It was really making a new discovery to establish that Carnot's
fundamental idea survived the destruction of the hypothesis on the
nature of heat, on which he seemed to rely. As he no doubt himself
perceived, his idea was quite independent of this hypothesis, since,
as we have seen, he was led to surmise that heat could disappear; but
his demonstrations needed to be recast and, in some points, modified.
It is to Clausius that was reserved the credit of rediscovering the
principle, and of enunciating it in language conformable to the new
doctrines, while giving it a much greater generality. The postulate
arrived at by experimental induction, and which must be admitted
without demonstration, is, according to Clausius, that in a series of
transformations in which the final is identical with the initial
stage, it is impossible for heat to pass from a colder to a warmer
body unless some other accessory phenomenon occurs at the same time.
Still more correctly, perhaps, an enunciation can be given of the
postulate which, in the main, is analogous, by saying: A heat motor,
which after a series of transformations returns to its initial state,
can only furnish work if there exist at least two sources of heat, and
if a certain quantity of heat is given to one of the sources, which
can never be the hotter of the two.
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