204 COSMICAL ARRANGEMENTS. 



medium is inconsistent with the argument which 

 we have drawn in a previous chapter, from the 

 provisions for its stability. In reality, however^ 

 the two views are in perfect agreement, so far as 

 our purpose is concerned. The main point which 

 we had to urge, in the consideration of the stability 

 of the system, was, not that it is constructed to 

 last for ever, but that while it lasts, the deviations 

 from its mean condition are very small. It is 

 this property which fits the world for its uses. 

 To maintain either the past or the future eternity 

 of the world, does not appear consistent with 

 physical principles, as it certainly does not fall 

 in with the convictions of the religious man, 

 in whatever way obtained. We conceive that 

 this state of things has had a beginning; we 

 conceive that it will have an end. But in the 

 mean time we find it fitted, by a number of 

 remarkable arrangements, to be the habitation of 

 living creatures. The conditions which secure 

 the stability, and the smallness of the perturba- 

 tions of the system, are among these provisions. 

 If the excentricity of the orbit of Venus, or of 

 Jupiter, were much greater than it is, not only 

 might some of the planets, at the close of ages, 

 fall into the sun or fly off into infinite space, but 

 also, in the intermediate time, the earth's orbit 

 might become much more excentric ; the course 

 of the seasons and the average of temperature 

 might vary from what they now are, so as to 

 injure or destroy the whole organic creation. By 



