  Boltzmann says that both he and Maxwell had attempted the determination of these probabilities for a gas system but without reaching a complete solution. Yet, on a closer inspection, “it seems not so unlikely that these probabilities can be derived on the basis of the equations of motion alone…” (WA I, 317). Indeed, he announces, he has solved this problem for gases whose molecules consist of an arbitrary number of atoms. His aim is to prove that whatever the initial state in such a system of gas molecules, it must inevitably approach the state characterized by the Maxwell distribution (WA I, 320).