20 CONSERVA TION OF ENERGY. 



It would be difficult, I should think, to find even a 

 child in these days who is not thoroughly satisfied that 

 matter and force are indestructible, and are not now created 

 anew. Although no mortal has ever denied the fact, our 

 teachers never tire of telling us that force and matter are 

 indestructible, that animals do not create force or matter, 

 that muscular power is not due to vital force. It is use- 

 less to confess that you stedfastly believe all this, for our 

 would-be teachers seem to say, " You don't believe it, you 

 cannot believe it, you shall not believe it, unless you believe 

 also, in the * unity of nature,' as defined by us, according 

 to our interpretation." They further assert, that those who 

 differ from them, assume that force is created and annihilated 

 in living beings, which is absurd. That some, for example, 

 " are satisfied with an imponderable gaseous or liquid 

 matter diffused through living liquids, or temporarily 

 attached to more solid granular matter," as if anyone in 

 his senses could entertain such a notion, far less be satisfied 

 with it! 



The disciples of the new Philosophy insist that there 

 is but one force or power in nature, that the sun is the 

 source of that force, and forms livers, hearts, lungs, and 

 brains, and that every living thing is formed by him that, 

 in the language of Bence Jones, " the one law of the union 

 of force and matter, and of the conservation of energy, 

 obtains throughout the organic as well as the inorganic 

 creation." All this many do not believe, nor is there 

 a shadow of evidence in favour of such notions. I feel 

 quite sure that if the physicists, who make these confident 

 assertions, would condescend to study the phenomena of very 

 simple living things, they would very soon discover that they 



