10 THE WORK OF SADI CARROT. 



world of one of its noblest intellects, just when it 

 was beginning its marvellous career. 



The following sentence from Carnot illustrates 

 in brief his wonderful prescience; one can hardly 

 believe it possible that it should have been written 

 in the first quarter of the nineteenth century: 

 " On pent done poser en these generate que la puis- 

 sance motrice est en quantite invariable dans la 

 Nature; qu' elle n'est jamais, a proprement parler, 

 ni produite, ni detruite. A la verite, elle change 

 de forme) c'est a direqu' elle produittantotun genre 

 de mouvement, tantot un autre; mais elle n'est 

 jamais aneantie." It is this man who has prob- 

 ably inaugurated the development of the modern 

 science of thermodynamics and the whole range of 

 sciences dependent upon it, and who has thus made 

 it possible to construct a science of the energetics 

 of the universe, and to read the mysteries of every 

 physical phenomenon of nature; it is this man who 

 has done more than any contemporary in his field, 

 and who thus displayed a more brilliant genius 

 than any man of science of the nineteenth century: 

 yet not even his name appears in the biographical 

 dictionaries; and in the Encyclopaedia Britannica 

 it is only to be found incidentally in the article on 

 Thermodynamics. 



Throughout his little book, we find numerous 



