380 THE EIDDLE OF THE UNIVERSE. 



higher plants and animals, which are unknown on 

 our earth ; perhaps from some higher animal stem, 

 which is superior to the vertebrate in formation, 

 higher beings have arisen who far transcend us 

 earthly men in intelligence. 



VIII. — The possibility of our ever entering into 

 direct communication with such inhabitants of other 

 planets seems to be excluded by the immense distance 

 of our earth from the other heavenly bodies, and the 

 absence of the requisite atmosphere in the intervening 

 space, which contains only ether. 



But while many of the stars are probably in a 

 similar stage of biogenetic development to that of our 

 earth (for the last 100,000,000 years at least), others 

 have advanced far beyond this stage, and, in their 

 planetary old age, are hastening towards their end — 

 the same end that inevitably awaits our own globe. 

 The radiation of heat into space gradually lowers the 

 temperature until all the water is turned into ice ; 

 that is the end of all organic life. The substance of 

 the rotating mass contracts more and more ; the 

 rapidity of its motion gradually falls off. The orbits 

 of the planets and of their moons grow narrower. At 

 length the moons fall upon the planets, and the 

 planets are drawn into the sun that gave them birth. 

 The collision again produces an enormous quantity of 

 heat. The pulverised mass of the colliding bodies is 

 distributed freely through infinite space, and the 

 eternal drama of sun-birth begins afresh. 



The sublime picture which modern astrophysics 

 thus unveils before the mind's eye shows us an 

 eternal birth and death of countless heavenly bodies, 

 a periodic change from one to the other of the different 

 cosmogenetic conditions, which we observe side by 



