COSMIC PHILOSOPHY 



cases, so long as the process goes on, there 

 must be a tendency, however slight, for the 

 planets to recede from the sun. 



The action of this set of circumstances, how- 

 ever, though hitherto no doubt predominant, 

 is strictly limited in duration. Sooner or later 

 an equilibration of motions will be reached, and 

 this receding tendency will cease to be mani- 

 fested. It is quite otherwise with the opposing 

 set of circumstances which we have now to con- 

 sider. We have now to contemplate a cause 

 which operating from the very outset, and still 

 insidiously operating, will continue to operate 

 long after the process just described has come 

 to an end. Each year's discoveries show more 

 and more conclusively that the interplanetary 

 spaces are filled with matter. The existence of 

 some interplanetary and interstellar matter is in- 

 deed a necessary condition for the transmission 

 of light and other forms of radiance. Now wher- 

 ever a body moves through a material medium, 

 it meets with resistance ; it imparts motion to the 

 medium, and loses motion in so doing. If the 

 body is a planet like Jupiter, weighing a couple 

 of septillions of tons, and rushing along at the 

 rate of eight miles per second through an ether 

 far lighter than the air left in an exhausted 

 receiver, the resistance will be inconceivably 

 small, I admit. Still there will be resistance, 

 and long before the end of time this resistance 

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