Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 7.djvu/510

494 of it. Our practical working certainty of the existence of matter means: 1. That it offers resistance to our imagination and our will; and, 2. That it offers absolute resistance to all attempts to change its quantity. Certain other things—notably energy—are in the same sense conserved, and, if we recognize the transmutability of energy of motion into energy of position, we may say that energy is equally indestructible with matter itself. But energy is undergoing a perpetual self-degradation. All other forms of energy are slowly passing into invisible heat-motions, and when the heat of the universe has ultimately been equalized, as it must be, all possibility of physical action or of work will have departed. Mechanical effort cannot longer be obtained from it. The perfect heat-engine only converts a portion of the heat into work; the rest is lost forever as an available source of work. There is indeed a sort of wild and far-off possibility by which a little more work might be got out of a uniform-temperature universe, if we could suppose Clerk-Maxwell's demons—'mere guidance applied by human intelligence'—occupied in separating those particles of a heated gas which are moving faster than the average from those which are moving slower. But this is but a broken reed to trust, and it would at the best avail us little. What must happen in the existing physical system would be this: the earth, the planets, the sun, the stars, are gradually cooling; but infinitely numerous catastrophes, by which the enormous existing store of energy of position may be drawn upon, may over and over again restore unequal temperature. The fall together, from the distance of Sirius, of the sun and another equal sun would supply the former with at least thirty times as much energy as can have been obtained by the condensation of his materials out of a practically infinite nebulous mass of stones or dust. But these catastrophes can only delay the inevitable. If the existing physical universe be finite—and the authors never seem to realize the speculative possibility that it may not be so the end must come, unless there be an invisible universe to supplement and continue it.

"What is the ultimate nature of matter, and especially of the ether, which is the vehicle of all the energy we receive from the sun? There have been four theories, for each of which something may be said. There is the Lucretian theory of an original, indivisible, infinitely hard atom, 'strong in solid singleness;' Boscovich's theory that the atom or unit is a mere centre of force; the theory that matter, instead of being atomic, is infinitely divisible, practically continuous, intensely heterogeneous; and, finally, the theory of the vortex-atom, a thing not infinitely hard and therefore indivisible, but infinitely mobile, so that it escapes all force which makes effort to divide it. What we call matter may thus consist of the rotating portions of a perfect fluid, which continuously fills space. Should this fluid exist, there must be a creative act for the destruction or production of the smallest portion of matter. Whichever of these theories we adopt, we must explain the simplest affection of matter—that by which it attracts other matter. There seems little possibility of doing so. The most plausible explanation is in Le Sage's assumption of ultramundane corpuscles, infinite in number, excessively small in size, flying about with enormous velocities in all directions. These particles must move with perfect freedom among the particles of ordinary matter, and if they do so we can understand how, through the existence of the ultramundane particles, two mundane particles attract inversely as the square of the distance. On this theory the energy of position is only the energy of motion of ultramundane and invisible particles—and a bridge is built between the seen and the unseen. These ultramundane particles are something far more completely removed from all possibility of sensible qualities than the ether which Sir William Thomson has attempted to weigh. Struve has speculated upon the possibility that it is not infinitely transparent to light, and his calculations, based on the numbers of stars of each visible magnitude, lead him to suppose that some portion of the light and energy from distant suns and planets may be absorbed in it. The ether is thus a kind of adumbration or foretaste of the invisible world. It may have certain 06 the properties of that world which is perceived by sense, but it is probably subject only to a few of the physical conditions of ordinary matter.

"Let us look once more at the substance of the universe. We recognize that it is impossible to suppose any existing state but as the development of something preexisting. To suppose creation is to suppose the unconditioned. Creation belongs to eternity, and not to time. This being so, it is difficult to believe in the vortex-ring theory, which regards the invisible universe as an absolutely perfect fluid. With an imperfect