EVOLUTION THE MASTER-KEY 



Judging by the cogent evidence before us, we are 

 led to the conclusion that there must be a term to 

 the "upward" course of cosmic evolution. Of all 

 the predictions of contemporary thought, this is 

 the most dismal. It sorely distressed the beautiful 

 and sympathetic soul of Charles Darwin, who did 

 so much to establish the doctrine of hope, only to 

 face the probability that the sun must ultimately 

 cease to support life upon the earth filled with 

 happy peoples in the coming time. And though 

 the recent discovery by Professor Rutherford that 

 radium is a general constituent of the earth's 

 crust, 1 and the high degree of probability that this 

 potent source of heat is also present in the sun, 

 give us reason to believe that the future duration 

 of life upon the earth may be much longer than 

 was formerly supposed, yet we are still asked to 

 believe that "the last catastrophe" is as inevitable 

 as the laws of physics can make it. 



This, then, is the local and personal illustration 

 of that converse of evolution which Spencer termed 

 dissolution. In the present state of our knowledge 

 there are grave reasons to believe that not merely 

 this lukewarm bullet, but the stellar universe in 

 virtue of the law of the dissipation and degradation 

 of energy is travelling towards universal death. 



This is a hopeless conclusion a circumstance 

 which, indeed, gives us no warrant for rejecting it, 

 but which has led physicists strenuously to seek 



J See Harper's Magazine, January, 1905. 

 302 



