Chapter XV: Introduction (5)

Among the practical arts which owe their progress to the development of the natural sciences, from the conclusion of the middle ages downwards, practical mechanics, aided by the mathematical science which bears the same name, was one of the most prominent. The character of the art was, at the time referred to, naturally very different from its present one. Surprised and stimulated by its own success, it thought no problem beyond its power, and immediately attacked some of the most difficult and complicated. Thus it was attempted to build automaton figures which should perform the functions of men and animals. The wonder of the last century was Vaucanson’s duck, which fed and digested its food; the flute player of the same artist, which moved all its fingers correctly; the writing boy of the older, and the pianoforte player of the younger Droz: which latter, when performing, followed its hands with its eyes, and at the conclusion of the piece bowed courteously to the audience. That men like those mentioned, whose talent might bear comparison with the most inventive heads of the present age, should spend so much time in the construction of these figures, which we at present regard as the merest trifles, would be incomprehensible, if they had not hoped in solemn earnest to solve a great problem. The writing boy of the elder Droz was publicly exhibited in Germany some years ago. Its wheel-work is so complicated, that no ordinary head would be sufficient to decipher its manner of action. When, however, we are informed that this boy and its constructor, being suspected of the black art, lay for a time in the Spanish Inquisition, and with difficulty obtained their freedom, we may infer that in those days even such a toy appeared great enough to excite doubts as to its natural origin. And though these artists may not have hoped to breathe into the creature of their ingenuity a soul gifted with moral completeness, still there were many who would be willing to dispense with the moral qualities of their servants if, at the same time, their immoral qualities could also be got rid of; and accept, instead of the mutability of flesh and bones, services which should combine the regularity of a machine with the durability of brass and steel. The object, therefore, which the inventive genius of the past century placed before it with the fullest earnestness, and not as a piece of amusement merely, was boldly chosen, and was followed up with an expenditure of sagacity which has contributed not a little to enrich the mechanical experience which a later time knew how to take advantage of. We no longer seek to build machines which shall fulfil the thousand services required of one man, but desire, on the contrary, that a machine shall perform one service, but shall occupy in doing it the place of a thousand men.

From these efforts to imitate living creatures, another idea, also by a misunderstanding, seems to have developed itself, which, as it were, formed the new philosopher’s stone of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. It was now the endeavour to construct a perpetual motion machine. Under this term was understood a machine which, without being wound up, without consuming in the working of it, falling water, wind or any other natural force, should still continue in motion, the motive power being perpetually supplied by the machine itself. Beasts and human beings seemed to correspond to the idea of such an apparatus, for they moved themselves energetically and incessantly as long as they lived, were never wound up, and nobody set them in motion. A connection between the taking in of nourishment and the development of force did not make itself apparent. The nourishment seemed only necessary to grease, as it were, the wheel-work of the animal machine, to replace what was used up, and to renew the old. The development of force out of itself seemed to be the essential peculiarity, the real quintessence of organic life. If, therefore, men were to be constructed, a perpetual motion must first be found.

Another hope also seemed to take up incidentally the second place, which, in our wiser age, would certainly have claimed the first rank in the thoughts of men. The perpetual motion was to produce work inexhaustibly without corresponding consumption, that is to say, out of nothing. Work, however, is money. Here, therefore, the practical problem which the cunning heads of all centuries have followed in the most diverse ways, namely, to fabricate money out of nothing, invited solution. The similarity with the philosopher’s stone sought by the ancient chemists was complete. That also was thought to contain the quintessence of organic life, and to be capable of producing gold.

The spur which drove men to inquiry was sharp, and the talent of some of the seekers must not be estimated as small. The nature of the problem was quite calculated to entice poring brains, to lead them round a circle for years, deceiving ever with new expectations, which vanished upon nearer approach, and finally reducing these dupes of hope to open insanity. The phantom could not be grasped. It would be impossible to give a history of these efforts, as the clearer heads, among whom the elder Droz must be ranked, convinced themselves of the futility of their experiments, and were naturally not inclined to speak much about them. Bewildered intellects, however, proclaimed often enough that they had discovered the grand secret; and as the incorrectness of their proceedings was always speedily manifest, the matter fell into bad repute, and the opinion strengthened itself more and more that the problem was not capable of solution; one difficulty after another was brought under the dominion of mathematical mechanics, and finally a point was reached where it could be proved that, at least by the use of pure mechanical forces, no perpetual motion could be generated.

