The author of this book has known many Perpetual Motion workers so confident and so enthusiastic that unhampered with extreme discretion, they announced that they were near enough to the solution of this ages-old puzzle that they were certain of success. A little less discretion, with the slightest disregard or even carelessness about the absolute truth could have easily led them to announce that they had such a working machine. The author has indeed known a few such announcements. It is therefore, not surprising that in the history of Perpetual Motion labors, instances can be found where the tireless, but enthusiastic worker being full of confidence, and not secretive, and with the least bit of human carelessness about the truth have announced the actual discovery and successful operation of the machine. We will undertake to say that there have been thousands of just such instances during the last three or four centuries, probably tens of thousands. It is probable that such an instance could be found in every township in the United States. It is not, therefore, surprising that two instances can be found in persons of sufficient personal eminence to give credence and weight to their stories. Such we conceive the facts with reference to the Marquis and the Councillor. Each thought what he told when telling it to be a harmless stretch of the truth, and felt sure that he could protect himself by a very little added perfection to his device. How many many Perpetual Motion devices have been perfect and ready for successful operation except for "one little thing," which the inventor felt sure of finding. The Marquis and Councillor by their little indiscretion, and their puerile carelessness about the truth, each made himself neither famous, nor infamous, but ridiculous in history. CHAPTER XI Conservation of Energy--A Discussion of the Relation of the Doctrine of Conservation of Energy, and the Possibility of Perpetual Motion _Conservation of Energy_ is a doctrine to the effect that energy, like matter, is indestructible, and, except by the infinite, can neither be created nor destroyed; that the sum total of all Energy in the world remains constant; that it may manifest itself in different forms, as heat, magnetism, electricity, mechanical motion, vaporization, but that the sum total remains the same. Nothing could be more satisfactorily proved than this doctrine, and, yet, like Newton's theory of universal gravitation the proof does not amount to a mathematical demonstration. Mathematics demonstrates the conformity of the doctrine of universal gravitation, and of Conservation of Energy with all known natural processes and observed phenomena; but mathematics does not otherwise prove the Universality of Gravitation nor Conservation of Energy. Writing on this subject of proof, with reference to gravitation, the late and eminent Simon Newcomb says: