May 4, 1883.] 



• KNOWLEDGE • 



263 



DEATH OF ^YORLDS. 



By EicuARD A. Proctou. 



1AM often asked, when I have shown how (so far as 

 science can judge) all the orbs in space seem to tend 

 towards death, whether there may not be some way in 

 which tills seeming tendency may be counterbalanced by 

 some restorative forces. When one has to reply that 

 science does not at present recognise any such forces, that 

 the theories devised by Mattieu ^^'illiams, Siemens, and 

 others to that end are not only not supported by scientific 

 evidence, but directly opposed to it, the idea seems com- 

 monly entertained that science rejects the belief in any 

 restriction of the energies which seem passing continually 

 away from suns and planets. Yet, in reality, such a reply 

 means nothing of the sort. On the contrary, it is as cer- 

 tain that science has shown nothing against the e.xistenee 

 of any restorative forces, as it is that science has as yet 

 shown nothing in favour of such a process. Science 

 simply knows nothing either on one side or the other. 

 And I think if men rightly understood the limitations of 

 scientific research, they would see no reason to wonder 

 that science should bo thus unable to reply to a question 

 80 exceedingly difficult Our knowledge has grown more 

 and more, and is ever growing more and more, till it 

 seems as though it would eventually e.\tend over all 

 time and all space ; yet it is in reality, and ever must 

 be, extremely limited compared with what actually is. 

 In regard to the (juestion of the seeming wasting aw-ay, 

 slowly, yet surely, of the life of every sun and every 

 planet, we are much in the position of creatures whose 

 whole lives, lasting but a few days perhaps, should be 

 passed beside a running river. They would learn, if 

 they had the power of reasoning, that the waters of the 

 river were passing continually away in one direction, and 

 they would be apt to infer that unless the store of water 

 were infinite, the supply must at length be exhausted. If 

 we imagine them combining together information derived 

 from others of their kind, up stream and down stream 

 within limited distances, and also storing up, for what 

 woxild seem to them a long period of time, the information 

 gathered by generation after generation, they would learn 

 that the river was broader lower down and narrower higher 

 up, and that it had remained (on the whole) without 

 appreciable change. They might even, we may ima- 

 gine, learn how the river was fed by smaller streams, 

 how it llowed into a larger river, that into yet larger 

 rivers, and so (possiVjly they might learn or guess) 

 into a sea of extent, to their minds, practicall}- in- 

 finite. Still their science could give no answer to the 

 question how the river might not really waste away, as 

 it seemed to be wasting (though inappreciably in long 

 periods of their time). The actual process of restoration, 

 which, to us, seems so simple a matter, could not possibly 

 suggest itself to creatures having their limited knowledge 

 and experience. That the air in which they lived con- 

 tained the stores from which the river, unlike in all re- 

 spects, was constantly nourished; would seem incredible if 

 suggested to them ; but as a matter of fact, the idea would 

 be to them utterly inconceivable. It could not occur to 

 their minds at all By parity of reasoning, we may well 

 believe that the way in which the energies of suna and 

 planets are continually restored, if (as I believe my- 

 self must be the case) they are restored at all, is utterly 

 outside the range of our knowledge and experience. Thus 

 understood as suggesting the kind . of way, not the way 

 itself, in which such restoration may be effected, the 

 following strictly unscientific ideas may be regarded as ad- 



missible. Men were long deceived in regard to space, — 

 they thought this earth all important in space, whereas 

 now they know it to be the merest point compared with 

 the solar system, this system the merest point compared 

 with the distances separating star from star, and the whole 

 of the system of stars utterly lost in unfathomable depths 

 of space. !Men were deceived with regard to time, — they 

 thought the duration of this earth represented all 

 time ; was, at least, central in time ; they know 

 it now to be the merest second compared with the 

 duration of the solar system, the duration of this a mere 

 moment compared with the uncounted leons, of whose 

 progress the star-depths tell us, and even these as nothing 

 compared with the eternities of past and future time amid 

 which they are lost. May it not well be, then, that as men 

 have deceived themselves with regard to both space and 

 time, so also ha\e they deceived themsehes with regard to 

 the very structure of the universe itself t May it not well 

 be that the solid, liquid, and vaporous forms of matter with 

 which alone we are acquainted are not the only forms of 

 matter which exist ? May there not be a higher order of 

 universe, of which the suns and planets of the universe we 

 know of are but as the atoms and molecules 1 i\Iay there not 

 be a lower, or rather a rarer, order of universe, as much finer 

 in texture, so to speak, as that imagined higher order is 

 in a sense grosser 1 But we know that there is a rarer 

 order of universe — the xther of space — which permeates 

 our universe, flowing through the densest solids as the 

 breeze passes through the forest trees. The waste energies 

 of stars and planets are expended in the aether of space. 

 May they not subserve within it important purposes, 

 though we may not be able to conceive how 1 May they 

 not continually revivify that universe, while in turn our 

 universe is continually refreshed and restored by receiving 

 supplies of energies passed on to us from a higher order of 

 universe 1 And thus from higher and higher orders of 

 universe, absolutely without end on one side, to lower and 

 lower orders as absolutely without end on the other side, 

 there may be constant interchange of energy, instead of 

 the dying out of any one among these various orders of 

 material universe. 



All this, as I have said, is outside science. For science 

 deals with what we know of, what we can observe, analyse, 

 and investigate, while these interchanges of life and energy 

 we can never analyse or test. But thus it is in whatever 

 direction we investigate the universe. On all sides we 

 reach the unknown, the unknowable. We approach in 

 every case the threshold of infinity — infinite space and 

 infinite time, infinite power and infinite variety. In deal- 

 ing with infinity we are dealing with what is for us abso- 

 lutely inconceivable, though its existence is absolutely 

 certain. — Newcastle Weekly Chronicle. 



The Appuojvcuikg Sol-\r Eclipse. — The U.S.A. Navy 

 Department placed a vessel of war at the disposal of the 

 National Academy of Sciences, to take a party to the South 

 Pacific, for the observation of the solar eclipse which is to 

 take place on May 6. 



The average time occupied in the transmission of tele- 

 grams between Australia and England during 1881 is 

 stated to have been three hours and fifteen minutes. 



In a report of the British Iron Trade Association, 

 giving the production in the United Kingdom of different 

 descriptions of manufactured iron in 18Sl', the quantity of 

 ship-plates is put down at 49.1,000 tons, or .30 53 per cent, 

 of the total production ; boiler and other plates, 64,000 

 tons, or 3-94 per cent, of the total production. 



