MODERN IDEAS ON THE END OF THE WORLD.^ 



By GrsTAV Jaumann, 

 Professor of Physics at the Technical High School at Briinn. 



We are totally ignorant of the beginning of the world. During 

 the last century the hypothesis of Laplace and Kant that the planets 

 proceeded from the sun and were cast off by the rotation of it enjoyed 

 wide credence. According to this theory our earth was once in a state 

 of glowing liquid. Judging by the increase in temperature in the 

 deep strata, it is covered at the present time by the solidified crust, 

 relatively very thin, on which we live. Such a conception has ren- 

 dered plausible a belief in the deluge and in the idea of a final day 

 of judgment when the world will be devoured by flames. 



Geology, indeed, records horrible catastrophes : the highest moun- 

 tains were formed by a single short earthquake of tremendous vio- 

 lence, the result of upheavals of granitic magma. By enormous 

 volcanic eruptions erratic blocks were carried thousands of kilometers. 

 In particular the whole of Asia suffered the invasion of the Indian 

 Ocean, which was precipitated on the continent with inconceivable 

 violence, sufficient to carry the rhinoceros and the mammoth, which 

 are considered Indian animals, as far as the frozen fields of Siberia. 

 Cuvier affirmed not only that the world would be destroyed some 

 thousands of years hence, but that it has already many times under- 

 gone like cataclysms, each geologic formation constituting the burial 

 place of a creation entirely separate in origin. According to this 

 hypothesis, the termination of each geologic period has been marked 

 by a complete ending of the world, and the opening of each succeed- 

 ing period by a special creative act giving birth to a new fauna 

 more perfect but equally incapable of evolution. By the side of 

 the brilliant Cuvier lived, obscure and unknown, the much greater 

 Lamarck. It is he who recognized the continuous evolution of the 

 faunas in accordance with an immanent law, or at least in conse- 

 quence of the capacity which organisms possess of perfecting them- 



1 Inaugural address of the rector of the Imperial German Franz-.Toseph Technical High 

 School at Briinn, delivered on October 26, 1912. Translated from the German, pub- 

 lished by the technical high school, by permission of Prof. Jaumann. 



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