COSMIC PHILOSOPHY 



in question is ended with this dispersal. Again 

 if, instead of a transient cloud or a mobile or- 

 ganism, we contemplate an apparently perma- 

 nent and immobile rock, we are led to a like 

 conclusion. If its origin be purely igneous, this 

 rock may have preexisted as a liquid stream of 

 matter surging beneath the earth's solid enve- 

 lope. If its origin be aqueous, its constituent 

 particles were once diffused over a wide area of 

 country, from which they were drawn together 

 through sundry rivulets and rivers, and here 

 at last deposited as sediment. In either case 

 the process by which the rock has assumed 

 an individual existence has been a process of 

 concentration. And when it ceases to exist — 

 whether it is blasted with gunpowder, or chipped 

 away with chisels, or eaten down by running 

 water, or ground to pieces by ocean waves, or 

 lowered through some long geologic epoch till 

 it is melted by volcanic heat — in any case its 

 disappearance is effected by a process of diffu- 

 sion. 



But our account is as yet only half complete. 

 In saying that the career of any object, from its 

 initial appearance to its final disappearance, con- 

 sists of a process of concentration followed by a 

 process of diffusion, we omit an important half 

 of the truth. For in making such a statement, 

 we are attending only to the material elements 

 of which objects are composed ; and we are leav- 

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