find them, is it not only because of our ignorance, and because the influence of these bodies is too weak for our experiment to be able to detect it? If the system is not regarded as completely isolated, it is probable that the rigorously exact expression of its internal energy will depend upon the state of the external bodies. Again, I have supposed above that the sum of all the external work is zero, and if we wish to be free from this rather artificial restriction the enunciation becomes still more difficult. To formulate Mayer's principle by giving it an absolute meaning, we must extend it to the whole universe, and then we find ourselves face to face with the very difficulty we have endeavoured to avoid. To sum up, and to use ordinary language, the law of the conservation of energy can have only one significance, because there is in it a property common to all possible properties; but in the determinist hypothesis there is only one possible, and then the law has no meaning. In the indeterminist hypothesis, on the other hand, it would have a meaning even if we wished to regard it in an absolute sense. It would appear as a limitation imposed on freedom.
But this word warns me that I am wandering from the subject, and that I am leaving the domain of mathematics and physics. I check myself, therefore, and I wish to retain only one impression of the whole of this discussion, and that is, that Mayer's law is a form subtle enough
