FACTS AND FANCIES 



discovery. But our sun is not merely one 

 of countless suns, some of them of greater 

 magnitude, but it is only a temporary de- 

 pository of a limited quantity of energy, ever 

 dissipating itself into space, calculable as to its 

 amount and duration, and known to depend for 

 its existence on gravitative force. We may 

 imagine the beginning of such a luminary in 

 the collision of great masses of matter rushing 

 together under the influence of gravitation, and 

 causing by their impact a conflagration capable 

 of enduring for millions of years. Yet our im- 

 agining such a rude process for the kindling 

 of the sun will go a very little way in account- 

 ing for all the mechanism of the solar system 

 and things therein. Further, it raises new 

 questions as to the original condition of mat- 

 ter. If it was originally in one mass, whence 

 came the incalculable power by which it was 

 rent into innumerable suns and systems? If 

 it was once universally diffused in boundless 

 space, when and how was the force of gravity 

 turned on, and what determined its action in 

 such a way as to construct the existing uni- 

 verse? This is only one of the simplest and 

 baldest possible views of the intricate deter- 

 minations of force displayed in the universe, 



