Internal energy

“ In energetics we do not reason in this way. We say that the body possesses a capacity for work which will be manifested when the opportunity arises, a storage of energy, a virtual or potential energy, or again, an energy of position, which will be transformed into actual energy or real work as soon as the body falls. ”

“ The remedials I propose to teach how to manufacture, will revive energy lost from whatever cause, for they are nervous force and vital power in tangible form, and act, not by stimulation, but by invigoration, restoring magnetic and dynamic power, when nothing else on earth can do it. ”

“ This physical universe is permeated by energy lanes which effectively activate material creation, even as the human body is nourished and energized by the circulatory distribution of the assimilable energy products of nourishment. ”

“ It is possible that the two states are similar to the difference between potential and kinetic energy; and we must remember that energy is always noticed or experienced by us, as energy, in its expenditure, never in its accumulation. [8]
If life be a physical force, if vitality be a specific energy, then, it seems to me, many things fall into line—many phenomena, hitherto inexplicable, become at once intelligible. ”

“ Granting that the human being takes in energy as food and drink and builds it up into dischargeable tissues, we are not further concerned with the details of its physiology. How does the feeling of energy arise, what increases the energy discharge and what blocks, inhibits or lowers it? For from day to day, from hour to hour, we are conscious either of a desire to be active, a feeling of capacity or the reverse. We depend on that feeling of capacity to guide us, and though it is organic, it has its mysterious disappearances and marvelous reenforcements. ”

“ In point of fact, however, I am in relation with the energetic system not merely or primarily as an Intelligence percipient of the transmutations proceeding in it at a particular point, but also as a Will initiative to some extent of such transmutations and capable of influencing and directing the physical process. Life necessarily involves a process of energetic transmutation constantly proceeding at that portion of the system of Energy which constitutes my organism, and I am there related as Will with a larger system which embraces the part in which intelligence is developed. ”

“ The potential energy is supplied by the food; this the metabolism of the body converts into the actual energy of heat and mechanical labour.
There is no more difficult problem in the world than that of the relation of the state of consciousness, termed volition, to the mechanical work which frequently follows upon it. But no one can even comprehend the nature of the problem, who has not carefully studied the long series of modes of motion which, without a break, connect the energy which does that work with the general store of energy. ”

“ We postulate that it is the work by which the energy stored in the brain-cells is converted into electricity or some other form of transmissible energy which then activates certain glands and muscles, thus converting latent energy into beat and motion. ”

“ Nothing is lost in Nature’s distribution of force and energy. Everything accomplished in life, either in the physical handling of material, the brain work in planning the constructions, the mental movements of thought in art, literature, or science, are all representatives of the heat and energy released from the body, and it is the effort of every man and woman to make the body yield as large an income as possible in the expression of this energy. ”

“ Potential Energy is defined as work. The C.G.S. unit of energy is, therefore, the erg." If mental states or consciousness be potential energy of the physicist, the neo-realist should define it in terms of physical work. ”

“ In every transformation of energy this external force is required to cut the cord, or pull the trigger, some external force of excitation or liberation, an energy which may be infinitesimal in amount, and which bears no proportion to the quantity of potential energy it sets free. This intervention of an excitatory, stimulating, or liberating energy is universal. Every phenomenon of nature is but a transformation or a transference of energy, determined by the intervention of a minimal quantity of energy from without. ”

“ So if you say to a man “your house is on fire”, he will start running; although the stimulus contained very little energy, his expenditure of energy may be tremendous. He increases the available energy by panting, which makes his body burn up faster and increases the energy due to combustion; this is just like opening the draft in a furnace. “Vital” movements are those that use up this energy which is in unstable equilibrium. It is they alone that concern the bio-chemist, the physiologist, and the psychologist. ”

“ Now, it does not seem probable that our brain is the residence of a separable demon, no matter whether we attribute to him the power of changing at will the total amount of energy contained in our body, or conceive his activity, as some psychologists do, as a new form of energy added to the mechanical, thermal, electric, chemical, and so on,—requiring only an additional transformation of energy and not breaking down the principle of its conservation. ”

“ To constitute potential energy there must be a passive accident capable of variation, and an effort tending to produce such variation; the integral of this effort, with respect to the possible variation of the passive accident, is potential energy, which differs in work from this—that in work the change has been effected, which, in potential energy, is capable of being effected. ”

“ To overcome it the hypothesis has been suggested that there may be in every case of conscious action a conversion of energy that exactly compensates itself—a simultaneous conversion of psychical into physical energy and of physical into psychical energy, so that the amount of each remains always constant. ”

“ As motion, heat, and nervous power the body uses most of its energy.
The Source of Bodily Energy.—As already indicated, the energy of the body is supplied through the food and the oxygen. These contain energy in the potential form, which becomes kinetic (active) through their uniting with each other in the body. Somewhat as the power of the steam engine is derived from the combustion of fuel in the furnaces, the energy of the body is supplied through the oxidations at the cells. ”

“ The vital energies are derived from the potential chemical energy accumulated in the immediate constituent principles of the organism. In the same way the consequent phenomenon of the vital phenomenon is in general a thermal phenomenon. The final form of vital energy is thermal energy. These three assertions as to the nature, the origin, and the final form of vital phenomena constitute the three fundamental principles, the three laws, of biological energetics.
Food, a Source of Heat. ”

“ For the supply of mental energy is as inexhaustible as the reservoir of all past experience, while the supply of physical energy involved in brain and nerve activity is, like the immortal liver of Prometheus, renewed as fast as depleted. ”

