Scientific Lectures. 247 



instituted a careful series of experiments to ascertain its origin. 

 These experiments led him to the conclusion that " anything wliicli 

 any isulated body or sj'stem of bodies can continue to furnish without 

 limitation, cannot possibly be a material substance." But this man, to 

 whom must be ascribed the discovery of the first great law of the 

 correlation of energy, was an American. Born in Woburn, Mass., 

 in 1T53, he, under the name of Benjamin Thompson, taught school 

 afterward at Concord, N. II., then called Rnmford. Unjustly sus- 

 pected of toryism during our revolutionary war, he went abroad and 

 distinguished himself in the service of several of the governments of 

 Europe. He did not forget his native land, though she had treated 

 him so unfairly. "When the honor of knighthood was tendered him, 

 he chose as his title the name of the Yankee village where he had 

 taught school, and was thenceforward known as Count Rumford. 

 And, at his death, by founding a professorship at Harvard College, 

 and donating a prize fund to the American Academy of Arts and 

 Sciences at Boston, he showed his interest in her prosperity and 

 advancement.* Nor has the field of vital forces been without earnest 

 workers belonging to our own country. Professors John W. Draperf 

 and Joseph Henry:}: were among the earliest explorers. And in 1851 

 Dr. J. H. "Watters, now of St. Louis, published a theory of the origin 

 of vital force, almost identical with that for which Dr. Carpenter, of 

 London, has of late received so much credit. Indeed, there is some 



which these very substances exhibit, in circumstances in which they no longer malce a part of living 

 organisms.'" 



Also Owen, Richard (Derivative Hypothesis of Life and Species, forming the 40th chapter of his 

 Anatomy of Vertebrates, published in Am. J. Sci., II, xlvii, 33, Jan. 1869.) "In the endeavor to 

 clearly comprehend and explain the functions of the combination of forces called ' brain,' the physi- 

 ologist is hindered and troubled by the views of the nature of those cerebral forces which the needs 

 of dogmatic theology have imposed on mankind." * * "Religion pure and undefilcd, can best 

 answer how far it is righteous or just to charge a neighbor with being unsound in his principles who 

 holds the term ' life ' to be a sound expressing the sum of living phenomena ; and who maintains 

 these phenomena to be modes offeree into M'hich other forms of force have passed, from potential to 

 active states, and reciprocally, through the agency of these sums or combinations offerees impressing 

 the mind with the ideas signified by the terms ' monad,' ' moss,' ' plant,' or ' animal.' " 



And Huxley, Thos. H., " On the PhysicalBasis of Life," University series, No. 1. College Courant, 

 1870. 



Per contra, see the address of Dr. P. A. P. Barnard, as retiring President, before the Am. Assoc, 

 for the Advancement of Science, Chicago meeting, August, 18G8. "Thought cannot be a physical 

 force, because thought admits of no measure." 



Gould, Benj. Apthorp, address as retiring President, before the American Association at its Salem 

 meeting, August, 1SG9. 



Bcale, Lionel S., " Protoplasm, or Life, Matter, and Mind," London, 1870. John Churchill & Sons. 



* For an excellent account of this distinguished man, see Youman's Introduction to the Correla- 

 tion and Conservation of Forces, p. xvii. 



t Draper, J. W., loc. cit. 



% Henry, Joseph, Agric. Rep. Patent Office, 1857, 440. 



