GRAVISTATIC HEAT 317 



alone and all bodies having, by construction, arrived at 

 the same neutral level of temperature, it is apparent that 

 Nature has betrayed herself into a stalemate. Though 

 the sum of energy may still exist, in contemplation of 

 theory, it is, by the same theory, recognized as all fore- 

 doomed one day to become forever inert and useless. 

 Conservationists themselves distinguish between kinds 

 of energy by calling the higher levels or potentials, as 

 contrasted with those of lower grade, available, and 

 those of the lower, unavailable. That is to say, all en- 

 ergy except that at the very foot of the course is held to 

 be at once available and unavailable available as to the 

 lower part of the runway, unavailable as to its upper 

 reaches. As the descent is forever going on, they tell 

 us, the quantum of unavailable energy is constantly in- 

 creasing at the expense of the available. Here, then, in 

 this general sense, as in the special case of gravitation, 

 we are taught that the primordial, the positive, the mo- 

 tive forces of the universe of matter are losing their vir- 

 tue and that nature is in an irremediable state of decay. 



The extremes to which scientists have shown them- 

 selves willing to go in the pursuit of this execrable doc- 

 trine are all but incredible, extending even so far as to 

 the open and unreserved repudiation of the principle of 

 universal gravitation itself! Let me ask the kind reader 

 to turn now again to the passage previously quoted from 

 Professor Soddy (v. p. 16) before reading further. 



In these lines Prof. Soddy talks as impassionedly as 

 if he had a grievance against Gravitation for having too 

 long imposed on scientists as a real thing instead of a 

 mere assemblage of letters. In Mr. Soddy 's gospel, posi- 

 tion and power are interchangeable terms, while gravity 

 itself is a low impostor that should be excluded from the 

 polite purlieus of scientific language. But if position, 

 as such, is power, then the energy positioned in Warme- 

 tod is not properly char act erizable as energy at all; for 

 how can that be energy which can never in the future by 

 any possibility do work; or how can position continue to 

 be energy when, even in this technical sense, it has ceased 



