Civilisation : Its Cause and Cure 



inevitable that the result should be unsatisfactory. 

 It is sufficient to say that the molecular theory of 

 heat is not in accordance with facts. Such things 

 as the law of Charles and the law of Boyle, which 

 according to it should be strictly accurate and of 

 general application, are known to be true only 

 over a most limited range. This failure of the 

 theory may be said to arise partly from its being 

 pursued by the statistical method ; but if, on 

 the other hand, we were to try and follow out the 

 individual movement of each molecule we should 

 be landed in a problem far exceeding in complexity 

 the wildest flights of Astronomy, and should 

 have exchanged for the original difficulty about 

 " temperature " a difficulty far greater. 



The result of all this has been that notwithstand- 

 ing the talk about energy and atoms, Science has 

 sadly to confess that it can still give no valid mean- 

 ing to the word temperature : the unknown thing 

 is still unknown, the independent existence 

 round the corner still escapes us. By the very 

 effort to arrive at something independent of human 

 sensation, Science has, in a roundabout way, 

 arrived at an absurdity. When the man said 

 he was cold, his statement deplorably vague as 

 it certainly was had some meaning ; he was 

 describing his feelings, or possibly he had seen 

 some snow or some ice on the road ; but when, 

 in the endeavour to leave out the human and to 

 say something absolute, Science declared that 

 the temperature was thirty degrees, it committed 

 itself to a remark which possibly was exact in 



114 



