combining the treatment prescribed by him with the deleterious potions of half a dozen ignorant and unscrupulous quacks. The decline of the Senate is undoubtedly the cause of most serious evils, but this decline is itself a symptom and the result of causes lying outside of and deeper than the Constitution.

"No amount of wisdom in a Constitution," says Justice Miller, "can produce wise government, unless there is a suitable response in the spirit of the people." (Lectures on the Constitution, p. 32.) And Story writes: "Private and public virtue is the foundation of republics; and it is folly, if it is not madness, to expect that rulers will not buy what the people are eager to sell. The people may guard themselves against the oppressions of their governors; but who shall guard them against their own oppression of themselves.' (Commentaries, §719.)

Let these wise and profound truisms be pondered well by those who think they can lift the Senate again to its former intellectual and moral level by transferring the election of senators from the Legislatures to the people. I do not mean to express myself adversely to this change. But while I admit that it may tend to mend matters somewhat, I am very sure that it cannot effect a real cure of the evil. The advocates of this change are not liable to a grave charge that has to be brought against the radicals, whose virtuous indignation over the shortcomings of the Senate pushes them to the extreme of preaching, that there is no cure,—that the people will have to bear the evil and grin, if they either cannot or will not consign the Senate to the things of the past. The latter are betrayed by their ill-advised patriotic ardor into spending the strength, which might and ought to be devoted to breaking the ground for genuine reforms, in attempts to switch off public opinion on to a track leading straight on to disaster. The former are exerting themselves in behalf of what may unquestionably turn out to be a reform. Still there is at least great danger that they too will mislead public opinion by-wittingly or unwittingly-making it believe that what can at best be a reform, will be a cure. If they do that, they will have wrought more harm than good, for what is needed first and above

all is the opening of the eyes of the people to the true nature and the real causes of the evil.

To contend in the face of the Senate's record for three generations that the election of senators by the State Legislatures had necessarily to prove a failure, is manifestly absurd. If the Legislatures have of late so frequently failed to elect men of the proper stamp that the general character of the Senate has thereby been seriously lowered, the Legislatures must evidently have deteriorated. That a spreading and progressing deterioration of the State Legislatures must affect the nation's life as injuriously as the deterioration of the federal Senate, is, however, self-evident, though Judge Story is unquestionably right in saying: "There is probably no legislative body on earth whose duties are more various and interesting and important to the public welfare, and none which calls for higher talents and more comprehensive attainments and more untiring industry and integrity." (Commentaries, § 707.) And as the people can elect to the State Legislatures whomsoever they see fit, it is as incontestable that the people are at fault, if there be a spreading and progressing deterioration of the State Legislatures. Therefore to scold the Senate for being, intellectually and morally, so much below its task, and the State Legislatures for not electing the proper sort of men, is but to denounce the symptoms of the disease. No disease has ever been cured by doing that, and this must be aggravated by it, for it averts the people's attention from the true causes and unless these are fought unremittingly and energetically, they must go on gaining steadily and rapidly in potency. It is not only impossible to stamp out the disease, but it must eat its way ever deeper into the very vitals of the republic, so long as the people are lacking either the discernment or the moral courage to lay the blame where it really belongs-at their own door.

To say that the responsibility ultimately rests with the people is, however, to say also that in the nature of things there can be no specific remedy. Specific measures cannot only be helpful, but they are absolutely indispensable. In politics the faith-cure system never works. Though private and public virtue is undoubtedly the foundation of republics, the mere preaching of the necessity of private

