Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 33.djvu/642

624 degree of light than would be expected if the universe of stellar bodies were infinite. For if so, and the stars are assumed to be of an equal average brightness, then if no loss or obstruction, as light decreases as the square of the distance and stars increase in the same ratio, the night would be as brightly illuminated as the day. We are told that there are stars of different ages—nascent, adolescent, mature, decaying, and dying; and when some of them, like nations at war, are broken up by collision into fragments or resolved into vapor, the particles fight as individuals do, and, like them, end by coalescing and forming new suns and planets. As the comparatively few people who die in London to-night do not affect us here, so in the visible universe one sun or planet in a billion or more may die every century and not be missed, while another is being slowly born out of a nebula. Thus worlds may be regenerated by antagonism without having for the time more effect upon the Cosmos than the people now dying in London have upon us. I do not venture to say that these collisions are in themselves sufficient to renew solar life; time may give us more information. There may be other modes of regeneration or renewed activity of the dissipated force, and some of a molecular character. The conversion of heat into atomic force has been suggested by Mr. Crookes. I give no opinion on that, but I humbly venture to doubt the mortality of the universe.

Again, is the universe limited? and if so, by what? Not, I presume, by a stone wall! or, if so, where does the wall end? Is space limited, and how? If space be unlimited and the universe of suns, planets, etc., limited, then the visible universe becomes a luminous speck in an infinity of dark, vacuous space, and the gases, or at all events the so-called ether, unless limited in elasticity, would expand into this vacuum—a limited quantity of ether into an infinite vacuum! If the universe of matter be unlimited in space, then the cooling down may be unlimited in time. But these are perhaps fruitless speculations. We can not comprehend infinity, neither can we conceive a limitation to it. I must once more quote Shakespeare, and say in his words, "It is past the infinite of thought." But whatever be the case with some stars and planets, I can not bring myself to believe in a dead universe surrounded by a dark ocean of frozen ether. Most of you have read "Wonderland," and may recollect that after the Duchess has uttered some ponderous and enigmatical apothegms, Alice says, "Oh!" "Ah," says the Duchess, "I could say a good deal more if I chose." So could I; but my relentless antagonist opposite (the clock) warns me, and I will only add one more word, which you will be glad to hear, and that word is—Finis.—Nature.