Thus it often happens
that discoveries put forward in a somewhat vague manner by adventurous
minds not overburdened by the heavy baggage of scientific erudition,
who audaciously press forward in advance of their time, fall into
quite intelligible oblivion until rediscovered, clarified, and put
into shape by slower but surer seekers. This was the case with the
ideas of Mayer. They were not understood at first sight, not only on
account of their originality, but also because they were couched in
incorrect language.
Mayer was, however, endowed with a singular strength of thought; he
expressed in a rather confused manner a principle which, for him, had
a generality greater than mechanics itself, and so his discovery was
in advance not only of his own time but of half the century. He may
justly be considered the founder of modern energetics.
Freed from the obscurities which prevented its being clearly
perceived, his idea stands out to-day in all its imposing simplicity.
Yet it must be acknowledged that if it was somewhat denaturalised by
those who endeavoured to adapt it to the theories of mechanics, and if
it at first lost its sublime stamp of generality, it thus became
firmly fixed and consolidated on a more stable basis.
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