and public virtue is not only unavailing, but very apt to work as a benumbing opiate. Definite measures are needed to bar the way to evil tendencies and noxious influences, to stimulate the activity of the vital energies, and to fight the symptoms, which become themselves causes of derangement if they be left unchecked. But if the disease is of long standing and complicated, and if it has affected the whole system, only the veriest quack can believe for a moment that all that is required is to apply some nostrum. Nothing but the removal of all the causes will do and that requires time, patient and persistent work, much deliberation and even experimenting, and a great deal of moral courage and self-abnegation. To keep a great democratic republic hale and sound or to restore it to health if it be diseased, is not so simple and easy as many people-to judge from their talking and still more from their acting-seem to think. It cannot be done either by shouting "hip, hip, hurrah!" or by looking contemptuously and pityingly at "effete monarchies" and praying: "We thank Thee, God, that we are not like these publicans." It is the most arduous task any nation can be put to and it must grow every day more arduous and more difficult, if the problem is not satisfactorily solved every day. In a democratic republic less than under any other form of government is there such a thing as a standstill; onward and upward, or backward and downward-there is no other possibility. The fathers of the country and the authors of the Constitution have bequeathed us not only a splendid heritage, but also an awful trust and a fearful responsibility. Let us beware lest we shall stand branded, as they stand exalted in the annals of mankind.

Let us not turn pessimists-we have no reason to. But let us not be optimists either, wafting on in a self-complacent dolce far niente; they are an even more harmful set than the lugubrious croakers. Let us be, what we ought to be-true patriots, looking the facts square in the face in order to do-each of us-our fair share in honestly, vigorously, and hopefully fighting the deeper causes, of which the eclipse of the Senate is but one effect-the evils, with which it stands not only in close, but in organic and genetic connexion.

UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO.

H. VON HOLST.

ON THE PRINCIPLE OF THE CONSERVATION OF ENERGY.'

IN a

Na popular lecture, distinguished for its charming simplicity and clearness, which Joule delivered in the year 1847,2 that famous physicist declares that the living force which a heavy body has acquired by its descent through a certain height and which it carries with it in the form of the velocity with which it is impressed, is the equivalent of the attraction of gravity through the space fallen through, and that it would be "absurd" to assume that this living force could be destroyed without some restitution of that equivalent. He then adds " You will therefore be surprised to hear that until very recently the universal opinion has been that living force could be absolutely and irrevocably destroyed at any one's option." Let us add that to-day, after forty-seven years, the law of the conservation of energy, wherever civilisation reaches, is accepted as a fully established truth and receives the widest applications in all domains of natural science.

The fate of all momentous discoveries is similar. On their first appearance they are regarded by the majority of men as errors. J. R. Mayer's work on the principle of energy (1842) was rejected. by the first physical journal of Germany; Helmholtz's treatise (1847) met with no better success; and even Joule, to judge from an intimation of Playfair, seems to have encountered difficulties with his

1 Translated from Professor Mach's manuscript by Thomas J. McCormack. 2On Matter, Living Force, and Heat, Joule : Scientific Papers, London, 1884 I, p. 265.

the

first publication (1843). Gradually, however, people are led to see that the new view was long prepared for and ready for enunciation, only that a few favored minds had perceived it much earlier than rest, and in this way the opposition of the majority is overcome. With proofs of the fruitfulness of the new view, with its success, confidence in it increases. The majority of the men who employ it cannot enter into a deep-going analysis of it; for them, its success is its proof. It can thus happen that a view which has led to the greatest discoveries, like Black's theory of caloric, in a subsequent period in a province where it does not apply may actually become an obstacle to progress by its blinding our eyes to facts which do not fit in with our favorite conceptions. If a theory is to be protected from this dubious rôle, the grounds and motives of its evolution and existence must be examined from time to time with the greatest care.

The most multifarious physical changes, thermal, electrical, chemical, and so forth, may be brought about by mechanical work. When such alterations are reversed they yield anew the mechanical work in exactly the quantity which was required for the production of the part reversed. This is the principle of the conservation of energy; "energy" being the term which has gradually come into use for that "indestructible something" of which the measure is mechanical work.

How did we acquire this idea? What are the sources from which we have drawn it? This question is not only of interest in itself, but also for the important reason above touched upon. The opinions which are held concerning the foundations of the law of energy still diverge very widely from one another. Many trace the principle to the impossibility of a perpetual motion, which they regard either as sufficiently proved by experience, or as self-evident. In the prov

ince of pure mechanics the impossibility of a perpetual motion, or the continuous production of work without some permanent alteration, is easily demonstrated. Accordingly, if we start from the theory that all physical processes are purely mechanical processes, motions of molecules and atoms, we embrace also, by this mechanical conception of physics, the impossibility of a perpetual motion in the