The Evolution of Forces - With Frontispiece and 24 Figures #231593

IN the following pages, Dr. Gustave Le Bon develops further the strikingly novel and original theories put forward by him in l'ecolution de la Mattere.1 As in the last-named work, he enunciated the doctrine, which he was the first to deduce, that all matter is continually in a state of dissociation and decay, so in this he goes in detail into the corollary, there only briefly stated, that the atom is a great reservoir of energy, and itself the source of most of the forces of the universe. In support of this position, he calls in the aid of his earlier researches into the nature of invisible radiations, phosphorescence, and the Hertzian waves, all which, with several related phenomena, he declares to be explicable by the hypothesis that the atom, on dissociating, sets free, either wholly or in part the energy stored up within it on its formation. Yet he is careful to declare that this is rather suggested than demonstrated by his researches.