86 THE LIMITATIONS OF SCIENCE 



(plus foible) which it can move, it loses as much mo- 

 tion as it gives to the other. 



Then seven other laws of impact of less importance 

 follow, which it is not necessary to quote, as Huygens 

 later showed that all eight were, for the most part, 

 erroneous. 



In spite of the fact that Descartes, without verifica- 

 tion, invented the laws of motion of bodies and of 

 their impact, yet we must recognize that he sought 

 and found one of the great scientific principles ; that un- 

 less the universe is tending to a state of uniform rest 

 through dissipation of motion by friction, some active 

 property of matter must be conservative in addition to 

 its quantity. While his particular law of the con- 

 servation of momentum was erroneous, yet it is un- 

 doubtedly the progenitor of the law finally enunciated 

 by von Helmholtz and now generally accepted, that the 

 total quantity of energy remains constant. 



With these general principles settled, the nature of 

 space and matter, and its conservation of quantity and 

 action, we shall defer criticism and describe the vari- 

 ous kinds and phenomena of matter as nearly as pos- 

 sible in the sense of Descartes. 



We are to suppose that, in the beginning of time, 

 God divided all space or substance into equal parts, 

 which, contrary to the chaos pictured by poets and 

 philosophers, had been previously in perfect uniformity 

 and rest. Out of these primordial particles of space 



