246 THE DISCOVERY OF NEW ELEMENTS. 



limit. Whence comes it and wbitber goes it? Properly sjjeaking, we 

 know nothing about it, and doubtless we will never know either its 

 origin or its end; but as the earth turns around this movable sun, it 

 hence results that our planet does not describe a closed path, but a 

 sort of spiral, and that it never returns to a spot that it has once 

 quitted. Each second takes our planet to a new point in the universe, 

 and from this incessant displacement it ought to follow that no piienom- 

 enon or event can ever rei^roduce exactly any anterior phenomenon 

 or event. Clouds may resemble each other, as one sunrise resembles 

 another, but there is never an absolute coincidence, and it would seem 

 that these variations ought to be perpetuated throughout the course of 

 time that is embraced by the history of humanity. 



It would be useless to push further these considerations, they are 

 merely speculations; but they lead to this thought, whicb, although 

 unsupported, continually recurs to our mind — the possibility of a pro- 

 gressive transformation of matter in a given direction, in that they 

 show that everything that is with us is drawn along in a dizzy course 

 across an unknown immensity. 



