Page:Reflections on the Motive Power of Heat.djvu/71

Rh of permanent gases, that is, without ever returning to a liquid state. Most of these substances have been proposed, many even have been tried, although up to this time perhaps without remarkable success.

We have shown that in steam-engines the motive-power is due to a re-establishment of equilibrium in the caloric; this takes place not only for steam-engines, but also for every heat-engine—that is, for every machine of which caloric is the motor. Heat can evidently be a cause of motion only by virtue of the changes of volume or of form which it produces in bodies.

These changes are not caused by uniform temperature, but rather by alternations of heat and cold. Now to heat any substance whatever requires a body warmer than the one to be heated; to cool it requires a cooler body. We supply caloric to the first of these bodies that we may transmit it to the second by means of the intermediary substance. This is to re-establish, or at least to endeavor to re-establish, the equilibrium of the caloric.

It is natural to ask here this curious and important question: Is the motive power of heat invariable in quantity, or does it vary with the agent employed to realize it as the intermediary