372 Prof. TyndalFs Remarks on the 



After disposing of the matters to which I have had thus far 

 occasion to refer, apparently much to your own satisfaction, you 

 put the following- pointed question : — "Does Professor Tyndall 

 know that Mayer's paper has no claims to novelty or correctness 

 at all, saving this, that by a lucky chance he got an approxima- 

 tion to a true result from an utterly false analogy " ? I am 

 able with the utmost sincerity of heart to avow that I did not 

 know anything of the kind, and that you are the first man 

 who has furnished me with this information. I should doubtless 

 stand abashed and confounded at my convicted ignorance were 

 it not that I find myself surrounded by an extremely respectable 

 company who are actually as ill-informed as myself. Permit me 

 to illustrate my meaning. In a discourse delivered at Konigs- 

 berg on the 7th of February, 1854, Prof. Helmholtz analyses 

 that relationship of natural forces which he, in 1847, called the 

 Conservation of Force — a phrase to which you object as inconve- 

 nient and erroneous, but which means the same thing as the 

 phrase f Conservation of Energy ' which you adopt. This con- 

 servation Helmholtz showed to follow directly from the negation 

 of a perpetual motion; and it is with reference to this great 

 principle that he expresses himself in the following words*: — 

 " The first man who correctly perceived and rightly enunciated 

 the general law of nature {das allgemeine Naturgesetz) which we 

 are here considering, was a German physician, J. It. Mayer, of 

 Heilbronn, in the year 1842. A little later (in 1843) a Dane 

 named Colding presented a memoir to the Academy of Copen- 

 hagen, in which the same law was enunciated In England 



Joule began about the same time to make experiments on the 

 same subject." You say that you " never intended to hint that 

 Prof. Tyndall could have meant to put Mayer forward as having 

 any claims to this great generalization." Bad as I am, you 

 would not think of charging me with this grotesque folly. And 

 still for nine years Helmholtz, who was a master in this field 

 before you ever entered it, has stood self-convicted of this very 

 absurdity. 



Let me now refer you to another of my companions in igno- 

 rance. On the 7th and 21st of February, 1862, two lectures 

 on the Mechanical Theory of Heat were given by M. Verdet 

 before the Chemical Society of Paris t- This philosopher, to 

 whom everybody has hitherto ascribed a thorough knowledge of 

 the literature of science, expresses himself on the subject in hand 

 in the following words : — " Finally, I will terminate this first 

 part of my historic review by calling to mind that M. Seguin, in 



* Ueber die Wechselwirkung der Naturkrdfte. Kbnigsberg. Phil. Mag. 

 vol. xi. p. 489. 

 t Expose de la Theorie Mecanique de la Chaleur, par M. Verdet. 



