A RATIONAL COSMOGONY 149 



ing to the integrity of the universe, arid Nature in very 

 self-defense will have 1 to decree his extinction. One 

 day comes the crisis. In an instant his huge bulk bursts 

 jisunder and is scattered broadcast, with the speed of 

 light, into surrounding space. Some fragments enter 

 other systems carrying with them more or less gravi- 

 tational disturbance; but most of his substance remains 

 within his whilom domain in the form of a nondescript 

 nebulous cloud enveloping a hailstorm of meteors and 

 larger pieces that instantly begin the process of equili- 

 bristic readjustment to the altered conditions, a 

 process requiring a year of ages, and ending at last 

 in a new system of worlds. 



Mere among the stars, then, do we find Nature act- 

 ing consistently with her established order on earth, 

 building only to tear down, bearing children that they 

 may die, creating, so there may not be wanting some- 

 thing to decay. Or shall we not rather reverse the 

 philosophical order and say, that she destroys only that 

 she may improve, that she sacrifices the individual, 

 not wantonly, but for the sake of the well-being, salva- 

 lion, and evolutional development, of the universal 

 Whole? 



This destruction of stars is as sure as fate, and 

 seemingly as fortuitous as is physical death among 

 mankind. What star shall be the next to explode is a 

 matter of inscrutable chance, and for this reason the 

 stellar ma]> is so wanting in symmetry. But symmetry 

 never has been, nor ever will be, either a guaranty of 

 permanence nor a consummation devoutly to be wished. 

 That variety is the spice of life is a, truth recognized 

 by Nature long before she ever thought to create man. 

 Killing though she does by the most inexorable of laws, 

 she yet manages to evolve infinite diversity, so that no 

 nvo objects are ever precisely alike, Planetary sys- 

 tems, planets, men, flowers, snowflakes, though faithful 