We have here arrived at the idea of the driving force or power of a machine, and shall have much to do with it in future. I must, therefore, give an explanation of it. The idea of work is evidently transferred to machines by comparing their arrangements with those of men and animals to replace which they were applied. We still reckon the work of steam engines according to horse-power. The value of manual labor is determined partly by the force which is expended in it (a strong laborer is valued more highly than a weak one), partly, however, by the skill which is brought into action. A machine, on the contrary, which executes work skilfully, can always be multiplied to any extent; hence its skill has not the high value of human skill in domains where the latter cannot be supplied by machines. Thus the idea of the quantity of work in the case of machines has been limited to the consideration of the expenditure of force; this was the more important, as indeed most machines are constructed for the express purpose of exceeding, by the magnitude of their effects, the powers of men and animals. Hence, in a mechanical sense, the idea of work is become identical with that of the expenditure of force, and in this way I will apply it.

How, then, can we measure this expenditure, and compare it in the case of different machines?

I must here conduct you a portion of the way--as short a portion as possible--over the uninviting field of mathematico-mechanical ideas, in order to bring you to a point of view from which a more rewarding prospect will open. And though the example which I shall here choose, namely, that of a water-mill with iron hammer, appears to be tolerably romantic, still, alas, I must leave the dark forest valley, the spark-emitting anvil, and the black Cyclops wholly out of sight, and beg a moment’s attention to the less poetic side of the question, namely, the machinery. This is driven by a water-wheel, which in its turn is set in motion by the falling water. The axle of the water-wheel has at certain places small projections, thumbs, which, during the rotation, lift the heavy hammer and permit it to fall again. The falling hammer belabors the mass of metal, which is introduced beneath it. The work therefore done by the machine consists, in this case, in the lifting of the hammer, to do which the gravity of the latter must be overcome. The expenditure of force will, in the first place, other circumstances being equal, be proportioned to the weight of the hammer; it will, for example, be double when the weight of the hammer is doubled. But the action of the hammer depends not upon its weight alone, but also upon the height from which it falls. If it falls through two feet, it will produce a greater effect than if it falls through only one foot. It is, however, clear that if the machine, with a certain expenditure of force, lifts the hammer a foot in height, the same amount of force must be expended to raise it a second foot in height. The work is therefore not only doubled when the weight of the hammer is increased twofold, but also when the space through which it falls is doubled. From this it is easy to see that the work must be measured by the product of the weight into the space through which it ascends. And in this way, indeed, do we measure in mechanics.

The unit of work is a foot-pound, that is, a pound weight, raised to the height of one foot.

While the work in this case consists in the raising of the heavy hammer-head, the driving force which sets the latter in motion is generated by falling water. It is not necessary that the water should fall vertically, it can also flow in a moderately inclined bed; but it must always, where it has water-mills to set in motion, move from a higher to a lower position. Experiment and theory coincided in teaching, that when a hammer of a hundred weight is to be raised one foot, to accomplish this at least a hundred weight of water must fall through the space of one foot; or what is equivalent to this, two hundred weight must fall full half a foot, or four hundred weight a quarter of a foot, etc. In short, if we multiply the weight of the falling water by the height through which it falls, and regard, as before, the product as the measure of the work, then the work performed by the machine in raising the hammer can, in the most favourable case, be only equal to the number of foot-pounds of water which have fallen in the same time. In practice, indeed, this ratio is by no means attained; a great portion of the work of the falling water escapes unused, inasmuch as part of the force is unwillingly sacrificed for the sake of obtaining greater speed.

I will further remark, that this relation remains unchanged whether the hammer is driven immediately by the axle of the wheel, or whether--by the intervention of wheel-work, endless screws, pulleys, ropes--the motion is transferred to the hammer. We may, indeed, by such arrangements, succeed in raising a hammer of ten hundred weight, when by the first simple arrangement, the elevation of a hammer of one hundred weight might alone be possible; but either this heavier hammer is raised to only one-tenth of the height, or tenfold the time is required to raise it to the same height; so that, however we may alter, by the interposition of machinery, the intensity of the acting force, still in a certain time, during which the mill-stream furnishes us with a definite quantity of water, a certain definite quantity of work, and no more, can be performed.

