seen with respect to heat and motion is to some degree true of all other forms of energy, as Lord Kelvin has shown. The principle of the degradation of energy is very general. Every manifestation of nature is an energetic transformation. In each of these transformations there is a degradation of energy—i.e., a certain fraction is lowered and becomes less easily transformable. So that the energy of the universe is more and more degraded; the higher forms are lowered to the thermal form, the latter increasing at temperatures which become more and more uniform. The end of the universe, from this point of view, would then be unity of (thermal) energy in uniformity of temperature.
Importance of the Idea of Energy in Physiology.—I have said that the application of Carnot's principle furnished numerical relations between the different energetic transformations.
The science of living beings has not yet reached that point of development at which it is possible for us to obtain its numerical relations. However, the consideration of energy and the principle of conservation has altered the outlook of physiology on many questions which are of the highest importance.
The determination of the sources from which plants and animals draw their vital energies; the mediate transformation of chemical energy into animal heat in nutrition, or into motion in muscular contraction; the chemical evolution of foods; the study of soluble ferments—all these questions are of considerable importance when we wish to understand the mechanisms of life. They are therefore departments of physiological energetics in which great advances have already been made.
