322 COSMIC PHILOSOPHY. [pt. ii. 



minant. And this is still more convincingly proved by the 

 fact that in old age, when the body frequently decreases 

 both in weight and in volume, the weight decreases !<■ is than 

 the volume. There is a general increase in density, and con- 

 comitant loss of mobility, due to the increased ratio of the 

 solid to the fluid constituents of the tissues, and exhibited in 

 the hardness and brittleness of the bones, the stiffness of the 

 joints, tha sluggishness of the circulation, and the torpidity 

 of the brain. Finally when, in accordance with the general 

 principle of rhythm, the consolidation has gone so far as to 

 become self-defeating, the antagonist process gains the 

 mastery for which it has all along been striving, and the 

 constituents of the body are separated and scattered. 



But the coexistence and alternate mastery of these two 

 opposing processes, though most strikingly exemplified in the 

 case of organisms, is by no means confined to organic pheno- 

 mena. Neither in the cloud, nor in the rock, which we have 

 chosen as examples, does concentration or diffusion ever go 

 on alone. The one is always antagonized by the other. 

 Even while the cloud is most rapidly losing motion and inte- 

 grating matter, it is receiving some solar radiance, either 

 direct or reflected from the earth or moon, and the absorption 

 of this radiance causes some disintegration of its matter. 

 Even while it is most quickly vanishing under the burning 

 solar rays, this cloud is still simultaneously losing heat by 

 radiation, and the loss tends to reintegrate it. And likewise 

 our sedimentary rocky deposit, while aggregating, is never- 

 theless daily abraded by passing currents, and at longer 

 intervals is perhaps cracked by those telluric vibrations 

 known as earthquakes. 



As finally amended then, our formula asserts that the 

 career of any composite body is a series of more or less 

 complicated rhythms, of which the differential result is, at 

 first, the integration of its constituent matter and the dissipa- 

 tion of part of its contained motion, and, at last, the diffusion 



