PROCEEDINGS OF THE POLYTECHNIC ASSOCIATION. ' 725 



man with the permanaiice of the forests, the mountains, the ocean, 

 the apparent course of the sun; but this contrast is a dehision, it 

 is only a difference of degree; geology teaches ns that forests only 

 lasts for a few thousand years, and then decay or change in coal, 

 that mountains crumble, or subside by convulsions in the earth's 

 crust, that the sea retires, and the ancient shores we find now 

 buried below the mountains resound no more with what we call 

 the everlasting voice of the ocean; now comes astronomy and 

 teaches us that not only the so called everlasting rocks, mountains 

 and ocean, but sun and moon, stars and planets have stamped upon 

 their foreheads the words: inslability^ transitory condition. They 

 exist like man, only longer ; the ephemeral insect exists a few 

 hours; man a few score of years; an empire, or nation exists a few 

 centuries; a language, a religious opinion, a few thousand of years; 

 a contiuent, an ocean, has its limited time of existence; and even 

 the very revolutions of the sky, by which we number centuries, 

 will at last have their end, when our earth with all the planets 

 will unite in a common centre and constitute one single globe, 

 w^hich in the course of eternity will unite with other similar globes, 

 and when all the millions of finer stars of our stellar system, com- 

 monly called the milky way, have united in one mass, the heat 

 developed may be so great that all will be expanded in a nebula 

 or vapor, extended as far as our stellar system extends now, and 

 then gravitation may reproduce new centres of attraction, and the 

 same history so beautifully taught by Laplace's theory, may be 

 reproduced. 



A body of about the size of our sun or of the fixed stars, may 

 be the limit in Avhich matter may remain united to a single globe, 

 ])ut when several millions of such bodies coalesce, the heat may 

 be so great as to overcome gravitation entirely, and to diffuse all 

 as vapor into space, this vapor carrying the heat with it and mak- 

 ing it latent, to be set free again by condensation. 



I cannot do better than give you, in closing, a translation of a 

 fantasy of the celebrated German orator, Fred. Richter, better 

 knov>ni under the nom de ]jlume oi Jean Paul: 



" God called up from dreams a man into the vestibule of heaven, 

 saying, ' Come thou hither and see the glory of My house.' And 

 to the servants that stood around His throne He said, ' Take him 

 and undress him from the robes of flesh, cleanse his vision and 

 put a new breath into his nostrils ; only touch not with any 

 change his human heart — the heart that weeps and trembles.' It 



