SPECULATIONS ON THE NATURE OF MATTER. 801 



enormous amount of energy liberated by their combination under any 

 supposable attraction certainly not under any that is observable. 



We are, therefore, compelled to recognize the latent energy in mat- 

 ter. The kinematists were profoundly impressed by this now estab- 

 lished fact, and, as is the usual tendency of the promulgation of any 

 brilliant discovery, they undertook too much with it to wit, to con- 

 struct a kosmos. 



By a similar tendency, after the establishment of the laws of mo- 

 tion, and of universal gravitation, followed by the discovery of the 

 conservation of matter, and later by that of the conservation of en- 

 ergy, and the perception of the energy of position, these brilliant 

 advances in knowledge of the absolute had encouraged the hope that 

 the ultimate could be explained. Matter was then viewed almost en- 

 tirely in its statical aspect as is even now too much the case, for we 

 still see in our chemical text-books molecules absurdly represented by 

 geometrical diagrams and, from the fact that motion does actually 

 result from attraction and position, it was natural to relegate motion 

 to the category of effects. There were, then, but two factors in the 

 problem matter, and its occult affections. But as matter they took 

 the old " dead matter," in the last gasp of its evolution, freighted 

 down with its bundle of inert properties of negation, and, to evolve a 

 universe, simply credited it with its virtue of position, and left it to 

 the action of the weakest of its affections, gravitation, to run over 

 again a short portion of its normal course. 



Even then, the surprising result appeared that it would galvanize 

 itself into life with activity enough to supply the radiant energy 

 which our sun now exhibits for a period of some 20,000,000 years. 

 This, whether we follow the meteoric hypothesis of Mayer, or the 

 contraction hypothesis of Ilelmholtz, which have been held to be the 

 only conceivable hypotheses. How sublime the solution of the prob- 

 lem could we, in the place of these cinders, put into the mathematical 

 mill the true data ! James Croll, in groping for some adequate data 

 to explain the duration actually needed for the exhibition of solar en- 

 ergy of which we have evidence, suggests (" Climate and Time," page 

 353) that, on dynamical principles, given two masses each one half the 

 sun's mass, moving directly toward each other with a velocity of 476 

 miles per second, sufficient heat might be accounted for to cover an 

 emission at the present rate for 50,000,000 years. The surplus velocity, 

 over and above that due to gravity, he derives from stellar proper 

 motion ; but, while the supposition is violent and unphilosophical, both 

 in respect to the large proper motion assumed, and particularly as to 

 the assumption of direct collision, in the plurality of cases called for 

 by the multitude of suns, the result is still grossly inadequate. The 

 problem is insoluble from pure dynamical considerations. They take 

 no heed of the most important factors elementary specific heat, ele- 

 mentary affinities, elementary motion. "When we once succeed in 



VOL. XXII. 51 



