So far as science allowed Mayer any credit for his work, this was based on the opinion that through his discovery he had provided the final vindication of the mechanical theory of heat. This judgment, however, was only piling one wrong upon another. Mayer's destiny was truly tragic. When he began to publicize his conviction of the numerical equilibrium between spent and created energy, he met with so much scepticism, even derision, that from sheer despair his mind at times became clouded. When at last toward the end of his life he received the recognition his discovery deserved (not before being dragged through a painful priority dispute which Joule forced upon him and lost), the scientists had begun to use his idea for bolstering up a hypothesis directly counter to the idea which had led him to his discovery, and for the sake of which he had accepted so much suffering.