GRAVISTATIC HEAT 305 



Having passed the habitable stage, nothing lies in 

 store for a planet but to grow up into a sun or a star, 

 with a retinue of planets to circle around him. Even- 

 tually his Gargantuan appetite for devouring lesser sur- 

 rounding bodies will create of him a vortex menacing to 

 the integrity of the universe, and Nature in very self- 

 defense will have to decree his extinction. One day 

 comes the crisis. In an instant his huge bulk bursts 

 asunder and is scattered broadcast, with the speed of 

 light, into surrounding space. Some fragments enter 

 other systems carrying with them more or less gravita- 

 tional disturbances; but most of his substance remains 

 within his whilom domain in the form of a nondescript 

 nebulous cloud enveloping a hailstorm of meteors and 

 larger fragments that instantly begin the process of 

 equilibristic readjustment to the altered conditions; a 

 process requiring a year of ages, and ending at last in a 

 new system of worlds. 



Here among the stars, then, do we find Nature acting 

 consistently with her established order on earth; build- 

 ing only to tear down, bearing children that they may 

 die, creating, so there may not be wanting something to 

 decay. Or shall we not rather reverse the philosophical 

 order and say, that she destroys only that she may im- 

 prove, that she sacrifices the individual, not wantonly, 

 but for the sake of the well-being, salvation, and evolu- 

 tional development of the universal Whole? 



This destruction of stars is as sure as fate, and 

 seemingly as fortuitous as is physical death among man- 

 kind. What star shall be the next to explode is a matter 

 of inscrutable chance, and for this reason the stellar map 

 is so wanting in symmetry. But symmetry never has 

 been, nor ever will be, either a guaranty of permanence 

 nor a consummation devoutly to be wished. That vari- 

 ety is the spice of life is a truth recognized by Nature 

 long before she ever thought to create man. Euling 

 though she does by the most inexorable of laws, she yet 

 manages to evolve infinite diversity, so that no two ob- 

 jects are ever precisely alike. Planetary systems, 

 planets, men, flowers, snowflakes, though faithful types 



