n PSEUDO-SCIENTIFIC REALISM 71 



order of nature is involved if, in the course of 

 descending through an Alpine pine-wood, I jump 

 upon an anthill and in a moment wreck a whole 

 city and destroy a hundred thousand of its inhabi- 

 tants. To the ants the catastrophe is worse than 

 the earthquake of Lisbon. To me it is the natural 

 and necessary consequence of the laws of matter 

 in motion. A redistribution of energy has taken 

 place, which is perfectly in accordance with 

 natural order, however unpleasant its effects may 

 be to the ants. 



Imagination, inspired by scientific reason, 

 and not merely assuming the airs thereof, as it 

 unfortunately too often does in the pulpit, so far 

 from having any right to repudiate catastrophes 

 and deny the possibility of the cessation of motion 

 and life, easily finds justification for the exactly 

 contrary course. Kant in his famous " Theory of the 

 Heavens " declares the end of the world and its 

 reduction to a formless condition to be a necessary 

 consequence of the causes to which it owes its 

 origin and continuance. And, as to catastro- 

 phes of prodigious magnitude and frequent occur- 

 rence, they were the favourite asylum ignorantice 

 of geologists, not a quarter of a century ago. If 

 modern geology is becoming more and more 

 disinclined to call in catastrophes to its aid, it is 

 not because of any a priori difficulty in reconciling 

 the occurrence of such events with the universality 

 of order, but because the a posteriori evidence of 



