WORLD-SMASHING. 257 



WORLD-SMASHING. 



SIB W. THOMSON'S moss-grown fragment of a shattered 

 world is not yet forgotten. In the current number of the 

 Cornhill Magazine (January, 1872) it is very severely 

 handled; the more severely, because the writer, though 

 treating the subject quite popularly, sljpws the fallacy of 

 the hypothesis, even when regarded from the point of view 

 of Sir W. Thomson's own special department of study. 

 That an eminent mathematician should make a great slip 

 when he ventures upon geological or physiological ground 

 is not at all surprising ; it is, in fact, quite to be expected, 

 as there can be no doubt that the close study of pure 

 mathematics, by directing the mind to processes of calcula- 

 tion rather than to phenomena, induces that sublime 

 indifference to facts which has characterized the purely 

 mathematical intellect of all ages. 



It is not surprising that a philosopher who has been 

 engaged in measuring the imaginary diameter, describing 

 the imaginary oscillations and gyrations of imaginary 

 atoms, and the still more complex imaginary behavior of 

 the imaginary constituents of the imaginary atmospheres 

 by which the mathematical imagination has surrounded 

 these imaginary atoms, should overlook tire vulgar fact 

 that neither mosses nor other vegetables, nor even their 

 seeds, can possibly retain their vitality when alternately 

 exposed to the temperature of a blast furnace, and that of 

 two or three hundred degrees below the freezing point; 

 but it is rather surprising that the purely mathematical 

 basis of this very original hypothesis of so great a mathe- 

 matician should be mathematically fallacious in plain 

 language, a mathematical blunder. 



In order to supply the seed-bearing meteoric fragment 

 by which each planet is to be stocked with life, it is neces- 

 sary, according to Sir W. Thomson, that two worlds one 

 at least nourishing with life shall be smashed; and, in 

 order to get them smashed with a sufficient amount of fre- 

 quency to supply the materials for his hypothesis, the 

 learned President of the British Association has, in accord- 



