BOOK II. § 2. of interchange between the potential and kinetic forms of any single energy, are that which any special department of Energetic must have it in Energetic view to ascertain and establish. and Correlation of It is moreover in these special departments of Energies. Energetic, including the energies of organic and living substances as well as those of inorganic matter, and in laboratories devoted to experiment and observation of the phenomena which they display, as well in conjunction as in isolation, that the main and proper work of positive science is done. For in them the scientific effort is continually directed to connect the energy or energies studied with the particular kind or kinds of matter, of which they are severally the operations. The ideal result of this effort, seen in forecast, would consist not only in exhibiting the ground of that intimate union and co-operation between electricity, magnetism, and chemical affinity, by his discoveries in regard to which Faraday initiated a new, that is, the present era, in electrochemical theory; not only in confirming Clerk Maxwell's electromagnetic theory of light, a theory also founded on Faraday's conceptions;16 but also, generally, in relating all the different energies of Nature without exception to one another, by showing to what particular configuration of Matter and mode of Force the 16 On both these subjects see Von Helmholtz's Address to the Chemical Society of London, on occasion of Faraday's Commemoration, April 5, 1881, entitled Die neuere Entwickelung von Faraday's Ideen über Electricitat, reprinted in his Vorträge und Reden, Vol. II., pp. 273 sqq. 1884.-See also, on the latter subject, Herr Professor Hertz's Heidelberg Address, 1890, Über die Beziehungen zwischen Licht und Electricität (Strauss, Bonn. 1890), in which he gives an account of his own experimental demonstration, in support of Clerk Maxwell's electromagnetic theory of light, that the transmission of electric or magnetic energy, precisely like the transmission of light, for even the minutest distances, is not instantaneous, but requires a proportionate time for its accomplishment. CH. II. BOOK II. origin of each was traceable, and by thus assigning to each its place in a single co-ordinated § 2. Energetic system. and Correlation of Such, I conceive, is the true and proper task of Energies. physical and physiological science. Supposing it fully accomplished in every branch, the work of these sciences would be done, and their end attained. But then to establish this complete connection between kind or form of matter and kind or form of energy, so as to explain the latter, both in nature and genesis, by referring it to the former, is just the very hardest and most obscure part of the whole task. Such at least is the consummation to which our logical instinct points, as enabling us to grasp the largest possible number and variety of details from the smallest possible number of central and co-ordinating conceptions. Not that this ideal is the only one. There is another ideal in positive science, and one which takes precedence even of this. I mean the aim of discovering the actual state of facts, whether that discovery gratifies our logical instinct or not. If truth to fact is the end which we seek in science, it may well be, that our logical instinct can never by it be fully gratified. Nevertheless, unless and until either this task is performed, or it has been shown how it is that the facts forbid its performance, all gratification of the logical instinct, however apparently complete, must of necessity be illusory. Our logical instinct bids us go as far as possible in the co-ordination of facts, but it contains no promise that a knowledge of all existing facts, which alone would render a complete co-ordination possible, will ever be within our reach. BOOK II. CH. II. § 3. §3. The foregoing brief consideration of the Correlation of Energies as the object-matter of Energetic must be taken as an account, sufficient Chemistry. for the purposes of the present work, of the various physical sciences which treat in detail of the different groups of phenomena depending on those correlations. Nevertheless since psychology is the science which is most closely, and indeed inseparably, bound up with philosophy; and since psychology depends most immediately on biology, and biology again cannot be understood except by showing its intimate union with chemistry, it is necessary here to give some special though very brief account of the nature and scope of the two latter sciences, and of the place they hold in the whole chain of positive scientific knowledge. To chemistry, then let us turn. In chemistry the object-matter which we have before us consists of (1) the intrinsic differences of compound physical substances, differences extending to the minutest particles, technically called molecules, in which their specifically different properties or qualities are found to inhere; (2) the intrinsic differences of simple or elementary substances, also inherent in their molecules; and (3) the different energies displayed by and between those various substances, both simple and compound, that is, their various combining affinities, in consequence of the intrinsic properties or qualities of their molecules. 1 1 "It is the molecules in which the qualities inhere. Hence the chemist's definition of a molecule: The smallest particles of a substance in which its qualities inhere, or the smallest particles of a substance which can exist by themselves; for both definitions are essentially the same."-From The New Chemistry, by Professor Josiah Parsons Cooke, LL.D., Harvard University. Eighth edition remodelled and enlarged. In the International Scientific Series. Kegan, Paul, Trench and Co., London, 1884, p. 100. BOOK II. § 3. The chemist's problem is, and the chemist's efforts are directed, in the first instance, to explain Chemistry. the specific qualities and energies of the molecules of the various compound substances, as they are experientially known in the aggregate (the molecules severally being too minute for presentative perception), by referring them to the specific qualities and energies of the molecules of the simple substances composing them, and then in the second place to explain the specific qualities and energies of the simple molecules, or molecules of simple substances, by referring them to differences of mass, volume, shape, weight, number, and configuration, or relative position, in the ultimate particles, technically called atoms, of which the least concrete molecule of any substance, simple or compound, is hypothetically assumed to be composed. The chemist's purpose is to push his analysis of the intrinsic properties of matter to the utmost possible limit. It is in the least possible, or ultimate, atoms of concrete matter that the vis insita, inherent in all matter, must be considered to reside, that force which is one of the inseparable constituent elements of all matter, and indispensable to its real existence. Atoms themselves are thus resolvable into inseparable "elements," which are incapable of an independent existence. "We are brought," says the writer of the Manual which I have already quoted, and to which I with pleasure acknowledge myself signally indebted, at the end of his work, "we are brought to this general conclusion the chemical relations of the atoms depend in the first place on mass, and in the second place on their inherent motion, and the ultimate elements of each immutable atom are a definite mass and a definite mode of motion." 2 BOOK II. § 3. It must, however, be remembered, that the Chemistry. specific properties and energies of physical substances due to the intrinsic differences of their molecules, or to the differences of mass, energy, or configuration of atoms, taken as the ultimates which compose molecules, which we may call their strictly chemical properties and energies, are never displayed in isolation from the other energies of Nature, dynamic, thermic, electro-magnetic, and etherial. This was made, I trust, sufficiently clear in the foregoing Section. It is a truth more especially to be borne in mind in biology, and in its daughter-science psychology. For if, as Faraday held, chemical and electric energy are ultimately identical, and if the hypothesis of an all-pervading Ether is our only means of rendering electric and magnetic action intelligible, as being that kind of matter in which these energies are displayed, it follows that the part played by the Ether, in all chemical, biological, and psychological phenomena must be of preponderating importance, entering into the last-named phenomena in virtue of its presence in living neural substance, the physical properties of which belong to the biological domain. But our knowledge of the Ether, and of the phenomena which are specially attributable to it, is as yet in its infancy. It is therefore only as a caveat that I interpose these few remarks. To return now to what may be called the specifically chemical phenomena. 2 The New Chemistry, p. 393. |