CONCLUDING REMARKS. 667 



tation older races of men and of animals and of plants are silently 

 disappearing, new races continually arising. Are they fixed, the ever- 

 lasting hills ? Our Laureate sings : 



" The hills are shadows, and they flow 

 From form to form, and nothing stands ; 

 They melt like mist, the solid lands, 

 Like clouds they shape themselves and go." 



Perhaps the daring image of a venerable living philosopher and poet 

 will best illustrate the aspect in which science now views what appeared 

 to men of a few generations ago the very type of permanence. He 

 compares the starry heavens to a flight of fire-flies. And, indeed, could 

 we but view the constellations diminished into the dimensions of a 

 swarm of insects, and ages of duration proportionately shrunk into 

 seconds, such in sober truth is the spectacle that the so-called fixed 

 stars would present to our gaze. We now know positively that many, 

 and we have reason for believing that all, of these far-distant suns are 

 moving with inconceivable velocities. Their fixity is an illusion due 

 to the comparatively brief space of man's existence. This mystic 

 dance of the stars tells us that they also are borne hither and thither 

 by vast all-pervading energies. To those deep and eager question- 

 ings which ask, Whence originated this stream of Energy ? Whither 

 is it bearing the Universe ? and Wherefore ? science has no answer. 

 She, looking before and after, sees only obscurity, and must leave the 

 questioner as 



"An infant crying in the night, 



An infant crying for the light, 



And with no language but a cry." 



FINIS. 