Our machinery, therefore, has, in the first place, done nothing more than make use of the gravity of the falling water in order to overpower the gravity of the hammer, and to raise the latter. When it has lifted the hammer to the necessary height, it again liberates it, and the hammer falls upon the metal mass which is pushed beneath it. But why does the falling hammer here exercise a greater force than when it is permitted simply to press with its own weight on the mass of metal? Why is its power greater as the height from which it falls is increased? We find, in fact, that the work performed by the hammer is determined by its velocity. In other cases, also, the velocity of moving masses is a means of producing great effects. I only remind you of the destructive effects of musket-bullets, which, in a state of rest, are the most harmless things in the world. I remind you of the windmill, which derives its force from the moving air. It may appear surprising that motion, which we are accustomed to regard as a non-essential and transitory endowment of bodies, can produce such great effects. But the fact is, that motion appears to us, under ordinary circumstances, transitory, because the movement of all terrestrial bodies is resisted perpetually by other forces, friction, resistance of the air, etc., so that motion is incessantly weakened and finally neutralized. A body, however, which is opposed by no resisting force, when once set in motion, moves onward eternally with undiminished velocity. Thus we know that the planetary bodies have moved without change, through space, for thousands of years. Only by resisting forces can motion be diminished or destroyed. A moving body, such as the hammer or the musket-ball, when it strikes against another, presses the latter together, or penetrates it, until the sum of the resisting forces which the body struck presents to its pressure, or to the separation of its particles, is sufficiently great to destroy the motion of the hammer or of the bullet. The motion of a mass regarded as taking the place of working force is called the living force (_vis viva_) of the mass. The word “living” has of course here no reference whatever to living beings, but is intended to represent solely the force of the motion as distinguished from the state of unchanged rest--from the gravity of a motionless body, for example, which produces an incessant pressure against the surface which supports it, but does not produce any motion.

In the case before us, therefore, we had first power in the form of a falling mass of water, then in the form of a lifted hammer, and, thirdly, in the form of the living force of the fallen hammer. We should transform the third form into the second, if we, for example, permitted the hammer to fall upon a highly elastic steel beam strong enough to resist the shock. The hammer would rebound, and in the most favourable case would reach a height equal to that from which it fell, but would never rise higher. In this way its mass would ascend: and at the moment when its highest point has been attained, it would represent the same number of raised foot-pounds as before it fell, never a greater number; that is to say, living force can generate the same amount of work as that expended in its production. It is therefore equivalent to this quantity of work.

Our clocks are driven by means of sinking weights, and our watches by means of the tension of springs. A weight which lies on the ground, an elastic spring which is without tension, can produce no effects; to obtain such we must first raise the weight or impart tension to the spring, which is accomplished when we wind up our clocks and watches. The man who winds the clock or watch communicates to the weight or to the spring a certain amount of power, and exactly so much as is thus communicated is gradually given out again during the following twenty-four hours, the original force being thus slowly consumed to overcome the friction of the wheels and the resistance which the pendulum encounters from the air. The wheel-work of the clock therefore exhibits no working force which was not previously communicated to it, but simply distributes the force given to it uniformly over a longer time.

Into the chamber of an air-gun we squeeze, by means of a condensing air-pump, a great quantity of air. When we afterwards open the cock of a gun and admit the compressed air into the barrel, the ball is driven out of the latter with a force similar to that exerted by ignited powder. Now we may determine the work consumed in the pumping-in of the air, and the living force which, upon firing, is communicated to the ball, but we shall never find the latter greater than the former. The compressed air has generated no working force, but simply gives to the bullet that which has been previously communicated to it. And while we have pumped for perhaps a quarter of an hour to charge the gun, the force is expended in a few seconds when the bullet is discharged; but because the action is compressed into so short a time, a much greater velocity is imparted to the ball than would be possible to communicate to it by the unaided effort of the arm in throwing it.

From these examples you observe, and the mathematical theory has corroborated this for all purely mechanical, that is to say, for moving forces, that all our machinery and apparatus generate no force, but simply yield up the power communicated to them by natural forces--falling water, moving wind, or by the muscles of men and animals. After this law had been established by the great mathematicians of the last century, a perpetual motion, which should make only use of pure mechanical forces, such as gravity, elasticity, pressure of liquids and gases, could only be sought after by bewildered and ill-instructed people. But there are still other natural forces which are not reckoned among the purely moving forces--heat, electricity, magnetism, light, chemical forces, all of which nevertheless stand in manifold relation to mechanical processes. There is hardly a natural process to be found which is not accompanied by mechanical actions, or from which mechanical work may not be derived. Here the question of a perpetual motion remained open; the decision of this question marks the progress of modern physics.

In the case of the air-gun, the work to be accomplished in the propulsion of the ball was given by the arm of the man who pumped in the air. In ordinary firearms, the condensed mass of air which propels the bullet is obtained in a totally different manner, namely, by the combustion of the powder. Gunpowder is transformed by combustion for the most part into gaseous products, which endeavor to occupy a much larger space than that previously taken by the volume of the powder. Thus, you see, that, by the use of gunpowder, the work which the human arm must accomplish in the case of the air-gun is spared.

In the mightiest of our machines, the steam engine, it is a strongly compressed aeriform body, water, vapour, which, by its effort to expand, sets the machine in motion. Here, also, we do not condense the steam by means of an external mechanical force, but by communicating heat to a mass of water in a closed boiler, we change this water into steam, which, in consequence of the limits of the space, is developed under strong pressure. In this case, therefore, it is the heat communicated which generates the mechanical force. The heat thus necessary for the machine we might obtain in many ways; the ordinary method is to procure it from the combustion of coal.

