questioned. But to make a
system of conduct out of this provisional conception, and to abide its slaves, is as unnecessary for us as
would be a similar course for a mathematician who, in varying a series of variables of a function which
were previously assumed to be constant, or in interchanging the independent variables, finds his method
to be the source of some very surprising ideas for him.[68]
If we look at the matter in this unbiassed light it will appear indubitable that the method of physiological
psychology is none other than that of physics; what is more, that this science is a part of physics. Its
subject-matter is not different from that of physics. It will unquestionably determine the relations the
sensations bear to the physics of our body. We have already learned from a member of this academy
(Hering) that in all probability a sixfold manifoldness of the chemical processes of the visual substance
corresponds to the sixfold manifoldness of color-sensation, and a threefold manifoldness of the
physiological processes to the threefold manifoldness of space-sensations. The paths of reflex actions
and of the will are followed up and disclosed; it is ascertained what region of the brain subserves the
function of speech, what region the function of locomotion, etc. That which still clings to our body,
namely, our thoughts, will, when those investigations are finished, present no difficulties new in
principle. When experience has once clearly exhibited these facts and science has marshalled them in
economic and perspicuous order, there is no doubt that we shall understand them. For other
"understanding" than a mental mastery of facts never existed. Science does not create facts from facts,
but simply orders known facts.
Let us look, now, a little more closely into the modes of research of physiological psychology. We have a
very clear idea of how a body moves in the space encompassing it. With our optical field of sight we are
very familiar. But we are unable to state, as a rule, how we have come by an idea, from what corner of our
intellectual field of sight it has entered, or by what region the impulse to a motion is sent forth. Moreover,
we shall never get acquainted with this mental field of view from self-observation alone. Self-observation,
in conjunction with physiological research, which seeks out physical connexions, can put this field of
vision in a clear light before us, and will thus first really reveal to us our inner man.
Primarily, natural science, or physics, in its widest sense, makes us acquainted with only the firmest
connexions of groups of elements. Provisorily, we may not bestow too much attention on the single
constituents of those groups, if we are desirous of retaining a comprehensible whole. Instead of
equations between the primitive variables, physics gives us, as much the easiest course, equations
between functions of those variables. Physiological psychology teaches us how to separate the visible,
the tangible, and the audible from bodies—a labor which is subsequently richly requited, as the division
of the subjects of physics well shows. Physiology further analyses the visible into light and space
sensations; the first into colors, the last also into their component parts; it resolves noises into sounds,
these into tones, and so on. Unquestionably this analysis can be carried much further than it has been. It
will be possible in the end to exhibit the common elements at the basis of very abstract but definite
logical acts of like form,—elements which the acute jurist and mathematician, as it were, feels out, with
absolute certainty, where the uninitiated hears only empty words. Physiology, in a word, will reveal to us
the true real elements of the world. Physiological psychology bears to physics in its widest sense a
relation similar to that which chemistry bears to physics in its narrowest sense. But far greater than the
mutual support of physics and chemistry will be that which natural science and psychology will render
each other. And the results that shall spring from this union will, in all likelihood, far outstrip those of the
modern mechanical physics.
What those ideas are with which we shall comprehend the world when the closed circuit of physical and
psychological facts shall lie complete before us, (that circuit of which we now see only two disjoined
parts,) cannot be foreseen at the outset of the work. The men will be found who will see what is right and
will have the courage, instead of wandering in the intricate paths of logical and historical accident, to
enter on the straight ways to the heights from which the mighty stream of facts can be surveyed.
Whether the notion which we now call matter will continue to have a scientific significance beyond the
crude purposes of common life, we do not know. But we certainly shall wonder how colors and tones
which were such innermost parts of us could suddenly get lost in our physical world of atoms; how we
could be suddenly surprised that something which outside us simply clicked and beat, in our heads
should make light and music; and how we could ask whether matter can feel, that is to say, whether a
mental symbol for a group of sensations can feel?
We cannot mark out in hard and fast lines the science of the future, but we can foresee that the rigid
walls which now divide man from the world will gradually disappear; that human beings will not only
confront each other, but also the entire organic and so-called lifeless world, with less selfishness and
with livelier sympathy. Just such a presentiment as this perhaps possessed the great Chinese
philosopher Licius some two thousand years ago when, pointing to a heap of mouldering human bones,
he said to his scholars in the rigid, lapidary style of his tongue: "These and I alone have the knowledge
that we neither live nor are dead."