GRAVISTATIC HEAT 303 



slant mutual attraction must prevail in the long run and 

 in the end bring about a crash that should leave nothing 

 but a stupendous clinker to mark the tomb of Nature. 



It is inferrable that all matter has run the celestial 

 cycle many times, so that the chances are a myriad to 

 one that a given planet has not grown by simple accumu- 

 lations of primordial dust, but owes its nucleus to a frag- 

 ment from its own sun or a neighboring star. Or, rather, 

 to fragments, for the stars are unquestionably plastic, 

 so that the future planet gains separate existence in the 

 form of a jet of coarse spray divided into many globules, 

 which separately congeal and afterward cling together 

 as a unit when their mutual attraction triumphs over the 

 unequal dispersive effect of the explosion that begat 

 them. That all planets are spherical, follows from the 

 law of gravitation, provided their parts are sufficiently 

 small or mobile. Were the fragment but an irregular 

 and very rigid block its future shape would depend upon 

 its size alone ; one very large would melt with the fervor 

 of its self-generated heat, whereas a small one, such as 

 an asteroid or a meteor, might be and stay any odd shape. 



LIFE IN THE UNIVERSE 



One of the labors of the chemist is to synthesize com- 

 pounds for various uses in the arts, and in the pursuit 

 of this object he is often obliged to try hundreds, perhaps 

 thousands, of combinations and permutations before he 

 attains the particular end he desires; if he attains it at 

 all. Thus far, science has never succeeded in experi- 

 mentally synthesizing protoplasm, the basis of life, or, 

 at least, protoplasm that actually lived. Speculating 

 with regard to gravitation, we may well ask whether that 

 power which, as we have seen, inspires all the activities 

 of the universe, may not, directly or indirectly, be the 

 secret of life -whether, so to speak, life may not be a sort 

 of idealizied form of it, the " will-to-live" of Schopen- 

 hauer. In the sun, in every star, in every planet, indeed, 

 we see the crucibles in which Nature tries out her materi- 

 als, combining, dissociating, and recombining them, again 



