456 THE WORLD MACHINE 



able. Yet the irresistible bent of the mind which leads me to 

 believe that I am I, and to lend to the exterior world an objective 

 existence, illusory though it may be, determines that I shall 

 also recognise in the concourse of phenomena a definitive 

 tendency or direction. A machine that can go on for ever is 

 no machine. The energy of the universe may be constant ; 

 but that part of it which is utilisable apparently tends to lower 

 and lower levels ; in a Clausian sense, the sum of entropy is 

 increasing. This, in scholastic phrase, can only predicate final 

 immobility. If, as all our reason peremptorily demands we 

 believe, we are part and cog of a cosmic mechanism, we must 

 look to its fate. 

 What will it be ? 



