When we find that here, and in the starry heavens, there are
innumerable multitudes of little bodies of exactly the same mass, so
many, and no more, to the grain, and vibrating in exactly the same
time, so many times, and no more, in a second, and when we reflect
that no power in nature can now alter in the least either the mass or
the period of any one of them, we seem to have advanced along the path
of natural knowledge to one of those points at which we must accept
the guidance of that faith by which we understand that "that which is
seen was not made of things which do appear."
One of the most remarkable results of the progress of molecular
science is the light it has thrown on the nature of irreversible
processes--processes, that is, which always tend towards and never
away from a certain limiting state. Thus, if two gases be put into
the same vessel, they become mixed, and the mixture tends continually
to become more uniform. If two unequally heated portions of the same
gas are put into the vessel, something of the kind takes place, and
the whole tends to become of the same temperature.
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