168 BULLETIN OF THE 



conservation of energy ; there could be no such thing as the pro- 

 duction of energy. 



Force — Real and Indispensable. — " Force " then is not a metapho- 

 rical abstraction : it is not a convenient asylum of ignorance. It 

 is the most real, — the most fundamental, — the most inseparable of 

 material attributes. It is the potency and faculty whereby all in- 

 organic — no less than organic — forms are builded, and whereby 

 alone their kaleidoscopic phenomena are revealed to our percep- 

 tions. And it is from the never resting antagonisms and reprisals 

 of diverse forces that are made up the activity, the life, and the 

 glory of the world in which we have our being ; to whose ever 

 changing — ever becoming — ever nascent pageantry, the poetry of 

 antiquity has given the name — Natura. 



In spite of every effort made to realize a favorite dream, there 

 is no " unity of force." To the dynamics of even a single mol- 

 ecule, the contestation and constraint of at least two opposite resist- 

 ing agencies are indispensable : and in the various play of matter, 

 other such agencies are no less clearly manifested. Nor is the 

 certainty of multiplicity, in the slightest degree impaired by our 

 admitted ignorance as to the final number of primeval forces. It 

 may be that chemical affinity, and magnetism, are like heat, and 

 electricity,* merely derivative forms of energy ; but at least this 



*It is not a little remarkable that a tendency seems lately to have arisen 

 to assign electricity to the station of a primitive force ; and several physicists 

 have almost simultaneously maintained its indestructibility and inconverti- 

 bility. 



Dr. O. J. Lodge, in a lecture delivered at the London Institution, De- 

 cember 16, 1880, says: " To the question What is electricity? — We cannot 

 assert that it is a form of matter, neither can we deny it ; on the other hand 

 we certainly cannot assert that it is a form of energy, and I should be dis- 

 posed to deny it. - - - It is as impossible to generate electricity in the 

 sense I am trying to give the word, as it is to produce matter ! " [Nature. 

 January 27, 1881 : vol. xxin, p. 302.) 



Mr. G. Lippman, in a memoir presented to the Academie des Sciences- 

 of France, May 2, 1881, maintains that all electrical changes have an 

 algebraic sum of zero : or in other words, that electricity can neither be 

 created nor destroyed : the subject of the paper being " The Conservation of 

 Electricity." (Comptes Rendus. 1881 : vol. xcir, p. 1049. — Also, L. E. D. 

 Phil. Mag. June, 1881 : vol. xi, p. 474.) 



Prof. Sylvanus P. Thompson, " in Elementary Lessons in Elec- 

 tricity," (preface,) also maintains as an important hypothesis in the treat- 



