GRAVISTATIC HEAT 319 



traction that the earth exerts today upon the moon, the 

 sun upon his planets, the stars upon each other, is not 

 the same that will be employed to-morrow or next day; 

 the supply for the future, Nature will evolve as it is re- 

 quired. The attraction of gravitation exercised to-day 

 had no existence yesterday, whether as such, or as heat, 

 or as electricity, or as any other entity. Though always 

 flowing afresh, its supply is not being in the least de- 

 pleted, nor is Nature being despoiled of anything beyond. 

 Further than this, the force of gravitation is multiple. 

 The earth, for example, attracts the sun no more and no 

 less than it would were the moon out of the way, yet it 

 attracts that body too, to say nothing of all the other ce- 

 lestial bodies each of them with precisely the same 

 strength as though only the two existed. Again, the 

 power of gravitation makes itself felt over the abysses 

 of space instantly, not, as in the case even of light itself, 

 after a space of seconds or years. Finally, it cannot be 

 eclipsed, as by the interposition of the earth between the 

 sun and the moon. Ponder this marvel! Force emanat- 

 ing out of nothing, uniform, all pervading, instantaneous 

 in action, eternal, the Hercules condemned forever to 

 perform the labors of the universe; to hold and draw the 

 planets in their orbits; to turn them round their axes; to 

 stoke the suns; to heap the tides; to scatter the rains; yes, 

 even to point the mariner's compass with the magnetism 

 of tidal friction! An unthinking, rigidly-conditioned 

 force, yet not ending in monotony or ruin, as modern 

 science teaches it must, but emerging in order, automa- 

 tism, perpetuity, and kaleidoscopic change! Has cur- 

 rent science made the most of this amazing energy? 



Having cast about so long, yet vainly, for an expla- 

 nation of the persistency of the solar heat, why not pa- 

 tiently consider the merits of gravitation as a last resort! 

 Behold the sun tempestuously ebullient after a service 

 of more than a hundred thousand times the span of hu- 

 man history, when, as Newcomb has said, were it an or- 

 dinary body it would have cooled off in a trifle of 4,000 

 years. Behold Jupiter and Saturn, elder brothers of our 



