th 



6 



THE BEGINNINGS OF LIFE. 



and darkness which previously enshrouded all vital 

 phenomena^ and few^ we suppose, would deny that the 

 results of their labours had sent gleams of light into 

 corners previously unillumined. 



H 



m 



^b) 



some of the phenomena, at least, formerly looked upon 

 as essentially ^ vital' — and, therefore, well-nigh in- 



r 



explicable— are now recognized as depending in great 



<. 



0- 



part upon purely physical processes. But before statin 

 what are the modern conceptions of Life — what 

 views are now possible — it will be well to glance 

 briefly at the labours of those who have helped to build 

 up that doctrine of the Correlation of Forces^ or Con- 

 servation of Energy, whose influence has been so great 

 in uDsettino- the old metaphvsical conceptions to which 





upon 



the 



small 



shortly 



He 



•ai 



sa 

 sit 



of the iflse^^ 

 in us that sei 

 the subject he 

 W, in the ob 

 not till quite 1 

 that Benjamin 

 announced to ' 



upon real ex] 



mode of moti 



of cannon in 



Rumford was 



the brass aftc 



also with the 



were separate 



we have referred. ' 



It is not to be expected that the doctrine of the 

 Conservation of Energy should have sprung fully formed 

 from the brain of any single man. The progress of 

 scientific thought and experiment had been gradually 

 tending in this direction during the closing years of 

 the last century, and the doctrine has since been built the most car( 



up and perfected by the labours of many workers and of this heat 



thinkers. The germs of it are, however, to be found, tailed the nit 



stated with remarkable clearness, even more than two ^^^^ ^^ 



centuries ago, in the writings of Lord Bacon, who says 

 'in the twentieth Aphorism of his 'Novum Organum: 



'- When I say of motion that it is the genus of which 

 heat is a species^ I would be understood to mean, not 



P^valent not 

 a kind of i 



