7 



lO 



THE BEGINNINGS OF LIFE. 



the recently published third edition of his <= Correlation 



¥ 



of the Physical Forces/ he says^ ^ As far as I am 



now 

 aware^ the theory that the so-called imponderables are 



affections of ordinary matter, that they are resolvable 



into motion, that they are to be regarded in their 



action on matter as forces^ and not as specific entities^ 



and that they are capable of mutual reaction, thence 



alternately acting as cause and effect, had not at that 



time been publicly advanced/ But it was also in the 



a physician 



H 



:er part, that Dr. Mayer ^^ 

 announced independently 



a doctrine substantially similar, to the effect that the 

 imponderables were forces at once indestructible and 

 convertible. He actually calculated the mechanical 

 equivalent of heat out of data derived from the velocity 

 of sound in air — an intellectual feat only possible to 

 a man of rare originality. Professor Tyndall says^ of 

 him, ^ When we consider the circumstances of Mayer's 

 life, and the period at which he wrote, we cannot fail 

 to be struck with astonishment at what he has ac- 

 complished. 



silence, animated solely by a love, of his subject, and 

 arriving at the most important results some time m 

 advance of those whose lives were entirely devoted 

 to Natural Philosophy. It was the accident of bleedin 



Here was a man of genius working in 





a feverish patient at Java, in 1840, that led Mayer to 



^ ' Bemerkungen iiber die Krafte der umbeleten Natur,' Liebigs 



Annalen, 1842, vol. xlii, 

 ^ Loc. cit. p. 445. 



.-> 



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 ublished his ^ 



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Heat, 

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 in ignorance 



ings of Maye: 

 indebted for t 

 the mechanic 

 was made to 

 a weighed qu 

 The mechani 

 which was en 

 so that when 

 tain time, tht 

 and the dista 



in the 



same 



estimate the 

 the fall of 



a 



c 



Of course 



^^^ heating ( 

 as Well 



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 ents 



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