Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 2.djvu/619

Rh. This new doctrine appears in the mechanical theory of heat announced by Joule, Krönig, Maxwell, and Clausius, in the doctrine of the conservation of energy of Helmholtz and Thomson, and by means of the brilliant writings of Tyndall it has become the common property of the educated world. Electricity and magnetism, heat and light, muscular energy and chemical attraction, motion, and mechanical work—all forces in the universe are only different forms of one and the same power, which has dwelt from the first in matter in invariable quantity, neither increased nor diminished; not the least trifle of it can be annihilated or created. Only the phenomenal forms of power are changeable; light can be converted into a chemical equivalent, this again into heat, heat into motion, and indeed a fixed quantity of one force always and only into an equivalent quantity of another. In like manner also the quantity of matter has remained unchanged from the beginning; not the least particle or molecule can be annihilated or created out of nothing, and only in the transformation of perishable bodies are the molecules formed into ever-new combinations. What we distinguish as natural forces are only movements of molecules, for the least particles of matter out of which bodies are composed are not inseparably united to each other, but are loosely held together and in continuous whirling and undulatory motion; according to the swiftness and width of undulation of the molecule will this motion of our nerves be regarded, now as sound, now as heat, then as light or as color. Moreover, the chemical union of the elements of matter, the attractive power of gravitation in all the bodies of the universe, are but varied forms of this universal motive force. The unity and permanency of substance with its two attributes, matter and force, and their innumerable modifications, which go to form the bodies of the universe, were in the first instance enunciated as a philosophical maxim by the great thinker Spinoza. Now it is established as a philosophic fact by means of exact measure and weight.

Again, on the inner organization of the system of the universe has unexampled light been thrown by the wonderful researches which were begun in 1859 by two men, united by the closest bonds of a friendship which bore rich fruit for science. After the light of the sun had, in the third decade of this century, been brought into the service of art by Nièpce and Daguerre, Bunsen and Kirchhoff compelled it also to render service to chemistry and astronomy. Like those magicians of the legend who, through the power of their knowledge, compelled the spirits of the elements to disclose their most recondite secrets, the genius of these men compelled the rays of light imprisoned in the spectrum apparatus to make revelation of things in the world of stars which the curiosity of men had deemed forever inaccessible. Already had Kirchhoff ascertained what terrestrial elements were present in the sun's atmosphere, and what were not; quite recently has it been discovered that there is even present in the sun a substance