3o6 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



reached a depth of 10 to 15 kilometers a reaction sets in. The deeply 

 buried beds of water-bearing detrital formations soften, very likely 

 under the influence of heat generated by the concentrated radioactive 

 minerals, as Professor Joly supposes. 15 Long eras of crumpling, ele- 

 vation and mountain-formation follow, to be in turn succeeded by 

 other ages of denudation. "The energy which determines the place of 

 yielding and upheaval, and ordains that the mountains shall stand 

 around the continental border," passes through a rhythmic interchange 

 or cycle. The cosmogonical process which I have described embodies 

 an analogous cycle, embracing the formation of matter from the ether, 

 and most abundantly in the vicinity of stellar aggregates, by the fixa- 

 tion of the radiant energy, outpouring from the disintegrating stellar 

 substance. Then follow, in turn, the concentration of the material on 

 the borders of the earlier galaxies and the birth of new heavens. In 

 proof of this association of old and new along a border region, the sim- 

 ilar distribution of the fourth -type and helium stars, which probably 

 represent the extremes of a thermal series, may be cited. 



The conception of a universal ether is to many so vague that the 

 distinction between ether and a purely spiritual atmosphere seems 

 slight; yet the difference is fundamental. The mind of man is not 

 conditioned by space. Thought can not be measured by the yardstick. 

 Ether, on the contrary, occupies space. The dimensions of its waves 

 have been made the fundamental standards of our units of length. 

 Nevertheless, we still grope and guess as to the real structure and na- 

 ture of the ether. Some of its properties seem to verge on the meta- 

 physical. Back of it, we have glimpses of a source of energy which is 

 inexhaustible, as if it were most intimately linked with the Infinite 

 Source of all existence. Matter which used to be looked upon as dead, 

 and as incapable of exhibiting energy except as this was thrust upon 

 it from without by physical forces, begins to look almost alive. "It 

 moves," said Galileo, of the solid earth ; and to-day the delighted phys- 

 icist, armed with the spectroscope and spinthariscope, Crookes's tube 

 and the electrometer, finds, in the Zeeman effect or the radium emana- 

 tion, evidence that the atom is an orderly maze of bewildering motion. 

 Its inertia is a gyroscopic inertia. Absolute rest would be nonentity. 

 Everywhere the universe speaks of never-ending life and motion. Cre- 

 ation is not the bringing forth of an infinite number of dead structure- 

 less particles, sent out as a set of miserable little waifs at some indefi- 

 nitely remote epoch and left to clash without guidance, without pur- 

 pose. Creation is perpetual. The interiors of matter are seen to be 

 more and more wonderful, more and more intensely active, as we ap- 

 proach the sacred portals where divine influx from the Soul of the 

 Universe quickens into the energy which is matter. 



15 J. Joly, ' ' Radioactivity and Geology. An Account of the Influence of 

 Radioactive Energy on Terrestrial History." 



