II.
The doctrine of the correlation, equivalence, persistence, transmutability and indestructibility of force, or the conservation of energy has had vast influence upon the thought and life of our time. It has furnished a new opening through which to behold the nature of things. It has given to men a new working hypothesis and richer views and conceptions of the universe and its author.
The tremendous advancement made in the material civilization of the present is due more to this than any other scientific doctrine or principle. According to Professor Balfour Stewart, there are eight forms of energy or force. The energy of visible motion, visible energy of position, heat motion, molecular separation, atomic or chemical separation, electrical separation, electricity in motion, and radiant energy. Now taking this earth as a complete whole, containing within itself all these forms of energy, and so isolated from the rest of the universe as to receive nothing from it and to add nothing to it, then the principle of the correlation of forces asserts that the sum of all these forces is constant.
“This does not assert that each is constant in itself, or any other of the forms of force enumerated, for in truth they are always changing about into each other—now some visible energy being changed into heat or electricity, and heat or electricity being changed back again into visible energy; but it only means that the sum of all the energies taken together is constant. There are eight variable quantities, and it is only asserted that their sum is constant, not by any means that they are constant themselves.”
For the purpose of elucidating our principle in the realm of nature, we will consider it as it applies to some of the useful forces whose effects we can measure and whose origin we can trace and determine.
There is the force of conserved fuel. Away back in the carboniferous period of the world’s history, there grew immense forests, which in succeeding ages were turned under the earth, and, in the process of the years, were changed into coal and oil and gas. These have been treasured for untold ages in the mountains and in the bowels of the earth. Now they are brought forth by the applied intelligence of man, to turn his wheel, draw his car, cook his food, propel his plow, and to light his home and his street. The force in one ton of coal is capable of accomplishing more work in a few hours than one man could in a lifetime. All this force, as well as that contained in the growing forests of to-day, originated in the sun.
There is the conserved force of food. This is found primarily in the grass, the wheat, the rice, the fruit, which grow in our fields and orchards. The lower animals feed on these, and through the process of digestion and assimilation, they are transmuted into blood and bone and muscle—thus furnishing man, who stands at the top and the end of the creative process, with a more refined higher form of food. But whether in the shape of grass, rice, wheat, or in the more refined form of animal flesh, these various elements of food are only so much transmuted sunshine. Before they ever adorned the surface of our fields, or moved in the lowing herd over the meadow, they were held in solution in the sunshine. The food, the fuel, and the animal life of our earth are all traceable to the sun.
There is the conserved force of flowing water. This turns the wheel, spins the thread, gins the cotton, weaves the cloth, and grinds the corn. All the force that water possesses for the performance of work, comes from the sun. The warm rays of the sun, coming down on southern seas and rivers, causes the waters thereof to evaporate, and then it is carried on the wings of north-bound winds to a colder clime. There the diffused waters gather themselves into clouds and fall in rain to flow down the rivers, thus exchanging their energy of position, which they have obtained from the sun, for the actual energy of the turning wheel.
There is also the conserved force of moving winds. By the aid of this ships spread their sails, and pass from continent to continent with the products of the earth. Again all the force the winds possess for the accomplishment of work comes from the sun. The rays of the sun come down with great intensity upon certain parts of the earth and heat the atmosphere. Into these heated places come the winds from colder regions. Thus currents and counter-currents are created. By putting the wheel of the windmill into these currents this force is converted into the ground wheat and the drawn water. Thus all the different forms of force displayed in the growing forests, the waving harvest fields, the flying birds, the lowing herds, the rushing railway train, the whir of the spindle, the ring of the hammer, and the pulsating blood come directly from the sun. The force, too, seen in all these physical, vegetable, animal, commercial realms, is the exact equivalent of what was poured into them from the sun. The earth contains no other force capital than what was paid over to it by the sun. It has issued no currency of its own, not even enough to run a watch, or to send the blood once around the body, or even to transport a piece of bread to a starving man. All the force our earth possesses is borrowed, and if we were to cease to borrow, we would be bankrupt in a single day. We are to remember, too, that by so much force as the sun has parted with to our earth, and to other worlds which look to it for supplies, by so much has its own force been decreased. If we knew how much force the sun had in the beginning, and would subtract from this amount all that it has given away to the present time, we might be able to form some estimate of its assets to-day.
