· ... Philosophy gets on my nerves. If we analyse the ultimate ground of everything, then everything finally falls into nothingness. But I have decid… - Ludwig Boltzmann

Let the molecules of certain es behave as rigid bodies. The molecules of the gas and of the enclosing vessel move through the ether without loss of energy as rigid bodies, or as Lord Kelvin's vortex rings move through a frictionless liquid in ordinary hydrodynamics. If we were to take a vessel filled with one gram of gas kept during an infinitely long time always at 0° C. and containing always the same portion of ether, every atom of ether and every atom of our gas molecules would reach the same average . If then we were to raise the temperature to 1° C and to wait till every ponderable and every ether atom was in , the total energy would be augmented by what we may call the ideal specific heat.

But this theory agrees in so many respects with the facts, that we can hardly doubt that in es certain entities, the number and size of which can roughly be determined, fly about pell-mell. Can it be seriously expected that they will behave exactly as aggregates of Newtonian centres of force, or as the rigid bodies of our Mechanics? And how awkward is the human mind in divining the nature of things, when forsaken by the analogy of what we see and touch directly?

In my view all salvation for philosophy may be expected to come from Darwin's theory.