206 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



vitality. The same immense expenditure, the same apparent dispropor- 

 tion discloses itself "when we consider the time that has been consumed 

 in the process. Here we are again confronted by figures approximat- 

 ing eternity. Life has existed on the Earth millions of years, and 

 mammalian life hundreds of thousands of years. Yet such periods are 

 insignificant in comparison with the cosmogony of the planets. The 

 duration of the highest order of life, under the refined conditions of 

 a high type of civilization, is but of yesterday comparatively, but it 

 has taken so enormous a period to ripen that we can no more conceive 

 of it than of eternity. A space so vast that it is a tedious journey for 

 light to traverse, and a lapse of time so great that a snail might have 

 made the circuit with ease in the morning of it, have been necessary to 

 give birth to one Shakespeare ! All this space, and all this time, and 

 all this immortal energy have as yet barely sufficed to develop a few 

 organisms capable of a glimmering comprehension of the forces which 

 have evolved them. All the rest, if the accepted theories of gravita- 

 tion and light and heat are not wholly illusory or misunderstood, is 

 waste space, waste matter, waste energy. Life is far more rare and 

 far more costly in our solar system than diamonds in the earth. 



But why not ? Space is boundless, matter is infinite in quantity, 

 and time is limitless, past and to come. Where the treasure is ex- 

 haustless, the question of cost is only interesting from a speculative 

 point of view. This as regards the past. 



One of the elements of cost time has an interesting bearing on 

 the future of the universe. Some scientists have of late indulged in 

 presages more despondent than philosophical. According to this 

 school, the dissipation of energy into space will finally result in the 

 death of matter. Matter, being indestructible, will exist forever, but 

 its soul will perish ; first the vital form, then electricity, light, and 

 heat, and finally even atomic vibration leaving all cosmic bodies 

 mere cadavers, like the terrestrial moon. This view has been com- 

 bated by special theories, like that of Siemens, but not with great 

 success. But there is a large aspect of the question which, though it 

 seems to have escaped the attention of thinkers, at once sets it at rest, 

 and demonstrates that energy and life are immortal. Bacon says of 

 eternal duration, that, dividing it into past and future, it is of no con- 

 sequence where we draw the line ; a billion years ago, or a billion 

 years hence, or the present, the two parts are still equal to each other 

 and to the whole ; thus contradicting all the laws of quantity. If 

 this be a paradox, it has the peculiarity of being irrefutable, since it is 

 impossible to conceive of any greater eternity than either the past or 

 the future. Assuredly it can not be maintained that the future eter- 

 nity is greater than the past. Assuming, then, this postulate, and that 

 energy in all phases has been eternal in the past, it follows, with a 

 force that commands unhesitating assent, that it will be eternal in 

 the future. Whatever is, has been ; whatever will be, has been. En- 



