196 Transactions.— Miscellaneous. 
Of all the speculations of modern thought no two ideas have obtained 
stronger hold upon the human mind than the indestructibility of matter 
and of energy. But although energy is indestructible, it is generally sup- 
posed it will pass into an unavailable form, and although matter cannot be 
lessened in quantity, yet it is believed it will all be aggregated into one 
stupendous mass. Consequently our great mathematical physicists look 
forward to a time when any motion but heat will be impossible, and all life 
will be extinct. Yet this dreary, this repugnant conclusion, has apparently 
been the only possible result that could happen from any of the standpoints 
from which the laws of nature have hitherto been viewed. It is no small 
recommendation that the theory of “ partial impact” offers a possible mode 
of escape from this melancholy prospect. It suggests that if gravitation 
does aggregate and tend to drain space, impact produces dispersion. Every- 
thing moves more slowly at a distance from an attractive source, so if bodies 
are moving indiscriminately in all directions, it is clear that where they move 
most slowly, they will certainly congregate together, thus tending in the 
opposite way to gravity, and in this way may be kept up a more or less 
uniform distribution of matter in space. The theory shows that the 
radiated heat of the sun falls upon the cosmical dust, which shuts us in as 
a curtain, and it is thus prevented from being lost; it also shows how, from 
various reasons, we must suppose that inconceivable numbers of particles of 
cold gas are slowly travelling space, and as these particles touch any part 
of this heated matter, it uses the heat of the body to project itself at 
increased velocity into more distant regions of space, there perhaps helping 
to build up new bodies capable of carrying on anew all the wonderfully 
complieated funetions which matter and energy are playing in the visible 
universe. In this way we hope that this theory will remove these repulsive 
blots of dissipated energy and aggregated matter, which deface the other- 
wise fair and stately structure reared by modern science, so that the 
intellectual cravings of the human mind may find in it the invigoration and 
rest which they require. 
Thus, the entire pieture this hypothesis presents to the mind is that of 
& Cosmos, infinite and immortal. In it a being travelling through eternity, 
on the wings of light, would see as little permanent change as does the 
sea-bird over the restless ocean. He would sometimes be present at the 
nativity of galaxies, see solar systems in all stages, see suns absorb planet 
after planet, each time flickering up for a few thousand years, and finally, 
after having devoured all its family, shrink smaller and smaller, and then 
become less and less brilliant, until the last faint glimmer had died out, 
and a vast cinder is all that remains of that former scene of teaming life 
and brilliant beauty. Then he might watch the approach of dead suns, 
