1870.] BARKER — ON VITAL AND PHYSICAL FORCES. 431 



believe that Dr. AVatters's essay may have suggested to the 

 distinguished English physiologist the germs of his own theory/" 

 A paper on this subject by Prof, Joseph Leconte, of Columbia, 

 S. C, published in 1859, attracted much attention abroad.^' 

 The remarkable results already given on the relation of heat to 

 mental work, which thus far are unique in science, we owe to 

 Professor J. S. Lombard, of Harvard College ; *'- the very 

 combination of metals used in his apparatus being devised by our 

 distinguished electrical engineer, Mr. Moses Gr. Farmer. Finally, 

 researches conducted by Dr. T. R. Noyes, in the Physiological 

 Laboratory of Yale College, have confirmed the theory that 

 muscular tissue does not wear during action, up to the point of 

 fatigue ; *^ and other researches by Dr. L. H. Wood have first 

 established the same great truth for brain-tissue.^* We need not 

 be ashamed, then, of our part in this advance in science. Our 

 workers are, indeed, but few ; but both they and their results will 

 live in the records of the world's progress. More would there be 

 now of them were such studies more fostered and encouraged. Self- 

 denying, earnest men are ready to give themselves up to the 

 solution of these problems, if only the means of a bare subsistence 

 be allowed them. When wealth shall foster science, science will 

 increase wealth — wealth pecuniary, it is true : but also wealth of 

 knowledge, which is far better. 



In looking back over the whole of this dicussion, I trust that 

 it is possible to see that the objects which we had in view at its 

 commencement have been more or less fully attained. I would 

 fain believe that we now see more clearly the beautiful harmonies 

 of bounteous nature ; that on her many-stringed instrument force 

 answers to force, like the notes of a great symphony ; disappear- 

 ing now in potential energy, and anon reappearing as actual 

 energy, in a multitude of forms. I would hope that this wonderful 

 unity and nuitual interaction of force in the dead forms of in- 

 organic nature, appears to you identical in the living forms of 

 animal and vegetable life, which make of our earth an Eden. 

 That even that mysterious, and in many aspects awful, power of 

 thought, hy which man influences the present and future ages, is 

 a part of this great ocean of energy. But here the great question 

 rolls upon us. Is it only this? Is there not behind this material 

 substance, a higher than molecular power in the thoughts which 

 are immortalized in the poetry of a Milton or a Shakespeare, the 

 art creations of a Michael Angelo or a Titian, the harmonics of a 



