686 The Baconian Philosophy of Heat . [November, 
ocean has been for long geological ages supported on the 
thin crust of the earth, through which the central heat has 
been constantly escaping ; and yet it is still of freezing cold- 
ness ! Experience would say that the heat cannot have escaped 
through the water without warming it, because the capacity 
of water for heat is greater than that of any other substance. 
We can no more imagine such a radiation, and consequent 
accumulation of heat in the ocean, without the natural 
result of a great rise in temperature, than we can be- 
lieve in a kettle resting for hours on a hot fire without 
the usual result of boiling water. We have no reason, 
therefore, to believe, as has been suggested, that the earth 
is growing colder, or that we, in common with all living 
things, are destined to be frozen out of existence and the 
earth itself finally swallowed up by the sun. 
III. THE BACONIAN PHILOSOPHY OF HEAT. 
By Dr. Akin. 
t ^F pessimist politicians are prone to consider ordinary 
history as the history of practical human folly, pessimist 
philosopers might not inaptly describe scientific history 
(if such a thing existed) as the history of theoretical human 
error. The relative proportion of right and wrong^ com- 
mitted, of which political history forms the record, is not 
inadequately matched by the ratio of truth and falsehood 
propounded, of which philosophical history would have to 
give an account ; and if speculative politicians are inclined 
to despond upon comparing the actual state of society with 
what they recognise as its ideal, philosophical inquirers into 
the secrets of nature have little cause to feel cheerful when 
they similarly compare the task before them with what has 
’been hitherto accomplished. Among the objedts of which 
the sensations of the first human beings must have rapidly 
rendered them conscious, were probably light and heat, 
owing to the great, sudden, and frequent variations to which 
these conditions of human existence are liable in all climates 
that is to say, if it be true, as is generally assumed, and 
apparently with reason, that consciousness is awakened by 
change. Later, when philosophers began to contemplate 
and ponder on the phenomena of Nature, heat, amongst 
others, naturally formed a principal topic of their specula- 
