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 beheved 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 di'eary, this repugnant conclusion, has apparently 

 been the only possible result that could happen fi'om 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 wiU 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 

 complicated functions 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 picture this hypothesis presents to the mind is that of 

 a 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, 



