The "second law" is wholly irrelevant to "history"--save that it sets a terminus--for history is the course of things before that terminus, and all that the second law says is that, whatever the history, it must invest itself between that initial maximum and that terminal minimum of difference in energy-level. As the great irrigation-reservoir empties itself, the whole question for us is that of the distribution of its effects, of _which_ rills to guide it into; and the size of the rills has nothing to do with their significance. Human cerebration is the most important rill we know of, and both the "capacity" and the "intensity" factor thereof may be treated as infinitesimal. Yet the filling of such rills would be cheaply bought by the waste of whole sums spent in getting a little of the down-flowing torrent to enter them. Just so of human institutions--their value has in strict theory nothing whatever to do with their energy-budget--being wholly a question of the form the energy flows through. Though the _ultimate_ state of the universe may be its vital and psychical extinction, there is nothing in physics to interfere with the hypothesis that the penultimate state might be the millennium--in other words a state in which a minimum of difference of energy-level might have its exchanges so skillfully _canalisés_ that a maximum of happy and virtuous consciousness would be the only result. In short, the last expiring pulsation of the universe's life might be, "I am so happy and perfect that I can stand it no longer." You don't believe this and I don't say I do. But I can find nothing in "Energetik" to conflict with its possibility. You seem to me not to discriminate, but to treat quantity and distribution of energy as if they formed one question. There! that's pretty good for a brain after 18 Nauheim baths--so I won't write another line, nor ask you to reply to me. In case you can't help doing so, however, I will gratify you now by saying that I probably won't jaw back.--It was pleasant at Paris to hear your identically unchanged and "undegraded" voice after so many years of loss of solar energy. Yours ever truly, Wm. James. [Illustration: Facsimile of Post-card addressed to Henry Adams.] [Post-card] NAUHEIM, _June 19, 1910_. P. S. Another illustration of my meaning: The clock of the universe is running down, and by so doing makes the hands move. The energy absorbed by the hands and the _mechanical_ work they do is the same day after day, no matter how far the weights have descended from the position they were originally wound up to. The _history_ which the hands perpetrate has nothing to do with the _quantity_ of this work, but follows the _significance_ of the figures which they cover on the dial. If they move from O to XII, there is "progress," if from XII to O, there is "decay," etc. etc. W. J. _To Henry Adams._ [Post-card] CONSTANCE, _June 26, [1910]_.