SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION. 563 



that transcends proof. Moreover, in becoming thus unified 

 with one another, the complex truths of Evolution become 

 simultaneously unified with those simpler truths shown to 

 have a like affiliation — the equivalence of transformed 

 forces, the movement of every mass and molecule along its 

 line of least resistance, and the limitation of its motion by 

 rhythm. Which further unification brings us to a concep- 

 tion of the entire plexus of changes presented by each con- 

 crete phenomenon, and by the aggregate of concrete phe- 

 nomena, as a manifestation of one fundamental fact — a fact 

 shown alike in the total change and in all the separate 

 changes composing it. 



§ 190. Finally we turned to contemplate, as exhibited 

 throughout Nature, that process of Dissolution which forms 

 the complement of Evolution; and which inevitably,, at 

 some time or other, undoes what Evolution has done. 



Quickly following the arrest of Evolution in aggregates 

 that are unstable, and following it at periods often long 

 delayed but reached at last in the stable aggregates around 

 us, we saw that even to the vast aggregate of which all 

 these are parts — even to the Earth as a whole — Dissolution 

 must eventually arrive. Nay we even saw grounds for the 

 belief that the far vaster masses dispersed at almost im- 

 measurable intervals through space, will, at a time beyond 

 the reach of finite imaginations, share the same fate; and 

 that so universal Evolution will be followed by universal 

 Dissolution — a conclusion which, like those preceding it, 

 we saw to be deducible from the Persistence of Force. 



It may be added that in so unifying the phenomena of 

 Dissolution with those of Evolution, as being manifestations 

 of the same ultimate law under opposite conditions, we also 

 unify the phenomena presented by the existing Universe 

 with the like phenomena that have preceded them and will 

 succeed them — so far, at least, as such unification is possible 

 to our limited intelligences. For if, as we saw reason to 



