ABSTRACT
Now, a discovery is great in proportion to the extent and importance of the results that flow from it. These results may be immediate and practical, as in the case of vaccination; or they may be scientific and intellectual, as in Newton’s discovery of the identity of the force which draws a stone to the ground with that which holds the planets in their orbits. And, further, the great discovery of the conservation of forces under definite equivalents, may be summed up very briefly in this statement—the amount of energy in the universe is constant. The greatest discovery of the age has, as already indicated, immediate and important practical bearings. The amount of thought which, even in the present day, is devoted by unscientific mechanics to old problem of perpetual motion is far greater than is generally supposed. The discoveries to which the readers have endeavoured to attract reader’s attention thus give rise to conceptions of utmost grandeur and interest.