We know not what the sun’s resources are. We know not by what methods it has been replenishing its supplies of light and heat for ages past; whether by chemical combination, meteoric impact, or condensation; we only know by so much as it has in the ages past parted with, by so much less force it has to-day. That it has been able to supply our world and others like it, however, with heat and light and physical life for ages, is not at all strange when we remember what an immense ball of fire the sun is. It has a diameter of a million miles, in round numbers. Storms, which travel across our world at the rate of sixty miles an hour, would move across the surface of the sun at the rate of twenty thousand miles an hour. The flames of a burning forest, which on our world would rise one hundred feet in the air, on the sun would rise to the height of two hundred thousand miles. The sun, too, has enough force on hand to supply our earth and others with heat for untold ages yet to come, but unless its supply is replenished, the time will come when it will be bankrupt and nothing but a burnt out char in the heavens. This is so, because the sun is the center of that great natural realm, the universal law of which is the law of exclusiveness.
In accordance with this law what the sun has in the way of force the other planets do not have, and what other planets obtain from the sun that body has forever lost. This is only another name for the law of the correlation of forces. This law applies not only to the force of the sun, but to all forces on this earth which come from that body. What one tree gathers into itself is at the expense of the general fund of force which goes to make trees. What one bird takes into his body is at the expense of all force which goes to make birds. What one man takes into his physical frame is at the expense of the general fund of force which goes to make human bodies. Whatever amount of force is contained in the cloud, in conserved water to turn the wheel, or in conserved electricity to carry the message, is at the expense of the general fund of force.
According to the doctrine of the correlation of forces, the rising up of force in one place involves the subsidence of force in another place. The amount rising up, too, is the exact equivalent of the amount subsiding. When a rock falls from a church steeple the earth rises as much to meet the rock, in proportion to its mass, as the rock falls to meet the earth, in proportion to its mass. When a man shoots a rifle ball from a gun, as much force goes back against his shoulder as goes out through the muzzle of the gun. What the gun lacks in velocity it makes up in mass, and what the ball lacks in mass it makes up in velocity. When a pine tree is cut down and split into small pieces and put into an engine, just the same amount of heat is gathered from it that was garnered from the sun in the fifty years of its growth. This heat is also converted into an equivalent of steam, and this steam into an equivalent amount of mechanical motion. The sunshine, the pine tree, the heat, the steam, the mechanical motion, are only different forms of the same thing. Scientists of the materialistic school claim that this law holds good not only in the realm of the natural world, but in the mental and moral, as well. Prof. Thomas H. Huxley said, in a celebrated address in this country once, that a speech was only so much transmuted mutton. According to Prof. Alexander Bain, there are five chief powers, or forces in nature: one mechanical or molar, the momentum of moving matter; the others, molecular, are embodied in the molecules, also supposed in motion—these are light, heat, chemical force, electricity. One member of vital energies, the nerve force, allied to electricity, fully deserves to rank in the correlation. According to this same distinguished authority, mind is only a refined and sublimated form of physical force. In this view the great poems, paintings, and literature of the world would be only so much transmuted sunshine—a higher form of the same force we see manifested in the flying railway train. In the one case the solidified sunshine contained in the coal is transmuted through the furnace of the engine into mechanical motion; in the other, the heat contained in food is transmuted through the human brain into literature and art. Perhaps it might not be at wide variance from the truth to assume that the force, mental or otherwise, expended by men who spend their lives under the dominion of the natural law of exclusiveness, may be accounted for in accordance with the doctrine of the correlation of forces. Even mind, when earthly and low, is subject to the bearing of the law of sin and death, which is the scriptural name for the law of exclusiveness.