Page:Experimental researches in chemistry and.djvu/475

460 to his dependence on the certainty of gravitation applied by the balance, so may the physical philosopher expect to find the greatest security and the utmost aid in the principle of the conservation of force. All that we have that is good and safe, as the steam-engine, the electric telegraph, &c., witness to that principle,—it would require a perpetual motion, a fire without heat, heat without a source, action without reaction, cause without effect, or effect without a cause, to displace it from its rank as a law of nature.

During the year that has passed since the publication of the preceding views regarding gravitation, &c., I have come to the knowledge of various observations upon them, some adverse, other favourable; these have given me no reason to change my own mode of viewing the subject, but some of them make me think that I have not stated the matter with sufficient precision. The word "force" is understood by many to mean simply "the tendency of a body to pass from one place to another," which is equivalent, I suppose, to the phrase "mechanical force;" those who so restrain its meaning must have found my argument very obscure. What I mean by the word "force," is the cause of a physical action; the source or sources of all possible changes amongst the particles or materials of the universe.

It seems to me that the idea of the conservation of force is absolutely independent of any notion we may form of the nature of force or its varieties, and is as sure and 'may be as firmly held in the mind, as if we, instead of being very ignorant, understood perfectly every point about the cause of force and the varied effects it can produce. There may he perfectly distinct and separate causes of what are called chemical actions, or electrical actions, or gravitating actions, constituting so many forces; but if the " conservation of force " is a good and true principle, each of these forces must be subject to it: none can vary in its absolute amount; each must be definite at all times, whether for a particle, or for all the particles in the universe; and the sum also of the three forces must be equally unchangeable. Or, there may be but one cause for these three sets of actions, and in place of three forces we may really have but one, convertible in its manifestations;then the proportions between one set of actions and another, as the chemical and the electrical,