88 LIFE AND DEATH. 



directly, that is to say without external assistance, 

 when it is a question of going down the scale again, in 

 the case of heat. 



3, Heat a Degraded Form of Energy. — We have 

 seen that thermal energy is not directly transformed 

 into chemical energy. There is yet another restriction 

 in the case of this thermal energy if we study the laws 

 which govern the circulation and the transformations 

 of thermal energy; and the most important comes from 

 the impossibility of transporting it from a body at 

 a lower temperature to a body at a higher temperature. 

 On the whole, and because of these restrictions, 

 thermal energy is an imperfect variety of universal 

 energy, or, as the English physicists call it, a degraded 

 form. 



4. Siviple Transformations of Electrical Energy. Its 

 Intermediary Roie. — On the other hand, electrical energy 

 represents a perfected and infinitely advantageous form 

 of this same universal energy, and this explains the vast 

 development of its industrial applications within less 

 than a century. It is not that it is better known than 

 the others in its nature and in the secret of its action. 

 On the contrary, there is more dispute than ever as to 

 its nature. To some, electricity, which is transported 

 and propagated with the speed of light, is a real flux 

 of the ether as was taught by Father Secchi, who 

 compared it to a current of water in a pipe. It would 

 do its work, just as the water of the mill does its 

 work by flowing over a wheel or through a turbine. 

 Electricity, like water in this case, would not be 

 an energy in itself, but a means of transporting 

 energy. 



To others, such as Clausius, Hertz, and Maxwell, it 

 is not so; the electric current is not a transport of 



