
272 

NATURE 
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tions, and fighting the self-same battles under slightly different 
banners, which is merely another form of stagnation (Kinetic 
Stability in fact). ‘A little folding of the hands to sleep” in 
chuckling satisfaction at what has been achieved of late years by 
our great experimenters—and we shall be left hopelessly behind. 
The sad fate of Newton’s successors ought ever to be a warning 
tous. Trusting to what he had done, they allowed mathematical 
science almost to die out in this country, at least as compared 
with its immense progress in Germany and France. It required 
the united exertions of late Sir J. Herschel and many others to 
render possible in these islands a Boole and a Hamilton. If the 
successors of Davy and Faraday pause to ponder even on ‘heir 
achievements, we shall soon be again in the same state of igno- 
minious inferiority. Who will then step in to save us? 
Eyen as it is, though we have among us many names quite as 
justly great as any that our rivals can produce, we have also (even 
in our educated classes) such an immense amount of ignorance 
and consequent credulity, that it seems matter for surprise that 
true science is able to exist. Spiritualists, Circle-squarers, Per- 
petual-motionists, believers that the earth is flat and that the 
moon has no rotation, swarm about us. They certainly multiply 
much faster than do genuine men of science. This is character- 
istic of all inferior races, but it is consolatory to remember that 
in spite of it these soon become extinct. Your quack has his 
little day, and disappears except to the antiquary. But in science 
nothing of value can ever be lost; it is certain to become a 
stepping-stone on the way to furthertruth. Still, when our step- 
ping-stones are laid, we should not wait till others employ them. 
“Gentlemen of the Guard, be kind enough to fire first” is a 
courtesy entirely out of date ; with the weapons of the present 
day it would be simply suicide. 
There is another point which should not be omitted in an 
address like this. For obvious reasons I must speak of the 
general question only. not venturing on examples, though I 
could give many telling ones. Even among our greatest men of 
science in this country, there is comparatively little knowledge of 
what has been already achieved, except, of course, in the one or 
more special departments cultivated by each individual. There 
can be little doubt that one cause at least of this is to be sought 
in the extremely meagre interest which our statesmen, as a rule, 
take in scientific progress. While abroad we find half a dozen 
professors teaching parts of the same subject in one University— 
each having therefore reasonable leisure-—with us one man has to 
do the whole, and to endeavour as he best can to make some- 
thing out of his very few spare moments. Along with this, and 
in great part due to it, there is often found a proneness to believe 
that what seems evident to the thinker cannot but have been 
long known to others. Thus the credit of many valuable dis- 
coveries is lost to Britain because her philosophers, having no 
time to spare, do not know that they are discoveries. The 
scientific men of other nations are, as a rule, better informed 
(certainly far better encouraged, and less over-worked), and 
perhaps likewise are not so much given to self-depreciation, 
Until something resembling the ‘‘ Fortschritte der Physik,” but 
in an improved form, and published at smaller intervals and with 
much less delay, is established in this country, there is little hope 
of improvement in this respect. Why should science be imper- 
fectly summarised in little haphazard scraps here and there, when 
mere property has its elaborate series of money articles and 
exact broker’s share lists? Such a work would be very easy of 
accomplishment ; we have only to begin boldly—we do not need 
to go back, for in every year good work is being done at almost 
every part of the boundary between, as it were, the cultivated 
land and the still unpenetrated forest—enough at all events to 
show with all necessary accuracy whereabouts that boundary 
lies. 
