34 THE PHYSICAL KINSHIP 



and will continue to give it up until it is the same 

 temperature as the surrounding abysms, which is 

 the frightful negative of something like 270 centi- 

 grade degrees. These are not very cheerful facts 

 for those who inhabit the earth to contemplate. 

 But they that seek the things that cheer must 

 seek another sphere. No power can stay the 

 emaciation of suns or the thievery of enveloping 

 immensities. Old age is inevitable. It is far off, 

 but it is as certain as human decay, and as 

 mournful. In that dreadful but inevitable time 

 no living being will be left in this world ; there 

 will be no cities nor states nor vanities nor creep- 

 ing things, no flowers, no twilights, no love, only 

 a frozen sphere. The oceans that now rave 

 against the rocky flanks of the continents will be 

 locked in eternal immobility; the atmospheres, 

 which to-day drive their fleecy flocks over the 

 azure meads of heaven and float sweet sounds and 

 feathered forms, will be, in that terrible time, 

 turned to stone ; the radiant woods and fields, 

 the home of the myriads and the green play-places 

 of the shadows, will, like all that live, move, and 

 breathe, have rotted into the everlasting lumber 

 of the elements. There will be no Europe then, 

 no pompous philosophies, no hellish rich, and no 

 gods. All will have suffered indescribable refrigera- 

 tion. The earth will be a fluidless, lifeless, sunless 

 cinder, unimaginably dead and desolate, a decrepit 

 and pitiful old ruin falling endlessly among heart- 

 less immensities, the universal tomb of the 

 activities. 



