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our mountains, picrate on dynamite, pan- 

 clactite on fulminate and other explosives a 

 thousand times more powerful, which sci- 

 ence, ever in progress, will not fail to invent, 

 shall we end by blowing up the planet? 

 Thrown into confusion by the shock, will the 

 ragged splinters of the terrestrial clod whirl 

 away in vortices like that of the asteroids, 

 the apparent ruins of a vanished world? 

 This would be the end of all great and noble 

 things, but it would be the end also of much 

 that is ugly and much that is pitiful. 



In our day, with materialism in full sway, 

 we have physics working precisely at demol- 

 ishing matter. It pulverizes the atom, sub- 

 tilizing it until it disappears, transformed 

 into energy. The tangible and visible mass 

 is only appearance; in reality all is force. If 

 the knowledge of the future succeeded in 

 harking back on a large scale to the primor- 

 dial origins of matter, a few slabs of rock, 

 suddenly disintegrated into energy, would 

 dislocate the glove Into a chaos of forces. 

 Then Gilbert's ^ great word-picture would 

 be realized: 



1 Nicolas Joseph Laurent Gilbert (1751-1780), a 

 satirical poet, many strophes of whose Adieux a la Vie 

 have become classic. — Translator's Note. 

 166 