Combustion is a chemical process. A particular constituent of our atmosphere, oxygen, possesses a strong force of attraction, or, as it is named in chemistry, a strong affinity for the constituents of the combustible body, which affinity, however, in most cases, can only exert itself at high temperatures. As soon as a portion of the combustible body, for example, the coal, is sufficiently heated, the carbon unites itself with great violence to the oxygen of the atmosphere and forms a peculiar gas, carbonic acid, the same which we see foaming from beer and champagne. By this combination, light and heat are generated; heat is generally developed by any combination of two bodies of strong affinity for each other; and when the heat is intense enough, light appears. Hence, in the steam engine, it is chemical processes and chemical forces which produce the astonishing work of these machines. In like manner the combustion of gunpowder is a chemical process which, in the barrel of the gun, communicates living force to the bullet.

While now the steam engine develops for us mechanical work out of heat, we can conversely generate heat by mechanical forces. A skilful blacksmith can render an iron wedge red hot by hammering. The axes of our carriages must be protected, by careful greasing, from ignition through friction. Even lately this property has been applied on a large scale. In some factories, where a surplus of water power is at hand, this surplus is applied to cause a strong iron plate to rotate swiftly upon another, so that they become strongly heated by friction. The heat so obtained warms the room, and thus a stove without fuel is provided. Now, could not the heat generated by the plates be applied to a small steam engine, which in its turn should be able to keep the rubbing plates in motion? The perpetual motion would thus be at length found. This question might be asked, and could not be decided by the older mathematico-mechanical investigations. I will remark, beforehand, that the general law which I will lay before you answers the question in the negative.

By a similar plan, however, a speculative American set some time ago the industrial world of Europe in excitement. The magneto-electric machines often made use of in the case of rheumatic disorders are well known to the public. By imparting a swift rotation to the magnet of such a machine, we obtain powerful currents of electricity. If those be conducted through water, the latter will be reduced into its two components, oxygen and hydrogen. By the combustion of hydrogen, water is again generated. If this combustion takes place, not in atmospheric air, of which oxygen only constitutes a fifth part, but in pure oxygen, and if a bit of chalk be placed in the flame, the chalk will be raised to a white heat, and give us the sun-like Drummond’s light. At the same time, the flame develops a considerable quantity of heat. Our American proposed to utilize in this way the gases obtained from electrolytic decomposition, and asserted that by the combustion a sufficient amount of heat was generated to keep a small steam engine in action, which again drove his magneto-electric machine, decomposed the water, and thus continually prepared its own fuel. This would certainly have been the most splendid of all discoveries; a perpetual motion which, besides the force which kept it going, generated light like the sun, and warmed all around it. The matter was by no means badly cogitated. Each practical step in the affair was known to be possible; but those who at that time were acquainted with the physical investigations which bear upon this subject could have affirmed, on first hearing the report, that the matter was to be numbered among the numerous stories of the fable-rich America; and indeed a fable it remained.

It is not necessary to multiply examples further. You will infer from those given, in what immediate connection heat, electricity, magnetism, light, and chemical affinity, stand with mechanical forces.

Starting from each of these different manifestations of natural forces we can set every other in motion, for the most part not in one way merely, but in many ways. It is here as with the weaver’s web--

Where a step stirs a thousand threads
The shuttles shoot from side to side,
The fibres flow unseen,
And one shock strikes a thousand combinations.

Now it is clear that if by any means we could succeed, as the above American professed to have done, by mechanical forces, to excite chemical, electrical, or other natural processes, which, by any circuit whatever, and without altering permanently the active masses in the machine, could produce mechanical force in greater quantity than that at first applied, a portion of the work thus gained might be made use of to keep the machine in motion, while the rest of the work might be applied to any other purpose whatever. The problem was, to find in the complicated net of reciprocal actions, a track through chemical, electrical, magnetical, and thermic processes, back to mechanical actions, which might be followed with a final gain of mechanical work; thus would the perpetual motion be found.

But, warned by the futility of former experiments, the public had become wiser. On the whole, people did not seek much after combinations which promised to furnish a perpetual motion, but the question was inverted. It was no more asked, how can I make use of the known and unknown relations of natural forces so as to construct a perpetual motion? but it was asked, if a perpetual motion be impossible, what are the relations which must subsist between natural forces? Everything was gained by this inversion of the question. The relations of natural forces rendered necessary by the above assumption, might be easily and completely stated. It was found that all known relations of force harmonize with the consequences of that assumption, and a series of unknown relations were discovered at the same time, the correctness of which remained to be proved. If a single one of them could be proved false, then a perpetual motion would be possible.

