68 LIFE AND DEATH. 



connected with the kinetic theory, and it should not 

 be exposed therefore to the vicissitudes experienced 

 by that theory. It is of a higher order of truth. We 

 can derive it from a less unsafe idea, namely that of 

 the connection of natural phenomena. To conceive it 

 we must get accustomed to this primordial truth, that 

 there are no pJienoinena isolated in time and space. 

 This statement contains the whole point of view of 

 energetics. 



The physics of early days had only an incomplete 

 view of things, for it considered phenomena in- 

 dependently the one of the other. 



Phenomena for purposes of analysis were classed in 

 separate and distinct compartments: weight, heat, 

 electricity, magnetism, light. Each phenomenon was 

 studied without reference to that it succeeded or that 

 which should follow. Nothing could be more artificial 

 than such a method as this. In fact, there is a 

 sequence in everything, everything is connected up, 

 everything precedes and succeeds in nature — in nature 

 there are only series. The isolated fact without 

 antecedent or consequent is a myth. Each 

 phenomenal manifestation is in solidarity with 

 another. It is a metamorphosis of one state of 

 things into another. It is transformation. It implies 

 a state of things anterior to that which we are 

 observing, a phenomenal form which has preceded 

 the form of the present moment. 



Now there exists a link between the anterior state 

 and the succeeding state — that is to say, between the 

 new form which is appearing and the preceding form 

 which is disappearing The science of energy shows 

 that something has passed from the first condition to 

 the second, but covering itself as it were with a new 



