i8 2 PIONEERS OF EVOLUTION PART 



sooner or later every evolved aggregate undergoes. 

 Remaining exposed to surrounding forces that are 

 unequilibrated, each aggregate is ever liable to be 

 dissipated by the increase, gradual or sudden, of 

 its contained motion ; and its dissipation, quickly 

 undergone by bodies lately animate, and slowly 

 undergone by inanimate masses, remains to be under- 

 gone at an indefinitely remote period by each 

 planetary and stellar mass, which since an indefi- 

 nitely distant period in the past has been slowly 

 evolving; the cycle of its transformations being 

 thus completed 



14. This rhythm of evolution and dissolution, 

 completing itself during short periods in small 

 aggregates, and in the vast aggregates distributed 

 through space completing itself in periods im- 

 measurable by human thought, is, so far as we 

 can see, universal and eternal each alternating 

 phase of the process predominating now in this 

 region of space and now in that, as local conditions 

 determine. 



15. All these phenomena, from their great 

 features down to their minutest details, are necessary 

 results of the persistence of force under its forms 

 of matter and motion. Given these as distributed 

 through space, and their quantities being unchange- 

 able, either by increase or decrease, there inevitably 

 result the continuous redistributions distinguishable 

 as evolution and dissolution, as well as all these 

 special traits above enumerated. 



1 6. That which persists unchanging in quantity, 

 but ever changing in form, under these sensible 

 appearances which the universe presents to us, tran- 