The first who endeavoured to travel this way was a Frenchman, named Carnot, in the year 1824. In spite of a too limited conception of his subject, and an incorrect view as to the nature of heat, which led him to some erroneous conclusions, his experiment was not quite unsuccessful. He discovered a law which now bears his name, and to which I will return further on.

His labors remained for a long time without notice, and it was not till eighteen years afterwards, that is, in 1842, that different investigators in different countries, and independent of Carnot, laid hold of the same thought.

The first who saw truly the general law here referred to, and expressed it correctly, was a German physician, J. R. Mayer, of Heilbronn, in the year 1842. A little later, in 1843, a Dane, named Colding, presented a memoir to the Academy of Copenhagen, in which the same law found utterance, and some experiments were described for its further corroboration. In England, Joule began about the same time to make experiments having reference to the same subject. We often find, in the case of questions to the solution of which the development of science points, that several heads, quite independent of each other, generate exactly the same series of reflections.

I myself, without being acquainted with either Mayer or Colding, and having first made the acquaintance of Joule’s experiments at the end of my investigation, followed the same path. I endeavoured to ascertain all the relations between the different natural processes, which followed from our regarding them from the above point of view. My inquiry was made public in 1847, in a small pamphlet bearing the title, “On the Conservation of Force.”

Since that time the interest of the scientific public for this subject has gradually augmented. A great number of the essential consequences of the above manner of viewing the subject, the proof of which was wanting when the first theoretic notions were published, have since been confirmed by experiment, particularly by those of Joule; and during the last year the most eminent physicist of France, Regnault, has adopted the new mode regarding the question, and by fresh investigations on the specific heat of gases has contributed much to its support. For some important consequences the experimental proof is still wanting, but the number of confirmations is so predominant, that I have not deemed it too early to bring the subject before even a non-scientific audience.

How the question has been decided you may already infer from what has been stated. In the series of natural processes there is no circuit to be found, by which mechanical force can be gained without a corresponding consumption. The perpetual motion remains impossible. Our reflections, however, gain thereby a higher interest.

We have thus far regarded the development of force by natural processes, only in its relation to its usefulness to man, as mechanical force. You now see that we have arrived at a general law, which holds good wholly independent of the application which man makes of natural forces; we must therefore make the expression of our new law correspond to this more general significance. It is in the first place clear, that the work which, by any natural process whatever, is performed under favourable conditions by a machine, and which may be measured in the way already indicated, may be used as a measure of force common to all. Further, the important question arises, “If the quantity of force cannot be augmented except by corresponding consumption, can it be diminished or lost?” For the purpose of our machines it certainly can, if we neglect the opportunity to convert natural processes to use, but as investigation has proved, not for a nature as a whole.

In the collision and friction of bodies against each other, the mechanics of former years assumed simply that living force was lost. But I have already stated that each collision and each act of friction generates heat; and, moreover, Joule has established by experiment the important law that for every foot-pound of force which is lost a definite quantity of heat is always generated, and that when work is performed by the consumption of heat, for each foot-pound thus gained a definite quantity of heat disappears. The quantity of heat necessary to raise the temperature of a pound of water a degree of the centigrade thermometer, corresponds to a mechanical force by which a pound weight would be raised to the height of 1350 feet; we name this quantity the mechanical equivalent of heat. I may mention here that these facts conduct of necessity to the conclusion, that the heat is not, as was formerly imagined, a fine imponderable substance, but that, like light, it is a peculiar shivering motion of the ultimate particles of bodies. In collision and friction, according to this manner of viewing the subject, the motion of the mass of a body which is apparently lost is converted into a motion of the ultimate particles of the body; and conversely, when mechanical force is generated by heat, the motion of the ultimate particles is converted into a motion of the mass.

Chemical combinations generate heat, and the quantity of this heat is totally independent of the time and steps through which the combination has been effected, provided that other actions are not at the same time brought into play. If, however, mechanical work is at the same time accomplished, as in the case of the steam engine, we obtain as much less heat as is equivalent to this work. The quantity of work produced by chemical force is in general very great. A pound of the purest coal gives when burnt, sufficient heat to raise the temperature of 8086 pounds of water one degree of the centigrade thermometer; from this we can calculate that the magnitude of the chemical force of attraction between the particles of a pound of coal and the quantity of oxygen that corresponds to it is capable of lifting a weight of one hundred pounds to a height of twenty miles. Unfortunately, in our steam engines, we have hitherto been able to gain only the smallest portion of this work; the greater part is lost in the shape of heat. The best expansive engines give back as mechanical work only eighteen per cent. of the heat generated by the fuel.

From a similar investigation of all the other known physical and chemical processes, we arrive at the conclusion that Nature as a whole possesses a store of force which cannot in any way be either increased or diminished. And that, therefore, the quantity of force in Nature is just as eternal and unalterable as the quantity of matter. Expressed in this form, I have named the general law “The Principle of the Conservation of Force.”

