effects do not seem to be substituted for acting causes.
Thermo-dynamics.—The rôle of the two fundamental principles of thermo-dynamics becomes daily more important in all branches of natural philosophy. Abandoning the ambitious theories of forty years ago, encumbered as they were with molecular hypotheses, we now try to rest on thermo-dynamics alone the entire edifice of mathematical physics. Will the two principles of Mayer and of Clausius assure to it foundations solid enough to last for some time? We all feel it, but whence does our confidence arise? An eminent physicist said to me one day, àpropos of the law of errors:—every one stoutly believes it, because mathematicians imagine that it is an effect of observation, and observers imagine that it is a mathematical theorem. And this was for a long time the case with the principle of the conservation of energy. It is no longer the same now. There is no one who does not know that it is an experimental fact. But then who gives us the right of attributing to the principle itself more generality and more precision than to the experiments which have served to demonstrate it? This is asking, if it is legitimate to generalise, as we do every day, empiric data, and I shall not be so foolhardy as to discuss this question, after so many philosophers have vainly tried to solve it. One thing alone is certain. If this permission were refused to us, science could not exist; or at least
