Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 85.djvu/558

554 what we are. All the ethics and morals ever thought of never could have effected this. We must eat before we can philosophize!

Of yore, figures of men and women in the sweat of their brows, digging, were a symbol of humanity. The symbol of modern mankind is the man who, by switch-board, steering wheel, or dictograph, expends enormous amounts of mental energy with but trifling muscular effort for the attainment of his ends. This elevation of man from the level of the ox to that of a higher being, who controls absolutely amounts of energy thousands of times greater than that represented by the muscles of his body; this is a great ethical gain which we owe exclusively to technology.

We may also find ethical applications of the idea of "figure of merit," or the efficiency relation. Jesus said of Himself that He came to bring peace into the world. Unfortunately, in the outcome, the sword was more prominent than the dove, and the church, as such, did but little for the realization of the idea. However, the perception that warfare involves an immense waste of energy, both in actual war and in armed peace, is a view destined to be of decisive effect.

To be delivered from waste of energy is to be delivered from evil. Take the most abstract of the sciences, philosophy, and the most abstract branch of it, logic. What can that have to do with transmutation of energy or with improvement of efficiency? Logic has for its subject the laws of thought, and for its object the avoidance of defective thinking. Let us suppose its object so far attained that only very few individuals are any longer guilty of drawing incorrect conclusions. Who can estimate how colossal is the waste of energy which would be spared if men almost invariably thought correctly, and were accordingly noble and virtuous in their dealings? In that happy state, all those energies now expended for judiciary, for punishment, for police and for government, would be set free to use for higher ends.

Ostwald emphasizes the ethical side of all these considerations and condenses the whole into a principle, called by him the energetic imperative, valid in all phases of our lives, technical, intellectual, ethical; as follows: "Waste no energy, use it!"

We know energy in two states or conditions. In one it is free to do work, or to be transmuted. In the other, it is in a dissipated state, like a cup of water poured in the sand, and is not available for use. It we call "bound energy." We are, then, expressing the facts of observation in saying, "any given amount of energy consists of two parts, free and bound."

Now, in every process of any kind, a portion of the free energy becomes bound, but never does any part of the bound energy become free. Everything of which we have knowledge as happening is subject to this law. Hence, the utmost limit of human achievement is, that we should