We cannot create mechanical force, but we may help ourselves from the general store-house of Nature. The brook and the wind, which drive our mills, the forest and the coal-bed, which supply our steam engines and warm our rooms, are to us the bearers of a small portion of the great natural supply which we draw upon for our purposes, and the actions of which we can apply as we think fit. The possessor of a mill claims the gravity of the descending rivulet, or the living force of the moving wind, as his possession. These portions of the store of Nature are what give his property its chief value.

Further, from the fact that no portion of force can be absolutely lost, it does not follow that a portion may not be inapplicable to human purposes. In this respect the inferences drawn by William Thomson from the law of Carnot are of importance. This law, which was discovered by Carnot during his endeavours to ascertain the relations between heat and mechanical force, which, however, by no means belongs to the necessary consequences of the conservation of force, and which Clausius was the first to modify in such a manner that it no longer contradicted the above general law, expresses a certain relation between the compressibility, the capacity for heat, and the expansion by heat of all bodies. It is not yet considered as actually proved, but some remarkable deductions having been drawn from it, and afterwards proved to be facts by experiment, it has attained thereby a great degree of probability. Besides the mathematical form in which the law was first expressed by Carnot, we can give it the following more general expression:--“Only, when heat passes from a warmer to a colder body, and even then only partially, can it be converted into mechanical work.”

The heat of a body which we cannot cool further, cannot be changed into another form of force; into the electric or chemical force, for example. Thus, in our steam engines, we convert a portion of the heat of the glowing coal into work, by permitting it to pass to the less warm water of the boiler. If, however, all the bodies in nature had the same temperature, it would be impossible to convert any portion of their heat into mechanical work. According to this, we can divide the total force store of the universe into two parts, one of which is heat, and must continue to be such; the other, to which a portion of the heat of the warmer bodies, and the total supply of chemical, mechanical, electrical, and magnetical forces belong, is capable of the most varied changes of form, and constitutes the whole wealth of change which takes place in nature.

But the heat of the warmer bodies strives perpetually to pass to bodies less warm by radiation and conduction, and thus to establish an equilibrium of temperature. At each motion of a terrestrial body, a portion of mechanical force passes by friction or collision into heat, of which only a part can be converted back again into mechanical force. This is also generally the case in every electrical and chemical process. From this, it follows that the first portion of the store of force, the unchangeable heat, is augmented by every natural process, while the second portion, mechanical, electrical, and chemical force, must be diminished; so that if the universe be delivered over to the undisturbed action of its physical processes, all force will finally pass into the form of heat, and all heat come into a state of equilibrium. Then all possibility of a further change would be at an end, and the complete cessation of all natural processes must set in. The life of men, animals, and plants, could not of course continue if the sun had lost its high temperature, and with it his light,--if all the components of the earth’s surface had closed those combinations which their affinities demand. In short, the universe from that time forward would be condemned to a state of eternal rest.

These consequences of the law of Carnot are, of course, only valid, provided that the law, when sufficiently tested, proves to be universally correct. In the mean time there is little prospect of the law being proved incorrect. At all events we must admire the sagacity of Thomson, who, in the letters of a long known little mathematical formula, which only speaks of the heat, volume, and pressure of bodies, was able to discern consequences which threatened the universe, though certainly after an infinite period of time, with eternal death.

I have already given you notice that our path lay through a thorny and unrefreshing field of mathematico-mechanical developments. We have now left this portion of our road behind us. The general principle which I have sought to lay before you has conducted us to a point from which our view is a wide one, and aided by this principle, we can now at pleasure regard this or the other side of the surrounding world, according as our interest in the matter leads us. A glance into the narrow laboratory of the physicist, with its small appliances and complicated abstractions, will not be so attractive as a glance at the wide heaven above us, the clouds, the rivers, the woods, and the living beings around us. While regarding the laws which have been deduced from the physical processes of terrestrial bodies, as applicable also to the heavenly bodies, let me remind you that the same force which, acting at the earth’s surface, we call gravity (_Schwere_), acts as gravitation in the celestial spaces, and also manifests its power in the motion of the immeasurably distant double stars which are governed by exactly the same laws as those subsisting between the earth and moon; that, therefore, the light and heat of terrestrial bodies do not in any way differ essentially from those of the sun, or of the most distant fixed star; that the meteoric stones which sometimes fall from external space upon the earth are composed of exactly the same simple chemical substances as those with which we are acquainted. We need, therefore, feel no scruple in granting that general laws to which all terrestrial natural processes are subject, are also valid for other bodies than the earth. We will, therefore, make use of our law to glance over the household of the universe with respect to the store of force, capable of action, which it possesses.

