ON IMMOETALITY: COUXTERTHESIS. 171 



same time ; for these are infinite, and of unequal ages ; 

 they only die with years and when their energies are 

 exhausted, as we do ; while it is quite conceivable that 

 in the depths of space, young stars and systems are 

 being born. Thus the light of consciousness may never 

 go out, but may be alight in innumerable worlds, even 

 should it fail finally on one, namely, the earth. And 

 again, even if the advanced speculation were generally 

 accepted by scientific men, which decrees that, at the 

 end of inconceivably remote, ages, all the heavenly bodies 

 will finally become resolved into one mass of uniform 

 temperature, still even there life and consciousness might 

 exist, as they might in the course of ages have become 

 adapted to these altered conditions. So that conscious- 

 ness may remain, and the night of nothingness which 

 you dread may never take place. Consciousness may 

 remain, or possibly something greater and better; for 

 after all, the infinite possibilities of the universe, of 

 which you have spoken and which Science does not 

 deny, may allow, and almost to a certainty do allow of 

 a much greater thing than consciousness. There was no 

 reason in particular, no inner necessity, why conscious- 

 ness should have flowered upon life ; it does not do so 

 in the case of the plants ; and something else might 

 have appeared as the flower and summit of life. Con- 

 sciousness is not a necessary product of life : this Science 

 allows ; it is only an invariable effect in the animal 

 kingdom on the earth ; there may be a quite different 

 effect elsewhere. There are many fields for Nature to 

 try her experiments in, where matter may have had 

 a different outcome and a much better one than con- 

 sciousness. For as we know, the pessimists now 

 increasing in number, and reckoning men of science 

 amongst them lament much over this fact of con- 