“ Take an illustration of the way in which this reserve or potential energy is transformed into circulating or kinetic energy. Suppose that you are a countryman and come to live in a large city. The speed with which we do things, our habits of quick decision, the whirlwind of activities of the busy man in town, appal you. You cannot see how we live through it. A day in the business district fills you with terror. ”

“ This is only another version of the old story that energy is our strong point and favourable characteristic, rather than intelligence. But we may give to this idea a more general form still, in which it will have a yet larger range of application. We may regard this energy driving at practice, this paramount sense of the obligation of duty, self-control, and work, this earnestness in going manfully with the best light we have, as one force. ”

“ My understanding of the doctrine is, that there are five chief powers or forces in Nature: one mechanical, or molar, the momentum of moving matter; the others molecular, or embodied in the molecules, also supposed in motion—these are, heat, light, chemical force, electricity. To these powers, which are unquestionable and distinct, it is usual to add vital force, of which, however, it is difficult to speak as a whole; but one member of our vital energies, the nerve-force, allied to electricity, fully deserves to rank in the correlation. ”

“ I was simple enough to think that no one who had as much knowledge of physiology as is to be found in an elementary primer, or who had ever heard of the greatest physical generalisation of modern times—the doctrine of the conservation of energy—would dream of doubting my statement ”

“ The matter giving out, the energy will pass away as waste, and the arteries bring back a new supply. For days, weeks, months, and years, matter and energy will thus pass while the identical consciousness will persist, and can be traced through every change precisely as energy can be traced from matter to matter. To say that energy is a two-sided entity, one side of which constitutes sensation, is against the facts. The energy my body has to-day is not that of yesterday. ”

“ Because of the law, the conservation of energy, which shows that no energy in the universe can be lost, it is possible to study, with great accuracy, the energy produced in, and given off by, the human body. ”

“ And then let us realize that the vital energy or Prana that man uses in his life work is but a portion of that great universal energy which permeates everything and everywhere, the portion being used by us at any particular moment being drawn from the universal supply, and again passing out from us into the great ocean of force or energy. ”

“ Now it is a significant fact that the single exception to this rule consists in, and is constituted by, life, or vital energy, which is constantly building lower forms of energy into higher forms. Life is certainly the highest form of energy which we know in this world, and all energies are below this in rank—as may readily be proved by an appeal to the facts of nutrition and metabolism. ”

“ But in so far as a negative value is also a possibility through which energy may attain development—as may, for instance, be clearly seen in the very considerable manifestations of energy shown in neurosis—it also stands for a value, albeit it brings about manifestations of energy which are useless and harmful. In itself energy is neither useful nor harmful, neither full of value nor lacking in it ”

“ Feeling accordingly must have originated, and the question how feeling originates is a problem that suggests itself naturally to the psychologist as well as the philosopher.
#Vital energy a unique form of energy.#
The kinetic energy liberated in our actions, in brain-activity as well as muscular motions, is produced from the potential energy stored up in our tissues. This energy, qua energy, is the same energy which we meet everywhere in nature. All kinds of energy are interconvertible. ”

“ It is evident that our organism has stored up reserves of energy that are ordinarily not called upon, but that may be called upon; deeper and deeper strata of combustion or explosible material, discontinuously arranged, but ready for use for any one who probes so deep, and repairing themselves by rest as well as do the superficial strata. ”

“ But, again, by the action of the vital force at any point of an organ, not only are fluids made to pass, and changed as they pass, but the organ itself is maintained and strengthened, so as to continue or to increase its operation: and thus the vital energy supports its activity by its action, and is augmented by being exerted. ”

“ Generalizing this teaching of experiment the illustrious biologist divined the fundamental law of energetics before the idea of energetics had made much way in France. Every act which expends energy, which produces heat or motion, any manifestation whatever that may be looked upon as an energetic transformation, necessarily expends energy, and that energy is borrowed from the substance of the organism. These substances are simplified, broken up, and destroyed. Now the functional activity of the muscle produces heat and movement in warm-blooded as well as in cold-blooded animals. ”

“ The states to which the term, potential energy, is especially applied, are those which are solely due to mutual actions.
To put a substance into a state of energy, or to increase its energy, is obviously a kind of work. ”

“ Lastly, to fortify this hypothesis, materialists point to the doctrine of the conservation of energy, which is supplied by the science of physics as a sort of buttress in this matter to the teachings of physiology. ”

“ And we here again see that a complex energy has been transformed, in its first phenomenal condition, into potential energy, and that this potential energy is always expended in the second phase without loss or gain. ”

“ This was the ability of the people of K’n-yan to regulate the balance between matter and abstract energy, even where the bodies of living organic beings were concerned, by the sheer force of the technically trained will. ”

“ It is because of this energy that rapids and waterfalls are such important sources of power.
72.Energy, like matter, can neither be created nor destroyed. It can, however, be transferred from one body to another and transformed from one form to another form. ”

“ And so, summing up our conclusions regarding Force and Energy and Motion in Inorganic Substance—and then in Organic Substance—we arrive at an understanding of the Basic Proposition of the Theory of Dynamic Thought, which is as follows:
Basic Proposition.—That All forms and exhibition of Force, Energy, Motion and Power are manifestations of Vital-Mental Action. And that, consequently, at the last there is no Force but Vital-Mental Force; no Energy but Vital-Mental Energy; no Motion but Vital-Mental Motion; no Power but Vital-Mental Power. ”