392 INDESTRUCTIBILITY OF THOUGHT. 



the world would sweep away and annihilate our race? It 

 was well worth the trouble, truly, of being born, of living, 

 and of suffering, to terminate, after all, in so inglorious a 

 fashion ! . . . Adhere to your hypothesis, materialist, if you 

 have the courage ; surely, no man of sense can accept it ! 



Let us now resume the thread of our meditations. 



The end of our system has come at last : the sun, the 

 planets, and their satellites form but one chaotic igneous mass, 

 a brilliant fugitive luminary, new-born to the inhabitants of 

 worlds which have escaped intact. 



The dust of our extinguished world will not be scattered 

 hap-hazard ; the molecules of matter, indissolubly linked to- 

 gether by universal gravitation, will so arrange themselves as 

 to constitute a new, and perhaps a more perfect world. But 

 in the constitution of this new world, balanced like the old, 

 our human bones, our ashes united with those of our ancestors, 

 may have, as far as they are matter, their due share. As for 

 the Thought which makes the true power of humanity, which 

 gives to man all his value, Thought, perfectible and trans- 

 missible, it will contribute nothing, because it is absolutely 

 imponderable and impassible. Will it then be lost for 

 ever? 



If the world is to last for ever, you may justly regard as 

 immortal the indefinite transmission of Thought, and the per- 

 petuity of the memory of certain great men. But will all this 

 avail, if the world must perish ? 



The world will never end, you say ; it is eternal. 



