in IDEAL GENESIS OF MATTER 257 



are visible and heterogeneous will be more and more 

 diluted into changes that are invisible and homogeneous, 

 and that the instability to which we owe the richness 

 and variety of the changes taking place in our solar 

 system will gradually give way to the relative stability 

 of elementary vibrations continually and perpetually 

 repeated. Just so with a man who keeps up his 

 strength as he grows old, but spends it less and less 

 in actions, and comes, in the end, to employ it entirely 

 in making his lungs breathe and his heart beat. 



From this point of view, a world like our solar 

 system is seen to be ever exhausting something of the 

 mutability it contains. In the beginning, it had the 

 maximum of possible utilization of energy : this 

 mutability has gone on diminishing unceasingly. 

 Whence does it come ? We might at first suppose 

 that it has come from some other point of space, but 

 the difficulty is only set back, and for this external 

 source of mutability the same question springs up. 

 True, it might be added that the number of worlds 

 capable of passing mutability to each other is unlimited, 

 that the sum of mutability contained in the universe is 

 infinite, and that there is therefore no ground on which 

 to seek its origin or to foresee its end. A hypothesis 

 of this kind is as irrefutable as it is indemonstrable ; 

 but to speak of an infinite universe is to admit a 

 perfect coincidence of matter with abstract space, and 

 consequently an absolute externality of all the parts of 

 matter in relation to one another. We have seen above 

 what we must think of this theory, and how difficult 

 it is to reconcile with the idea of a reciprocal influence 

 of all the parts of matter on one another, an influence 

 to which indeed it itself makes appeal. Again it might 

 be supposed that the general instability has arisen 



