COSMIC PHILOSOPHY 



the sun. To this source may be traced all the 

 aqueous phenomena, save the tides, which con- 

 cur in maintaining the diversity of the earth's 

 surface. And having thus seen how a complex 

 geologic evolution is rendered possible, we shall 

 further discern that organic evolution also, that 

 highly specialized series of terrestrial events, is 

 rendered possible by the same favouring circum- 

 stance. 



Let us now proceed to note two or three 

 conspicuous features of geologic evolution, re- 

 membering that in so doing we are but follow- 

 ing out a portion of the phenomena of planetary 

 evolution discussed in the preceding chapter. 

 There is no demarcation in the series of phe- 

 nomena, save that which we arbitrarily introduce 

 for convenience of study and exposition. The 

 process of integration of matter and dissipation 

 of motion which we have just witnessed in the 

 solar nebula as a whole, we have now to witness 

 in that segregated portion of it which we call 

 our earth, and we have to observe how here 

 also indeterminate uniformity has been suc- 

 ceeded by determinate multiformity. 



moon down to an asteroid, the differences are at bottom only 

 differences of degree ; though the differences in result may 

 range all the way from a world habitable by civilized men 

 down to a mere dead ball of planetary matter. An interesting 

 example, if it be sound, of the continuity of cosmical phe- 

 nomena. 



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