A NEW PHASE OF AN OLD CONFLICT 551 



work, then, is this; it is the bottom principle of everything that 

 happens. In a universe in which there were no work, nothing would 

 happen. Work alone conquers death. 



When Faust, saturated with the pseudo-science of scholasticism, 

 cries out in despair: 



Geheimnissvol am liehten Tag 



Laesst sieh Natur des Schleiers nicht berauben; 

 Und was sie Dir nicht offenbaren mag, 



Das zwingst du ihr nicht ab mit Hebeln und mit Sehrauben. 



(Nature, secretive in the bright day, 



Suffers no man to snatch her veil aside; 



And what she does not care to tell thee, 



Thou canst not force from her by rack nor screw.) 



His utterance, in the light of natural knowledge, shows itself to be 

 false. Nature tells man all he asks; only he must have learned to 

 question her intelligently. How can he learn to do that ? There is but 

 one answer, through science. Not in ancient parchments, but in the 

 fresh well of experience shall we find the knowledge that we need, 

 which is fruitful and a sure guide. 



We have seen that work can not be produced from nothing. But 

 how does it stand with the reverse proposition? Can work be annihil- 

 ated ? The fact is, of course, familiar that in mechanisms of every sort 

 there are seeming losses of work, or of "power" as we sometimes in- 

 correctly call it. This is true, doubtless, but not the whole truth. It 

 is all we knew of the truth till an original thinker, Eobert Mayer by 

 name, came upon the scene early in the forties of the last century, 

 who was not satisfied with this meager information. The young physi- 

 cian, on the occasion of a journey by sea to the tropics, was assured by 

 an old ship's officer that the sea-water is always warmer after a severe 

 storm than it was before. This suggestion was enough to arouse in the 

 mind of Mayer a series of questions. Might not the heat be produced 

 by the large amount of work which had been done in raising the waves 

 which had disappeared ? The thought looked like an absurdity to the 

 scientific men of the day, but, luckily, there were none of these for 

 Mayer to question, as his ship lay off the coast of Java, and he fol- 

 lowed out the line of thought, undisturbed by prejudices. In the 

 steam-engine work is undoubtedly produced. Whence comes it? May 

 not the work it does spring directly from the heat which it must re- 

 ceive in order to run? Work gives heat when it vanishes and, con- 

 versely, heat generates work in the engine. Are, then, heat and work 

 things which can be transformed into one another, like two chemical 

 compounds, or are they merely different forms of one and the same 

 thing? 



Filled with these reflections and with the conviction that he had at- 

 tained a deep insight into the nature of things, Mayer returned home, 