A number of singular peculiarities in the structure of our planetary system indicate that it was once a connected mass with a uniform motion of rotation. Without such an assumption, it is impossible to explain why all the planets move in the same direction round the sun, why they all rotate in the same direction round their axes, why the planes of their orbits, and those of their satellites and rings all nearly coincide, why all their orbits differ but little from circles; and much besides. From these remaining indications of a former state, astronomers have shaped an hypothesis regarding the formation of our planetary system, which, although from the nature of the case it must ever remain an hypothesis, still in its special traits is so well supported by analogy, that it certainly deserves our attention. It was Kant who, feeling great interest in the physical description of the earth and the planetary system, undertook the labour of studying the works of Newton, and as an evidence of the depth to which he had penetrated into the fundamental ideas of Newton, seized the notion that the same attractive force of all ponderable matter which now supports the motion of the planets, must also aforetime have been able to form from matter loosely scattered in space the planetary system. Afterwards, and independent of Kant, Laplace, the great author of the _Mecanique Celeste_, laid hold of the same thought, and introduced it among astronomers.

The commencement of our planetary system, including the sun, must, according to this, be regarded as an immense nebulous mass which filled the portion of space which is now occupied by our system, far beyond the limits of Neptune, our most distant planet. Even now we perhaps see similar masses in the distant regions of the firmament, as patches of nebulæ, and nebulous stars; within our system also, comets, the zodiacal light, the corona of the sun during a total eclipse, exhibit remnants of a nebulous substance, which is so thin that the light of the stars passes through it unenfeebled and unrefracted. If we calculate the density of the mass of our planetary system, according to the above assumption, for the time when it was a nebulous sphere, which reached to the path of the outmost planet, we should find that it would require several cubic miles of such matter to weigh a single grain.

The general attractive force of all matter must, however, impel these masses to each other, and to condense, so that the nebulous sphere became incessantly smaller, by which, according to mechanical laws, a motion of rotation originally slow, and the existence of which must be assumed, would gradually become quicker and quicker. By the centrifugal force which must act most energetically in the neighbourhood of the equator of the nebulous sphere, masses could from time to time be torn away, which afterwards would continue their courses separate from the main mass, forming themselves into single planets, or, similar to the great original sphere, into planets with satellites and rings, until finally the principal mass condensed itself into the sun. With regard to the origin of heat and light, this view gives us no information.

When the nebulous chaos first separated itself from other fixed star masses, it must not only have contained all kinds of matter which was to constitute the future planetary system, but also, in accordance with our new law, the whole store of force which at one time must unfold therein its wealth of actions. Indeed in this respect an immense dower was bestowed in the shape of the general attraction of all the particles for each other. This force, which on the earth exerts itself as gravity, acts in the heavenly spaces as gravitation. As terrestrial gravity when it draws a weight downwards performs work and generates _vis viva_, so also the heavenly bodies do the same when they draw two portions of matter from distant regions of space towards each other.

The chemical forces must have been also present, ready to act; but as these forces can only come into operation by the most intimate contact of the different masses, condensation must have taken place before the play of chemical forces began.

Whether a still further supply of force in the shape of heat was present at the commencement we do not know. At all events, by aid of the law of the equivalence of heat and work, we find in the mechanical forces, existing at the time to which we refer, such a rich source of heat and light, that there is no necessity whatever to take refuge in the idea of a store of these forces originally existing. When through condensation of the masses their particles came into collision, and clung to each other, the _vis viva_ of their motion would be thereby annihilated, and must reappear as heat. Already in old theories, it has been calculated that cosmical masses must generate heat by their collision, but it was far from anybody’s thought to make even a guess at the amount of heat to be generated in this way. At present we can give definite numerical values with certainty.

Let us make this addition to our assumption; that, at the commencement, the density of the nebulous matter was a vanishing quantity, as compared with the present density of the sun and planets; we can then calculate how much work has been performed by the condensation; we can further calculate how much of this work still exists in the form of mechanical force, as attraction of the planets towards the sun, and as _vis viva_ of their motion, and find by this how much of the force has been converted into heat.

