56 Scientific Proceedings, Royal Dublin Society. 



from those of the mineral. This is the subject of the present 

 inquiry ; and thus early, I ask indulgence, as one who ventures on 

 matters to a great extent foreign to his habitual line of work. 



General Dynamic Conditions attending Inanimate Actions. 



It is necessary, in the first place, to refer briefly to the phe- 

 nomena attending the transfer of energy within and into inanimate 

 material systems. It is not assumed here that these phenomena 

 are restricted in their sphere of action to inanimate natiire. It is, 

 in fact, very certain that they are not ; but while they confer on 

 dead nature its peculiar dynamic tendencies, it will appear that 

 their effects are in some way evaded in living nature. We, there- 

 fore, treat of them as characteristic of inanimate actions. We 

 accept as fundamental to all the considerations which follow the 

 truth of the principle of the Conservation of Energy.^ 



Whatever speculations may be made as to the possible course 

 of future events, or of events very distant from us in space, it 

 appears certain that dissipation of energy is at present actively 

 progressing throughout our sphere of observation in inanimate 

 nature. It follows, in fact, from the second law of thermo-dynamics, 

 that whenever work is derived from heat, a certain quantity of heat 

 falls in potential without doing work or, in short, is dissipated. 

 On the other hand, work may be entirely converted into heat. 

 The result is the heat-tendency of the universe. Heat, being an 

 undirected form of energy, seeks its own level, like a liquid acted on 

 unidirectionally by gravity, so that the result of this heat- tendency 

 is continual approach to uniformity of potential. 



The heat-tendency of the universe is also revealed in the far- 

 reaching ' law of maximum work ' which defines that chemical 

 change, accomplished without the intervention of external energy, 

 tends to the production of the body, or system of bodies, which 

 disengage the greatest quantity of heat.* And, again, vast 



1 '■' The principle of the Conservation of Energy has acquired so much scientific 

 weight during the last twenty years that no physiologist would feel any confidence in 

 an experiment which showed a considerable difference between the work done by the 

 animal and the balance of the account of Energy received and spent." — Clerk 

 Maxwell, " Nature," vol. xix., p. 142. See also Helmholtz " On the Conservation of 

 Force." 



2 Berthelot, "Essai de Mecanique Chimique." 



