Page:The evolution of worlds - Lowell.djvu/190

156 inevitable, results of planetary evolution, but resultant, individual, characteristics of our particular abode. They are as much our own as the peculiar arithmetic of waiters is theirs, or as used to be the sobriety of the country doctor's horse—his and no other's. Our whole geologic career is essentially earthly. Not that its fundamental laws are not of universal application, but the kaleidoscopic patterns they produce depend on the little idiosyncrasies of the constituents and the mode in which these fall together. Our everyday experiences we should find quite changed, could we alight on Venus or on Mars.

On the other hand, the chemical changes which follow a body's acquisition of heat, setting in the moment that heat has reached its acme and starts to decline, are as universal as the universe itself. They are conditioned, it is true, by the body's size and by the position that body occupied in the primal nebula, but they depend directly upon the degree of heat the body had attained. The larger the planet, the higher the temperature it reached and the fuller its possibilities. Even the planets are born to their estate. Thus the little meteorites live their whole waking life during the few seconds they spend rushing through our air. For then only does change affect their otherwise eternally inert careers. That the time is too short for any important experience is evident on their faces.