History and Root of the Principle of the Conservation of Energy

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1910 edition. Excerpt: ... I INTRODUCTION HE who calls to mind the time when he obtained his first view of the world from his mother's teaching will surely remember how upside-down and strange things then appeared to him. For instance, I recollect the fact that I found great difficulties in two phenomena especially. In the first place, I did not understand how people could like letting themselves be ruled by a king even for a minute. The second difficulty was that which Lessing so deliciously put into an epigram, which may be roughly rendered: "One thing I've often thought is queer," Said Jack to Ted, "the which is "That wealthy folk upon our sphere, "Alone possess the riches." The many fruitless attempts of my mother to help me over these two problems must have led her to form a very poor opinion of my intelligence. Everybody will remember similar experiences in his own youth. There are two ways of reconciling oneself with actuality: either one grows accustomed to the puzzles and they trouble one no more, or one learns to "Es ist doch sonderbar bestellt," Sprach Hanschen Schlau zu Vetter Fritzen, "Dass nur die Reichen in der Welt "Das meiste Geld besitzen." understand them by the help of history and to consider them calmly from that point of view. Quite analogous difficulties lie in wait for us when we go to school and take up more advanced studies, when propositions which have often cost several thousand years' labour of thought are represented to us as self-evident. Here too there is only one way to enlightenment: historical studies. The following considerations, which, if I except my reading of Kant and Herbart, have arisen quite independently of the influence of others, are based upon some historical studies. The reason why, in discussion of these thoughts...