WORLD-CREATIONS. 707 



stance. If then, as would be the case, it should fall into the sun, this 

 heat would be increased by the fall four-hundred-fold. Now, it makes 

 no difference in the aggregate evolution of heat whether this cessation 

 of motion is sudden or gradual ; and if we can find in Nature any 

 agencies tending to retard the revolutions of the planetary bodies, 

 they must inevitably sooner or later fall into the sun. In such a case 

 it can hardly be doubted that we have found a cause sufficient to pro- 

 duce again the disintegration and diffusion of matter. 



The wave-theory of light and radiant heat presupposes the exist- 

 ence of an ethereal medium pervading all space. It must be a me- 

 dium of material atoms held in equipoise by a balance of forces, for 

 it is evident there could be no wave-motion unless there was some- 

 thing to move, and something, too, having the attributes of matter in 

 a state of extreme mobility or fluidity. There is no other conceiv- 

 able way by which light could reach us from the sun and stars except 

 through this all-pervading form of matter. And if there is a material 

 medium, of whatsoever exceeding tenuity it may be, still it must pre - 

 sent something of resistance to everything passing through it. It 

 resists the passage of light eight minutes in 90,000,000 miles, thus 

 proving its materiality by its resistance to force, which is one of the 

 definitions Of matter. If one could conceive of any force passing 

 through an absolute vacuum, it could only be conceived of as passing 

 instantaneously there is absolutely nothing to detain it. Again, heat 

 and its allied forces are only effects, and the subject is and can be only 

 matter. There is no physical truth better established than that the 

 forces can exist only where matter is in some form. It is not essential 

 that this form of matter be subject to the ordinary laws of gravitation. 

 The probability is, : that it differs entirely from anything that we have 

 experience of. It would seem that the atoms composing the ether of 

 space, instead of attracting each other like those of ordinary matter, 

 must repel each other. At least this supposition would account for 

 what there is remarkable in connection with the ethereal medium. 

 But, whatever theories we may adopt in regard to it, this is certainly- 

 true, that the revolutions of the heavenly bodies must be continually 

 opening passages through it, and that a certain part of the force of 

 those revolutions must be expended in pushing it aside. The centrif- 

 ugal force is thus lessened, and the bodies are drawn nearer to the 

 sun. In consequence, the periods of their revolutions are shortened. 

 This has not as yet become noticeable in the case of the planets, from 

 the fact that the slow contraction of their bulk by the loss of internal 

 heat through volcanoes, thermal springs, and other sources, has the 

 contrary effect of increasing the velocity of revolution, and thus coun- 

 terbalancing the retardation of friction. The fact that the two effects 

 are thus nearly counterbalanced proves the retardation, for otherwise 

 we know that the acceleration would be observable. In the case, how- 

 ever, of the light cometary bodies, it has been shown that they suf- 



