88 £SSAyS IN PHILOSOPHY 



movement and the average direction of the motions 

 is constant and unchangeable ; ^ that an unvarying 

 correlation of all the various modes of motion exists, 

 so that each mode is convertible into its correlates 

 at a constant numerical rate, and so that each, hav- 

 ing passed the entire circuit of correlated forms, 

 returns again into its own form undiminished in 

 amount : all this seems to point unmistakably to a 

 primal energy — aground-form of moving activity — 

 in itself one and unchangeable, immanent in its sum 

 of correlated forms, but not transcending them, while 

 each instance of each form is only a transient and 

 evanescent mode of this single Reality. 



Nor is this inference weakened by the later scho- 

 lium upon the principle of conservation, known as 

 the principle of the Dissipation of Energy. On the 

 contrary, the pantheistic significance of the principle 

 of conservation seems to be greatly deepened by this. 

 Instead of a constant whole of moving activity, ex- 

 hibited in a system of correlated modes of motion, 

 we now have a vaster correlation between the sum 

 of actual energies and a vague but prodigious mass 

 oi potential Qn^rgy — the "waste-heap," as the phy- 



^ The principle of conservation is very commonly stated as the in- 

 variability of the sum-total of vis viva in the world, and is expressed 

 in the formula \mv'^ = constant. But the statement in the text, which 

 returns to the formula of Leibnitz, is more comprehensive as well as 

 more philosophic, and is for these reasons preferred by some of the 

 latest physicists. 



