CHAPTER L 



THE QUESTION EESTATED. 



A Synthesis of scientific doctrines has now been fairly con- 

 structed, iu accordance with the plan laid out in the eleventh 

 chapter of our Prolegomena. We have passed in review the 

 sciences which deal with the various orders of phenomena 

 that make up the knowable universe, and we have contem- 

 plated the widest truths which these sciences severally 

 reveal, as corollaries of an ultimate truth. Before proceed- 

 ing to expound our Cosmic Philosophy in its final results, 

 let us briefly sum up the leading conclusions ' at which we 

 have arrived. 



It has been proved to follow from that axiom of the Per- 

 sistence of Force upon which all physical science is based, 

 that the mere coexistence of innumerable discrete bodies in 

 the universe, exerting attractive and repulsive forces upon 

 each other, necessitates a perpetual rhythmical redistribution 

 of the Matter and Motion of which the phenomenal universe 

 Ls composed. It has been proved that this eternal rhythm 

 must of necessity be manifested in alternating eras both 

 general and local, of Evolution and Dissolution, — eras in which 

 now the concentration of Matter and dissipation of Motion, 

 and now the diffusion of Matter and absorption of Motion, 

 predominate, — eras which may be short, as in the duration of 



