Part 46

Hence we must regard the hosts of glittering stars as a conflagration that has been simultaneously lighted up in the heavens. The enormous (to our ideas) thermal energy of the stars resembles the scintillation of iron dust in a jar of oxygen when a pinch of the dust is thrown in. Although some particles be burnt up before others become alight, and some linger yet a little longer than the others, in our day's work the scintillation of the iron dust is the work of a single instant, and so in the long night of eternity the scintillation of the mightiest suns of space is over in a moment. A little longer, indeed, in duration than the life which stirs a moment in response to the diffusion of the energy, but only very little. So must an Eternal Being regard the scintillation of the stars and the periodic vibration of life in our geological time and the most enduring efforts of thought. The latter indeed are no more lasting than

"... the labour of ants In the light of a million million of suns."

But the myriad suns themselves, with their generations, are the momentary gleam of lights for ever after extinguished.

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Again, science suggests that the present process of material aggregation is not finished, and possibly will only be when it prevails universally. Hence the very distribution of the stars, as we observe them, as isolated aggregations, indicates a development which in the infinite duration must be regarded as equally advanced in all parts of stellar space and essentially a simultaneous phenomenon. For were we spectators of a system in which any very great difference of age prevailed, this very great difference would be attended by some such appearance as the following:--

The aupearance of but one star, other generations being long extinct or no others yet come into being; or, perhaps, a faint nebulous wreath of aggregating matter somewhere solitary in the heavens; or no sign of matter beyond our system, either because ungathered or long passed away into darkness.

Some such appearances were to be expected had the aggregation of matter depended solely on chance encounters of particles scattered through infinite space.

For as, by hypothesis, the aggregation occupies an infinite time in consummation it is nearly a certainty that each particle encountered after immeasurable time, and then for the first time endowed with actual gravitational potential energy, would have long expended this energy

It is interesting to reflect upon the effect which an entire absence of luminaries outside our solar system would have had upon the views of our philosophers and upon our outlook on life.

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before another particle was gathered. But the fact that so many fires which we know to be of brief duration are scattered through a region of space, and the fact of a configuration which we believe to be a transitory ore, suggest their simultaneous aggregation here and there. And in the nebulous wreaths situated amidst the stars there is evidence that these actually originated where they now are, for in such no relative motion, I believe, has as yet been detected by the spectroscope. All this, too, is in keeping with the nebular hypothesis of Kant and Laplace so long as this does not assume a primitive infinite dispersion of matter, but the gathering of matter from finite distances first into nebulous patches which aggregating with each other have given rise to our system of stars. But if we extend this hypothesis throughout an infinite past by the supposition of aggregation of infinitely remote particles we replace the simultaneous approach required in order to accotnt for the simultaneous phenomena visible in the heavens, by a succession of aggregative events, by hypothesis at intervals of nearly infinite duration, when the events of the universe had consisted of fitful gleams lighted after eternities of time and extinguished for yet other eternities.

Finally, if we seek to replace the eternal instability involved in Kant's hypothesis when extended over an infinite past, by any hypothesis of material stability, we at once find ourselves in the difficulty that from the known properties of matter such stability must have been

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permanent if ever existent, which is contrary to fact. Thus the kinetic inertia expressed in Newton's first law of motion might well be supposed to secure equilibrium with material attraction, but if primevally diffused matter had ever thus been held in equilibrium it must have remained so, or it was maintained so imperfectly, which brings us back to endless evolution.

On these grounds I contend that the present gravitational properties of matter cannot be supposed to have acted for all past duration. Universal equilibrium of gravitating particles would have been indestructible by internal causes. Perpetual instability or evolution is alike unthinkable and contrary to the phenomena of the universe of which we are cognisant. We therefore turn from gravitating matter as affording no rational account of the past. We do so of necessity, however much we feel our ignorance of the nature of the unknown actions to which we have recourse.

A prematerial condition of the universe was, we assume, a condition in which uniformity as regards the average distribution of energy in space prevailed, but neterogeneity and instability were possible. The realization of that possibility was the beginning we seek, and we today are witnesses of the train of events involved in the breakdown of an eternal past equilibrium. We are witnesses on this hypothesis, of a catastrophe possibly confined to certain regions of space, but which is, to the motions and configurations concerned, absolutely unique, reversible to

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its former condition of potential by no process of which we can have any conception.

Our speculation is that we, as spectators of evolution, are witnessing the interaction of forces which have not always been acting. A prematerial state of the universe was one of unfruitful motions, that is, motions unattended by progressing changes, in our region of the ether. How extended we cannot say; the nature of the motions we know not; but the kinetic entities differed from matter in the one important particular of not possessing gravitational attraction. Such kinetic configurations we cannot consider to be matter. It was possible to construct matter by their summation or linkage as the configuration of the crystal is possible in the clear supersaturated liquid.

Duration in an ether filled with such motions would pass in a succession of mere unfruitful events; as duration, we may imagine, even now passes in parts of the ether similar to our own. An endless (it may be) succession of unprogressive, fruitless events. But at one moment in the infinite duration the requisite configuration of the elementary motions is attained; solely by the one chance disposition the stability of all must go, spreading from the fateful point.

Possibly the material segregation was confined to one part of space, the elementary motions condensing upon transformation, and so impoverishing the ether around till the action ceased. Again in the same sense as the

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stars are simultaneous, so also they may be regarded as uniform in size, for the difference in magnitude might have been anything we please to imagine, if at the same time we ascribe sufficient distance sundering great and small. So, too;, will a dilute solution of acetate of soda build a crystal at one point, and the impoverishment of the medium checking the growth in this region, another centre will begin at the furthest extremities of the first crystal till the liquid is filled with loose feathery aggregations comparable in size with one another. In a similar way the crystallizing out of matter may have given rise, not to a uniform nebula in space, but to detached nebula, approximately of equal mass, from which ultimately were formed the stars.

That an all-knowing Being might have foretold the ultimate event at any preceding period by observing the motions of the parts then occurring, and reasoning as to the train of consequences arising from these nations, is supposable. But considerations arising from this involve no difficulty in ascribing to this prematerial train of events infinite duration. For progress there is none, and we can quite as easily conceive of some part of space where the same Infinite Intelligence, contemplating a similar train of unfruitful motions, finds that at no time in the future will the equilibrium be disturbed. But where evolution is progressing this is no longer conceivable, as being contradictory to the very idea of progressive development. In this case Infinite Intelligence

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necessarily finds, as the result of his contemplation, the aggregation of matter, and the consequences arising therefrom.

The negation of so primary a material property as gravitation to these primitive motions of (or in) the ether, probably involves the negation of many properties we find associated with matter. Possibly the quality of inertia, equally primary, is involved with that of gravitation, and we may suppose that these two properties so intimately associated in determining the motions of bodies in space were conferred upon the primitive motions as crystallographic attraction and rigidity are first conferred upon the solid growing from the supersaturated liquid. But in some degree less speculative is the supposition that the new order of motions involved the transformation of much energy into the form of heat vibrations; so that the newly generated matter, like the newly formed crystal, began its existence in a medium richly fed with thermal radiant energy. We may consider that the thermal conditions were such as would account for a primitive dissociation of the elements. And, again, we recall how the physicist finds his estimate of the energy involved in mere gravitational aggregation inadequate to afford explanation of past solar heat. It is supposable, on such a hypothesis as we have been dwelling on, that the entire subsequent gravitational condensation and conversion of material potential energy, dating from the first formation of matter to the stage of star formation

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