Note 66 — Chapter VI

For a careful examination of the several theories of heat consult Dr. Young’s Course of Lectures on Natural Philosophy, &c., Lecture 52, On the Measures and the Nature of Heat; also Powell’s very excellent Reports on Radiant Heat—Reports of the British Association, 1832, 1840. The transcendental view which the immaterial theory leads to, cannot be better exemplified than by the following quotation from that inexplicable dream of a talented man, Elements of Physiophilosophy, by Lorenz Oken, M.D. (translated for the Ray Society, by Alfred Tulk):—

“Heat is not matter itself any more than light is; but it is only the act of motion in the primary matter. In heat, as well as in light, there certainly resides a material substratum; yet, this substratum does not give out heat and light; but the motion only of the substratum gives out heat, and the tension only of the substratum light. There is no body of heat; nitrogen is the body of heat, just as oxygen may be called the body of fire. Heat is real space; into it all forms have been resolved, as all materiality has been resolved into gravity, and all activity, all polarity, into light. Heat is the universal form, consequently the want of form.”