HELMHOLTZ IN BERLIN 



or appearing to happen, in the outer world. When 

 this has been accomplished, then all physical problems 

 will be solved. Even now the mind can imagine 

 such a being as arose to the mental vision of Laplace, 

 thus described by Helmholtz himself: 'An intelli- 

 gence which at any given instant should know all 

 the forces by which nature is urged, and the respec- 

 tive situation of the beings of which nature is com- 

 posed ; if, moreover, such a mind were sufficiently 

 comprehensive to subject these data to calculation, 

 such an intelligence would include in the same for- 

 mula the movements of the largest bodies of the 

 universe and those of the smallest atoms. Nothing 

 would be uncertain to such an intelligence, and the 

 future no less than the past would be present to 

 his eyes/ 



G. H. Wiedemann, 1 a contemporary of Helmholtz, 

 aptly points out that he had two methods of looking 

 at things, which he used according to the nature of 

 the problems treated and their state of development. 

 ( i ) In his earlier works, and in a few of the later 

 ones, Helmholtz starts from general principles of 

 dynamics, or from general differential equations, 

 and attains results without special assumptions as to 

 the structure of matter, or the nature of electricity. 

 Examples of this method are afforded by the tract 

 on the conservation of energy, by his examination 



1 Introduction to Helmholtz's Witsenschaftliche Abhandlungen^ vol. 

 Hi. Leipzig, 1895. 



