64 FROM NEBULA TO NEBULA 



In earlier eons, the migration of the continents 

 northwardly was doubtless much faster, relatively, than 

 it is to-day, for now they have become jammed, and hence 

 much longer accumulations of depositions must precede 

 every infinitesimal advance. Have you ever wondered 

 how the Esquimaux came to settle in the Arctic wilds? 

 Have you never marveled at the highly organized forms 

 of life that inhabit those inhospitable regions! Do you 

 think such life as that can have evolved there from prim- 

 ordial forms 1 No ! There is only one explanation that 

 will serve, and that is, that the land which they and their 

 forebears have inhabited from paleolithic days on, has 

 not been the immovable platform for which they have all 

 along mistaken it, but a land raft that imperceptibly has 

 carried them through genial climates and latitudes to 

 where they now find themselves. But this is not to be a 

 work on biology, so let us return to the main theme. 



Before proceeding to the more general problems of 

 the solar system, let me emphatically warn the reader 

 against inferring that the axis of the earth is pointing to 

 the center of the universe. I do not mean to convey any 

 such impression. An apple falling from the twig of the 

 tree where you may be sitting as you read this, and one 

 falling at the same time in the antipodes, though in ab- 

 solute space moving in opposite directions, are really 

 tending toward the same point, namely, the earth's center 

 of gravity. But no one would think of arguing from this 

 that the earth's center is therefore the center of the uni- 

 verse! Mass for mass, proximate bodies dictate much 

 more strongly than those more remote the course a celes- 

 tial orb shall follow, and no two bodies are affected by the 

 sum of attractions to the same extent, or impelled toward 

 the same mathematical point in space. We know, 

 furthermore, that all of the stars are in rapid movement, 

 not only absolutely but relatively, for which reason the 

 goal or focus of the attracting powers is forever rhyth- 

 mically shifting about. When I assert, therefore, that 

 the earth is headed toward a Hank point in the heavens, 

 I mean that the merging of all the attractions focussed 

 upon her unite to coerce her movement, not only in a 



