Page:Elementary Principles in Statistical Mechanics (1902).djvu/212

188 the indentification of any particular particle of the first system with any particular particle of the second. And this would be true, if the ensemble of systems had a simultaneous objective existence. But it hardly applies to the creations of the imagination. In the cases which we have been considering, and in those which we shall consider, it is not only possible to conceive of the motion of an ensemble of similar systems simply as possible cases of the motion of a single system, but it is actually in large measure for the sake of representing more clearly the possible cases of the motion of a single system that we use the conception of an ensemble of systems. The perfect similarity of several particles of a system will not in the least interfere with the identification of a particular particle in one case with a particular particle in another. The question is one to be decided in accordance with the requirements of practical convenience in the discussion of the problems with which we are engaged.

Our present purpose will often require us to use the terms phase, density-in-phase, statistical equilibrium, and other connected terms on the supposition that phases are not altered by the exchange of places between similar particles. Some of the most important questions with which we are concerned have reference to phases thus defined. We shall call them phases determined by generic definitions, or briefly, generic phases. But we shall also be obliged to discuss phases defined by the narrower definition (so that exchange of position between similar particles is regarded as changing the phase), which will be called phases determined by specific definitions, or briefly, specific phases. For the analytical description of a specific phase is more simple than that of a generic phase. And it is a more simple matter to make a multiple integral extend over all possible specific phases than to make one extend without repetition over all possible generic phases.

It is evident that if $$\nu_1, \nu_2 \ldots \nu_h$$, are the numbers of the different kinds of molecules in any system, the number of specific phases embraced in one generic phase is represented by the continued product $${\nu_1}! \, {\nu_2}! \ldots {\nu_h}!$$ and the coefficient of