There is no need to enter here on the question of Conser- 
vation of Energy. It is thoroughly accepted by scientific men, 
and has revolutionised the greater part of physics. The facts as 
to its history also are generally agreed upon, but differences of a 
formidable kind exist as to the deductions to be drawn from 
them. These are matters, however, which will be more easily 
disposed of thirty years hence than now. The Transformation 
of Energy is also generally accepted, and, in fact, under various 
unsatisfactory names was almost popularly known before the 
Conservation of Energy was known in its entirety to more than 
avery few. But the Dissipation of Energy is by no means well 
known—and many of the results of its legitimate application 
have been received with doubt, sometimes even with attempted 
ridicule, Yet it appears to be at the present moment by far the 


most promising and fertile portion of Natural Philosophy ; 
having obvious applications of which as yet only a small per- 
centage appear to have been made. Some indeed were made 
before the enunciation of the principle, and have since been 
recognised as instances of it. Of such we have good examples 
in Fourier’s great work on Heat-conduction, in the optical 
theorem that an image can never be brighter than the object, in 
Gauss’s mode of investigating electrical distribution, and in some 
of Thomson’s theorems as to the energy of an electromagnetic 
field. But its discoverer has, so far as I know, as yet confined 
himself in its explicit application to questions of Heat-conduction 
and Restoration of Energy, Geological Time, the Earth’s Rota- 
tion, and such like. Unfortunately his long-expected Rede 
Lecture has not yet been published, and its contents (save to 
those who were fortunate enough to hear it) are still almost 
entirely unknown. 
But there can be little question that the Principle contains 
implicitly the whole theory of Thermo-electricity, of Chemical 
Combination, of Allotropy, of Fluorescence, &c., and perhaps 
even of matters cf a higher order than common physics and 
chemistry. In Astronomy it leads us to the grand question of 
the age, or perhaps more correctly the phase of life, of a star or 
nebula, shows us the material of potential suns, other suns in 
the process of formation, in vigorous youth, and in every stage 
of slowly protracted decay. It leadsus to look on each planet 
and satellite as having been at one time a tiny sun, a member of 
some binary or multiple group, and even now (when almost 
deprived, at least at its surface, of its original energy) presenting 
an endless variety of subjects for the application of its methods. 
It leads us forward in thought to the far-distant time when the 
materials of the present stellar system shall have lost all but their 
mutual potential energy, but shall in virtue of it form the materials 
of future larger suns with their attendant planets. Finally. as it 
alone is able to lead us, by sure steps of deductive reasoning, to 
the necessary future of the universe—necessary, that is, if 
physical laws for ever remain unchanged—so it enables us dis- 
tinctly to say that the present order of things has zof been 
evolved through infinite past time by the agency of laws nowat 
work—but must have had a distinctive beginning, a state beyond 
which we are totally unable to penetrate, a state in fact which 
must have been produced by other than the now acting causes. 
Thus also, it is possible that in Physiology it may ere long 
lead to results of a different and much higher order of novelty 
and interest than those yet obtained, immensely valuable though 
they certainly are. 
It was a grand step in science which showed that just as the 
consumption of fuel is necessary to the working of a steam- 
engine, or to the steady light of a candle, so the living engine re- 
quires food to supply its expenditure in the forms of muscular work 
andanimal heat, Still grander was Rumford’s early anticipation that 
the animal isa more economic engine than any lifeless one we can 
construct. Even in the explanation of this there is involved a ques- 
tion of very great interest, still unsolved, though Joule and many 
other philosophers of the highest order have worked at it. Joule has 
given a suggestion of great value, viz., that the animal resembles 
an electromagnetic rather than a heat-engine ; but this throws us 
back again upon our difficulties as to the nature of electricity. 
Still, even supposing this question fully answered, there remains 
another—perhaps the highest which the human intellect is capa- 
ble of directly attacking, for it is simply preposterous to suppose 
that we shall ever be able to understand scientifically the source 
of consciousness and volition, not to speak of loftier things— 
there remains the question of Lite. Now it may be startling to 
some of you, especially if you have not particularly considered 
the matter, to hear it surmised that possibly we may, by the help 
of physical principles, especially that of the Dissipation of Energy, 
some time attain to a notion of what constitutes Life—mere 
Vitality I repeat, nothing higher. If you think for a moment of 
the vitality of a plant or a zoophyte, the remark, perhaps, will 
not appear so strange after all. But do not fancy that the Dissi- 
pation of Energy to which I refer is at all that of a watch or 
such-like piece of mere human mechanism, d ssipating the low 
and common form of energy of a single coiled spring. It must 
be such that every little part of the living organism has its own 
store of energy constantly being dissipated, and as constantly re- - 
plenished from external sources drawn upon by the whole 
arrangement in their harmonious working together. As an 
illustration of my meaning, though an extremely inadequate one, 
suppose Vaucanson’s Duck to have been made up of excessively 
small parts, each microscopically constructed as perfectly as was 
