BicKERTON. — On the Probability of Impact. 169 



while the life of a sun is, to him, distinctly finite. The number of the 

 finite in infinity is infinity, therefore what a vast cemetery of dead suns our 

 Universe must be if there is no resurrection. 



If the chances are as small as supposed — that a million million bright 

 suns are rushing about and piilling each other, and never clash — surely 

 among the inconceivable multitude of the extinct suns that an eternity 

 must thus have sown broadcast, beaconless, and blindly wandering, the 

 chances are not hopelessly small that their ceaseless attractions and never- 

 ending journeys may sometimes make them clash together, and thus receive 

 the Promethean spark that would cause their inert mass to become once 

 more suns instinct with life and beauty. 



Without "partial impact " every attempt to conceive of an eternal Cosmos 

 appears to lose itself in vague cloudy words, while the conception that flows 

 from this idea is as clear and sharp as a rock at noonday. 



Although it may be a splendid poetic achievement to talk of a Cosmos of 

 which dead suns are to form the constituent atoms, it is quite another thing 

 to conceive of one. Surely if the present order can be intelligibly and scienti- 

 fically shown to be a possible phase of an eternal rhythm, as it certainly can 

 be, whatever such a cosmic philosophy may lack in poetic fancy is compen- 

 sated by intellectual satisfaction. 



21a 



