Page:Reflections on the Motive Power of Heat.djvu/261



APPENDIX B.

CARNOT'S FOOT-NOTES.

.—The objection may perhaps be raised here, that perpetual motion, demonstrated to be impossible by mechanical action alone, may possibly not be so if the power either of heat or electricity be exerted; but is it possible to conceive the phenomena of heat and electricity as due to anything else than some kind of motion of the body, and as such should they not be subjected to the general laws of mechanics? Do we not know besides, à posteriori, that all the attempts made to produce perpetual motion by any means whatever have been fruitless?—that we have never succeeded in producing a motion veritably perpetual, that is, a motion which will continue forever without alteration in the bodies set to work to accomplish it? The electromotor apparatus (the pile of Volta) has sometimes been regarded as capable of producing perpetual motion; attempts have been made to realize this idea by constructing dry piles said to be unchangeable; but however it has been done, the apparatus has always exhibited sensible 237