7 i6 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



tion is hard to combat; for, even among scientific thinkers, the class 

 of men who do not become attached to the cast-iron ways down 

 which thought has traveled to them is small. A logician who sets 

 his mental machinery in motion, and then steps to one side to scru- 

 tinize its defects and limitations, is rare. To hint that there may be 

 higher processes of logic than those generally accepted, implies the 

 possession of a scientific mind, to say the least, not of a quantitative 

 cast. It has seemed to the writer that a discussion of the idea of 

 the degradation of spiritual energy, so to speak, would not be an 

 unprofitable or irreverent subject from the purely scientific point of 

 view. A little thought will convince one that no transformation of 

 energy can take place in Nature without degradation or dissipation 

 of it. In order to generate steam we must expend the energy stored 

 up in the coal ; and in its turn the steam in doing work passes from a 

 hotter state to a colder one. A fresh supply of energy is needed in 

 order to enable the cold body to do work again. There is a tendency 

 to a uniform diffusion of heat, or to a degradation of energy. 



In the process of physical growth and decay, the doctrine of the 

 conservation of force, and the degradation of energy, is clearly 

 exemplified. What the body receives from the sun in the process of 

 growth is given back, transformed, to the earth. At death'the physi- 

 cal being undergoes a chemical change ; and the earth and air recall 

 to themselves their respective portions. Here there is an equivalent 

 rendering: of matter. If the soul and mind have been the result of a 



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process of growth, the entire potential energy of the living unit has 

 not been accounted for in the final dissolution. The song of a bird 

 can be resolved into waves of motion which, although they cease after 

 a moment, and the consequent vibrations of the human ear die away, 

 are still exerting an influence upon matter. Babbage, in his " Bridge- 

 water Treatise," has drawn a powerful picture of the possible perma- 

 nence of the motion which has been communicated to the ether by 

 the tones of a human voice, and shows that it may not be impossible 

 to believe that the eloquence of Demosthenes still continues in some 

 form of motion. So we can believe that the physical effects of a 

 bird's song can remain forever impressing some form of motion upon 

 matter. Besides the physical vibrations which the song communi- 

 cated to the human ear, it has so impressed the mind that, after the 

 lapse of years, the repetition of the same notes can call up innumer- 

 able memories of deeds and a thousand pictures of the past. In the 

 mind of the poet it may be the one detached note from which he can 

 construct a song of home which can serve to arouse the ardor of the 

 Christian Slav against the Turk, and store up a fearful potential energy 

 which by its fall can destroy entire nations. Here we have, in the 

 transformation of the vibrations of sound to another form of enei'gy, 

 a continual degradation of energy ; but we may have by the same 

 means an exaltation of spiritual potential energy which is unexplained 



