This will help us to some extent to understand the creation of beautiful and complicated figures by the simple tendency of liquids to assume surfaces of least superficial area. But the question arises, Why do liquids seek surfaces of least superficial area?
The particles of a liquid cling together. Drops brought into contact coalesce. We can say, liquid particles attract each other. If so, they seek to come as close as they can to each other. The particles at the surface will endeavor to penetrate as far as they can into the interior. This process will not stop, cannot stop, until the surface has become as small as under the circumstances it possibly can become, until as few particles as possible remain at the surface, until as many particles as possible have penetrated into the interior, until the forces of attraction have no more work to perform.[3]
The root of the principle of least surface is to be sought, accordingly, in another and much simpler principle, which may be illustrated by some such analogy as this. We can conceive of the natural forces of attraction and repulsion as purposes or intentions of nature. As a matter of fact, that interior pressure which we feel before an act and which we call an intention or purpose, is not, in a final analysis, so essentially different from the pressure of a stone on its support, or the pressure of a magnet on another, that it is necessarily unallowable to use for both the same term—at least for well-defined purposes.[4] It is the purpose of nature, accordingly, to bring the iron nearer the magnet, the stone nearer the centre of the earth, and so forth. If such a purpose can be realised, it is carried out. But where she cannot realise her purposes, nature does nothing. In this respect she acts exactly as a good man of business does.
It is a constant purpose of nature to bring weights lower. We can raise a weight by causing another, larger weight to sink; that is, by satisfying another, more powerful, purpose of nature. If we fancy we are making nature serve our purposes in this, it will be found, upon closer examination, that the contrary is true, and that nature has employed us to attain her purposes.
Equilibrium, rest, exists only, but then always, when nature is brought to a halt in her purposes, when the forces of nature are as fully satisfied as, under the circumstances, they can be. Thus, for example, heavy bodies are in equilibrium, when their so-called centre of gravity lies as low as it possibly can, or when as much weight as the circumstances admit of has sunk as low as it can.
The idea forcibly suggests itself that perhaps this principle also holds good in other realms. Equilibrium exists also in the state when the purposes of the parties are as fully satisfied as for the time being they can be, or, as we may say, jestingly, in the language of physics, when the social potential is a maximum.[5]
You see, our miserly mercantile principle is replete with consequences.[6] The result of sober research, it has become as fruitful for physics as the dry questions of Socrates for science generally. If the principle seems to lack in ideality, the more ideal are the fruits which it bears.
But why, tell me, should science be ashamed of such a principle? Is science[7] itself anything more than—a business? Is not its task to acquire with the least possible work, in the least possible time, with the least possible thought, the greatest possible part of eternal truth?