such an operation, but must, on the contrary, be spent upon the process.
151. Let us now for a moment consider the case of an enclosure in which everything is of the same temperature. Here we have a dull dead level of heat, out of which it will be impossible to obtain the faintest semblance of work. The temperature may even be high, and there may be immense stores of heat energy in the enclosure, but not a trace of this is available in the shape of work. Taking up Carnot's comparison, the water has already fallen to the same level, and lies there without any power of doing useful work—dead, in a sense, as far as visible energy is concerned.
152. We thus perceive that, firstly, we can get work out of heat when it passes from a higher to a lower temperature, but that, secondly, we must spend work upon it in order to make it pass from a lower temperature to a higher one; and that, thirdly and finally, nothing in the shape of work can be got out of heat which is all at the same temperature level.
What we have now said enables us to realize the conditions under which all heat engines work. The essential point about such engines is, not the possession of a cylinder, or piston, or fly wheels, or valves, but the possession of two chambers, one of high and the other of low temperature, while it performs work in the process of carrying heat from the chamber of high to that of low temperature.
