ON THE PHYSICAL VIEW OF NATURE. 



151 



time by Franz Neumann and Wilhelin Weber ; the later 

 one was the theory of Maxwell based upon the totally 

 different view which was maintained and gradually 

 unfolded in the experimental researches of Faraday. 

 The two former looked to the effects of the action of 

 electricity at measurable distances, and has been called 

 the telescopic view ; the latter reduced these to the 

 action which takes place in contiguous portions of matter 

 or of space, and has been called the microscopic view. 

 Helmholtz first of all, by an independent line of reason- 

 ing, brought the three mathematical formulae in which 

 these different views found expression under one com- 

 mon formula, of which each appears as a special case, 

 and then proceeded by theory and experiment to decide 

 which of the three possible special forms is to be adopted. 

 As a theoretical test he applied the principle of the 

 conservation of energy in a manner in which it had 

 at that time hardly been used by Continental thinkers. 

 His reasoning, which was largely discussed and criti- 

 cised by eminent philosophers, gave to this principle 

 the prominence and importance which it has ever 

 since maintained in all Continental treatises. It 

 meant the introduction of the physical view of natural 

 phenomena. 1 



1 In England the publication of 

 Thomson and Tait's ' Natural Phil- 

 osophy ' formed, as stated above 

 (p. 144), an epoch in the teaching 

 of the physical sciences, notably 

 through the prominence given to 

 the principle of the conservation 

 of energy. A similar epoch was 

 created in Germany, not so much 

 by Helmholtz's enunciation of the 

 principle in 1847 as by the use he 



made of it, in one remarkable in- 

 stance, in reviewing and criticising 

 the existing and apparently conflict- 

 ing theories. As Lavoisier intro- 

 duced the chemical balance based 

 upon the conservation of matter 

 as a test for the correctness of chem- 

 ical statements, so Helmholtz used 

 the principle of the conservation of 

 energy in two distinct forms, as a 

 test of the validity of electrical 



