322 LAUGEL'S PROBLEMS OP NATUEE AND LIFE. 



plausible conclusion. If, indeed, the notion of neces- 

 sary repair be admitted, we are called upon to provide 

 for more than two million times the amount which the 

 sun transmits to the earth, such being the relative pro- 

 portion of this power lost if lost by projection into 

 circumambient space. 



Latent heat, again or what we are called upon to 

 regard as synonymous, latent force or potential energy- 

 is among the conceptions which modern science has 

 embodied in its doctrines ; a difficult conception, indeed, 

 but based on the apparent phenomena of bodies pass- 

 ing successively through the solid, fluid, and gaseous 

 states. Even if Dr. Andrews' recent discoveries did 

 not throw doubt on the interpretation of these phe- 

 nomena, we should still have to ask, What is this latent 

 force of heat ? The name implies an existing reality. 

 In what does this reality consist? Theory can only 

 answer, in some interior specific condition or arrange- 

 ment of atoms, lasting until excited to fresh change. 

 But see how much obscurity hangs over all this, when 

 closely analysed! How much obscurity, too, in that 

 general conception of potential force or energy stored 

 up in matter, which furnishes so many startling illustra- 

 tions to the scientific teaching of the day. It is deemed 

 possible to say that Heat and Light, as forces or active 

 powers, absorbed originally from the sun by vegetable 

 life on the earth, and following the conversion of the 

 latter into coal, have thus lain dormant for untold ages 

 in a mineral form, to be finally extricated in the fires 

 and furnaces of our own time. We cannot disprove 

 this, or bring other hypotheses to meet the facts. But 



