JoLY — The Abundance of Life. 63 



system," is impossible. It is to the perfect contrivance of life our 

 statement refers. 



That the final end of all will be general non-availability there 

 seems little reason to doubt, and the organism, itself dependent 

 upon differences of potential, cannot hope to carry on aggregation 

 of energy bej^ond the period when differences of potential are not. 

 The organism is only partly to blame for this. It is being affected 

 by events external to it, by the actions going on through inani- 

 mate agents. And although there be only a part of the received 

 energy preserved, there is a part preserved, and this amount is con- 

 tinually on the increase. To see this it is only necessary to reflect 

 that the sum of animate energ}^ — capability of doing work in any 

 way through animate means — at present upon the earth, is the 

 result, although a small one, of energy reaching the earth since a 

 remote period, and which otherwise had been dissipated in space. 

 In inanimate actions throughout nature, as we know it, the availa- 

 bility is continually diminishing. The change is all the one way. 

 As, however, the supply of available energy in the universe is 

 limited (probably) in amount, we must look upon the two as simply 

 effecting the final dissipation of potential in very different ways 

 The animate system is aggressive on the energy available to it, spends 

 with economy, and, miser-like, goes on putting by till death finally 

 deprives it of all. It has heirs, indeed, who inheriting some of its 

 gains, put them out at interest ; but they, too, must die, and ulti- 

 mately there will be no successors, and the whole must melt away 

 as if it had never been. The inanimate system responds to the 

 forces imposed upon it by sluggish changes ; of that which is 

 thrust upon it, it squanders uselessly, like one who has so little 

 appreciation of the value of money that he neither desires to have 

 it, nor cares to keep it. But, dropping the metaphor, it is seen 

 that the path of the energy is very different in the two cases. 



While it is true generally that both systems ultimately result 

 in the dissipation of energy to uniform potential, it is to be 

 observed that the organism, which does so to a great extent under 

 compulsion, can under certain circumstances evade the final doom 

 altogether. It can lay up a store of potential energy which may 

 be permanent. Thus, so long as there is free oxygen in the uni- 

 verse, our coal-fields might, at any time in the remote future, 

 when all has for ages been buried in darkness, strike out light and 



