ON THE RECONSTRUCTION OF A UNIVERSE. 243 



into the second, and whenever he saw, also, that he could 

 allow a slow-moving molecule to escape from the second 

 compartment into the first. It is obvious that the demon 

 would eventually succeed in dividing the molecules of the 

 gas into two groups, one group of which would possess 

 greater kinetic energy than the other and would be capable 

 of doing work, say, in moving the dividing partition, and all 

 this without the performance of work upon it. The second 

 law would thus be contravened. The only reason that this 

 contravention of the "law" is not possible in a practical 

 sense is the exceedingly small size of the gaseous molecules 

 and their immense number. 



The great question for us is this: Is the "law" which 

 we see has its limitations in the case of gases also limited 

 in the case of sub-atomic change? Throughout this book 

 we have had evidence, and, in fact, demonstrations, of the 

 continuous disintegration of the heavy atoms into sub- 

 atoms. The heavy elements of matter are undergoing a 

 steady and inevitable decomposition with the continuous 

 production of inter-elemental energy. Now, if the lighter 

 elements were at the same time undergoing the reverse 

 process, were, in fact, synthesizing themselves into the 

 heavy elements with the absorption of energy so that as 

 much energy was collected up by them in their growth as 

 was "wasted" by the decomposition of the heavy elements 

 in their decay, the universe of matter would keep its avail- 

 able energy constant; it would constitute a conservative 

 system having neither beginning nor end. It is true that 

 the energy evolved in atomic disintegration is enormous in 

 amount, page 176, and that the energy absorbed in atomic 

 synthesis must be equal to it ; but that does not constitute a 

 valid reason why our atoms, which we consider to be aggre- 

 gations of corpuscles, should not continuously grow by the 



