354 
BIGELOW. 
energy, electric and magnetic energy ? What about the 
ether, the atoms, action at a distance or through a connect¬ 
ing medium ? The mere mention of these modern questions 
is sufficient to recall the vague suspicion which has been re¬ 
cently overspreading the scientific world, that perhaps after 
all mathematical mechanics is going to fail of its ultimate 
mission. For I have only to remind you that the great 
modern masters, Maxwell and Helmholtz , definitely abandoned 
the use of the purely mechanical equations, and attained their 
advances by the employment of the more comprehensive 
energy equations; and also to note that their disciples, J. J. 
Thomson , Heaviside, Hertz, Planck, Boltzmann, Helm, and 
others, are working these problems from the energy point of 
view and not from the purely mechanical. The trouble has 
been two-fold. In the first place, the mathematical equations 
become too complicated for operation outside the province 
of simple geometrical points in their mutual interrelation; 
and in the second place, there is coming to realization the 
fact that the fundamental things of this universe are not so 
simple as the geometers would have them. The two laws of 
thermodynamics, with their expressions of conservation of 
energy, namely, the impossibility of creating energy or de¬ 
stroying it, and the impossibility of transforming energy ex¬ 
cept under certain definite conditions, have given rise to a 
new reach of knowledge apparently as high above the three 
Newtonian laws of motion, as these are above the Ptolemaic 
fear that man would slip off this earth if it were round. It 
is now about as difficult for us to perceive how it can be that 
the collision of gas molecules is maintained without the ad¬ 
dition of some outside forces, as it was for the churchmen of 
Galileo’s day to see how a planet can continue to circle about 
the sun without some outside force acting on it to push it 
along. 
Let us now go back to our other starting point, the theory 
of phlogiston, and advance to the general point of view, 
namely, the struggle between mechanics and energetics, 
which we wish to more fully explain. The history of the 
