10 
ANNIVERSARY ADDRESS. 
back into heat, this into motion, motion into magnetism, the 
magnetism into electricity, this into light, or into motion, or into 
chemical force, this into heat, the heat once more being converted 
into light. Transformation, always; apparent dissipation, rarely ; 
destruction, never! 
The story of the relations of fuel and its associated force and the 
indestructibility of both, is the story of the relations of food and its 
associated force and the indestructibility of both. Light and heat 
shine upon the edible as on all the vegetables of prairie and forest, 
field and garden. These forces are stored up within the respective 
vegetables as chemical force ; animals eat the vegetables, and 
immediately a portion of the latent force is changed into the form 
of heat which keeps the animal warm, another portion being 
transformed into mechanical force, as when the man, horse, or other 
animal walks. Perhaps the man transfers some of the force 
through his arm and hand to the spring of a watch or a clock 
enabling it to “go,” or to a hammer enabling it to hit, or to the 
brain enabling it to think, and to the hand enabling it to write. 
The ultimate particles of food, as mere material particles or atoms, 
are useless to us. It is their stores of force that we need in order 
that we may exert force, or, in other words, their stores of energy 
that we want in order that we may energise, their stores of power 
in order that we may be powerful. Of that force, however, as of 
the matter of our food, we are but stewards, passing both on in 
their ceaseless round of transformations, in quality unimpaired, 
in quantity undiminished, but in direction possibly more or less 
changed—not always involuntarily changed, but sometimes use¬ 
fully changed, often harmlessly changed (seldom, let us hope, 
harmfully changed), by the exercise of the mysterious "Will 
within us. 
We cannot always trace force through all its subtle transforma¬ 
tions, cannot yet in every case know whence a particular manifest¬ 
ation came or whither it has gone. But, on the other hand, in 
many cases we can not only follow its course, but measure its 
amount, then transform it and measure its amount in the new form, 
and even give its numerical equivalents in various forms, and thus 
actually demonstrate its imperishable nature. The patient search 
and toil of many men for truth has been rewarded in the gradual 
laying bare of the simple yet all-reaching fact or natural law that 
all force is indestructible. Who decreed this law? Not man. 
The combination of simplicity with grandeur in The Laws of 
God in Nature is characteristic. Indeed, the rate at which they 
act, or the power with which they act, or the time in which they 
