Researches in the Theory and Calculus of Operations, 311 



forms by operating through a series of varying conditions, 

 ought to admit that this exposition explains itself; and that 

 a specific form once thus established should possess the pro- 

 perty of heredity, in a comparative sense, as securely in- 

 herent as that which exists in a particle of the metal gold. 

 Even as in the formation of the terrestrial elements, the 

 quantity of each necessarily became definite — there is so 

 much gold and no more in the world ; so in the gradual 

 subsidence of the elementary matters susceptible of varied 

 combinations, the proportional quantity of each that could 

 go to make up a particular combination must necessarily 

 have approximated to definiteness, and therefore would be 

 mainly used up in a first production while the conditions 

 were favorable : the deposit was exhausted, and the con- 

 ditions passed away never more to be met with, so that 

 like denizens cannot originate in after periods. A first race 

 took up all the appropriate material peculiar to its place 

 and time: in a succeeding time, the conditions have chang- 

 ed, other material of another deposit enters into the forma- 

 tion of a new race differing in form and capacity ; and simi- 

 lar reasoning applies to other places and succeeding times. 

 Conditions of existence change, gradually introducing a 

 state of things incompatible with the continuance of an 

 extant race, the extinction of which liberates the complex 

 elements that embodied their life, to mingle and unite with 

 other elements in other combinations for the inchoation of 

 yet other races. 



35. It may be proper here to inquire into the physical 

 origin of the function or phenomenon of periodicity, which 

 is found to prevail throughout the universe. As Nature 

 abhors a vacuum, there always existed a necessity for more 

 worlds than one, indeed for an infinity of worlds. In its 

 progress towards infinite expansion, any one would find its 

 limit in the encountering expansions of neighboring world- 

 forces. From this limit, a return towards the central origin 



