EVOLUTION THE MASTER-KEY 



been dissipating energy, in the form of light and 

 heat, into the chilly depths of inter-sidereal space 

 ever since the first hour of its longseval shrinkage. 



What is the destiny of this dead sun, among 

 whose constituent electrons, remember, will be those 

 in the printer's ink before your eyes and those in 

 the eyes themselves? Are they forever "stable 

 in desolation," as Stevenson has it to be borne 

 onward through infinite space ? No ; this shriv- 

 elled globe, the common tomb of sun and earth and 

 moon and of the bodies of the great that once 

 breathed thereon, may live again. Give it but the 

 consuming embrace of such another voyager, and 

 in a moment a new nebula will be born. The 

 force of their impact will suffice to evaporate their 

 substance into another cloud which will repeat 

 the history of the old. The path of the two dead 

 suns will determine the position of the " principal 

 plane" which will form the ground -plan of the 

 new system. A new system, I say, new in time, 

 alien in place, yet in part composed of the same 

 imperishable substance as the old. 



You asked me whence I derived the nebula 

 which I proposed to consider ? And I replied that 

 its last stage would indicate its first. We be- 

 lieve that the nebula from which the solar sys- 

 tem is formed was itself derived from the impact 

 of two or more bodies, each of which may well have 

 been the dark epitome and consummation of a sys- 

 tem such as ours. 



We hear much of waves and vibrations nowa- 

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