COSMIC PHILOSOPHY 



nomena, the stars in their courses have become 

 the types of permanence ; and the stability of 

 our planetary system has furnished a fruitful 

 theme for the admiring comments of the math- 

 ematician and the theologian. In so far as this 

 appearance of eternal stability is well founded, 

 it admirably illustrates the theorem — already 

 cited in our discussion of the rhythm of mo- 

 tion — that wherever the forces in action are few 

 in number and simple in composition, the re- 

 sulting rhythms will be simple and long-endur- 

 ing. Nevertheless the processes still going on 

 in our system are such as to forbid the conclu- 

 sion that this apparently permanent equilibrium 

 is destined really to be permanent. The con- 

 centration of matter and concomitant dissipa- 

 tion of molecular motion, which has gone on 

 from the beginning, must still continue to go 

 on until it has reached its limit. That consolida- 

 tion and accompanying refrigeration which has 

 changed the earth from a nebula into an incan- 

 descent star, and from a star into an inhabitable 

 planet, must continue until a state of things is 

 inaugurated for which we must seek a parallel 

 in the present condition of the moon. So, too, 

 the contraction which generates the prodigious 

 quantity of heat daily lost by the sun cannot 

 go on forever without reducing the sun to a 

 solidity incompatible with the further genera- 

 tion of radiant energy. 



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