The result of this calculation is, that only about the 454th part of the original mechanical force remains as such, and that the remainder, converted into heat, would be sufficient to raise a mass of water equal to the sun and planets taken together, not less than twenty-eight millions of degrees of the centigrade scale. For the sake of comparison, I will mention that the highest temperature which we can produce by the oxyhydrogen blowpipe, which is sufficient to fuse and vaporize even platina, and which but few bodies can endure, is estimated at about two thousand centigrade degrees. Of the action of a temperature of twenty-eight millions of such degrees we can form no notion. If the mass of our entire system were pure coal, by the combustion of the whole of it only the 3500th part of the above quantity would be generated. This is also clear, that such a development of heat must have presented the greatest obstacle to the speedy union of the masses, that the larger part of the heat must have been diffused by radiation into space, before the masses could form bodies possessing the present density of the sun and planets, and that these bodies must once have been in a state of fiery fluidity. This notion is corroborated by the geological phenomena of our planet; and with regard to the other planetary bodies, the flattened form of the sphere, which is the form of equilibrium of a fluid mass, is indicative of a former state of fluidity. If I thus permit an immense quantity of heat to disappear without compensation from our system, the principle of the conservation of force is not thereby invaded. Certainly for our planet it is lost, but not for the universe. It has proceeded outwards, and daily proceeds outwards into infinite space; and we know not whether the medium which transmits the undulations of light and heat possesses an end where the rays must return, or whether they eternally pursue their way through infinitude.

The store of force at present possessed by our system, is also equivalent to immense quantities of heat. If our earth were by a sudden shock brought to rest on her orbit--which is not to be feared in the existing arrangements of our system--by such a shock a quantity of heat would be generated equal to that produced by the combustion of fourteen such earths of solid coal. Making the most unfavourable assumption as to its capacity for heat, that is, placing it equal to that of water, the mass of the earth would thereby be heated 11,200 degrees; it would therefore be quite fused and for the most part reduced to vapour. If, then, the earth, after having been thus brought to rest, should fall into the sun, which of course would be the case, the quantity of heat developed by the shock would be four hundred times greater.

Even now, from time to time, such a process is repeated on a small scale. There can hardly be a doubt that meteors, fire-balls, and meteoric stones are masses which belong to the universe, and before coming into the domain of our earth, moved like the planets round the sun. Only when they enter our atmosphere do they become visible and fall sometimes to the earth. In order to explain the emission of light by these bodies, and the fact that for some time after their descent they are very hot, the friction was long ago thought of which they experience in passing through the air. We can now calculate that a velocity of 3,000 feet a second, supposing the whole of the friction to be expended in heating the solid mass, would raise a piece of meteoric iron 1,000° C. in temperature, or, in other words, to a vivid red heat. Now the average velocity of the meteors seems to be thirty or forty times the above amount. To compensate this, however, the greater portion of the heat is, doubtless, carried away by the condensed mass of air which the meteor drives before it. It is known that bright meteors generally leave a luminous trail behind them, which probably consists of several portions of the red-hot surfaces. Meteoric masses which fall to the earth often burst with a violent explosion, which may be regarded as a result of the quick heating. The newly-fallen pieces have been for the most part found hot, but not red-hot, which is easily explainable by the circumstances, that during the short time occupied by the meteor in passing through the atmosphere, only a thin, superficial layer is heated to redness, while but a small quantity of heat has been able to penetrate to the interior of the mass. For this reason the red heat can speedily disappear.

Thus has the falling of the meteoric stone, the minute remnant of processes which seems to have played an important part in the formation of the heavenly bodies, conducted us to the present time, where we pass from the darkness of hypothetical views to the brightness of knowledge. In what we have said, however, all that is hypothetical is the assumption of Kant and Laplace, that the masses of our system were once distributed as nebulæ in space.

On account of the rarity of the case, we will still further remark, in what close coincidence the results of science here stand with the earlier legends of the human family, and the forebodings of poetic fancy. The cosmogony of ancient nations generally commences with chaos and darkness.

Neither is the Mosaic tradition very divergent, particularly when we remember that that which Moses names heaven is different from the blue dome above us, and is synonymous with space, and that the unformed earth, and the waters of the great deep, which were afterwards divided into waters above the firmament, and waters below the firmament, resembled the chaotic components of the world.

Our earth bears still the unmistakable traces of its old fiery fluid condition. The granite formations of her mountains exhibit a structure, which can only be produced by the crystallization of fused masses. Investigation still shows that the temperature in mines, and borings, increases as we descend; and if this increase is uniform, at the depth of fifty miles, a heat exists sufficient to fuse all our minerals. Even now our volcanoes project, from time to time, mighty masses of fused rocks from their interior, as a testimony of the heat which exists there. But the cooled crust of the earth has already become so thick, that, as may be shown by calculations of its conductive power, the heat coming to the surface from within, in comparison with that reaching the earth from the sun, is exceedingly small, and increases the temperature of the surface only about one-thirtieth of a degree centigrade; so that the remnant of the old store of force which is enclosed as heat within the bowels of the earth, has a sensible influence upon the processes at the earth’s surface, only through the instrumentality of volcanic phenomena. These processes owe their power almost wholly to the action of other heavenly bodies, particularly to the light and heat of the sun, and partly also, in the case of the tides, to the attraction of the sun and moon.