WORLD-SMASHING. 259 



sort of life which he says can only proceed from life, and that from 

 such a world thus stocked and thus smashed " many great and small 

 fragments carrying seed and living plants and animals would un- 

 doubtedly be scattered through space ;" and that " if at the present 

 instant no such life existed upon this earth, one such stone falling 

 upon it might, by what we blindly call natural causes, lead to its be- 

 coming covered with vegetation." 



The conclusion of this paragraph is instructively characteristic of 

 the philosophy of Sir William Thomson and his admirers. He says 

 that " the hypothesis that life originated on this earth through moss- 

 grown fragments of another world may seem wild and visionary ; all I 

 maintain is that it is not unscientific." 



I have italicized the phrases which, put together, express the phi- 

 losophy of this school of modern manufacturers of mathematical 

 hypotheses. It matters not to them how " wild and visionary, " how 

 utterly gratuitous any assumption may be, it is not unscientific pro- 

 vided it can be invested in formulae, and worked out mathematically. 

 These transcendental mathematicians are struggling to carry philoso- 

 phy back to the era of Duns Scotns, when the greatest triumph of 

 learning was to sophisticate so profoundly an obvious absurdity that 

 no ordinary intellect could refute it. 



Fortunately for the progress of humanity, there are other learned 

 men who firmly maintain that the business of science is the dis- 

 covery and teaching of simple sober truth. 



The writer of the Daily News article above referred to very charita- 

 bly suggests that Sir W. Thomson may be " poking fun at some of 

 his colleagues," and compares the moss-grown meteorite hypothesis 

 with the Hindoo parable which explains the stability of the earth by 

 stating that it stands on the back of a monster tortoise, that the tor- 

 toise rests upon the back of a gigantic elephant, which stands upon 

 the shell of a still .bigger tortoise, resting on the back of another still 

 more gigantic elephant, and so on. Sir W. Thomson, of course, 

 requires to smash two more worlds in order to provide a moss-grown 

 fragment for starting the life upon the world which was broken up 

 for our benefit and so on backward ad infinitum. 



CHAPTER XXXIY. 



WOELD-SMASHING. 



SIB W. THOMSON'S moss-grown fragment of a shattered world is not 

 yet forgotten. In the current number of the Cornhill Magazine (Janu- 

 ary, 1872) it is very severely handled ; ihe more severely, because the 

 writer, though treating the subject quite popularly, shows the fallacy 

 of the hypothesis, even when regarded from the point of view of Sir 

 W. Thomson's own special department of study. That an eminent 

 mathematician should make a great slip when he ventures upon geo- 

 logical or physiological ground is not at all surprising ; it is, in fact, 

 quite to be expected, as there can be no doubt that the close study of 

 pure mathematics, by directing the mind to processes of calculation 



