434 ON THE DIFFUSION OF HEAT, &C. 



terminate in the total cessation of movement and animated 

 existence. The assumption on which this gloomy hypothesis 

 is built, — that of the unlimited escape of heat from each plane- 

 tary mass, is fortunately as false, as the view to which it leads 

 is unworthy of the order and magnificence which the system 

 of nature displays ; and instead of this termination, in what 

 one of these philosophers emphatically calls the state of Ice 

 and Death, of silence and repose, we may with more confi- 

 dence look to the equal diffusion of heat through the mass of 

 each planet, as the state of permanence under which it will 

 exist, and to the equal interchange of heat among all, as the 

 perfection of the system they form. 



XV. 



