The Shasta courier., 1859-01-22
Age and Destiny of the Earth.

The following is the conclusion of remarka-
BILE paper by Prof. Helmholtz of Bonn, transla-
ted by Prof. Tyndall, and published in the Lon
don Philosophical lNagazine. The subject is
The Natural Action of Natural Forcesn This
extract on great and narrowly understood
subject will prove interesting to the reader:
" Men are In the habit of measuring the great
ness and the wisdom of the universe by the du-
ration and the profit which it promises to their
own race but the past history of the earth al
ready shows what an insignificant moment the
duration of the existence of our race upon it
constitutes. Ninevah vessel, Roman sword,
awakes in us the conception of gray antiquity.
What the museums of Europe show US Of the
remains of Egypt and Assyria we gaze on with
silent astonishment, and despair of being able to
carry our thoughts back to period so remote
Still must the human race have existed for ages,
and multiplied itself, before the pyramid of MIN
evah could have been erected. We estimate the
duration ofhuman history at six thousand years;
but, immeasIrabie as this may appear to US,
what is it in comparison with the time during
which the earth carried successive series of rank
plants and mighty animals and no men during
which, in our neighborhood, Germany the am
ber-tree bloomed and dropped its costly gum on
the earth and in the sea when in Siberia, Eu-
rope and North America, groves of tropical
palms fiourished where gigantic lizards, and
after them elephants whose mighty remains we
still find buried in the earth, found a home?
Different geologists, proceeding from differ
ent premises, have sought to estimate the dura-
tion of the above created period, and vary from
a million to nine millions years. At the time
during which the earth generated organic beings
is again small, when we compare it with the
ages during which the world was a ball of fused
rocks. For the duration of its cooling from 1000
degrees to 200 degrees centigrade, the expert
ments of Bishop upon basalt show that about
three hundred and fifty millions of years would
be necessary. And with regard to the time
during which the first nebuous mass condensed
into our planetary SYSTEM our most daring con-
lectures must cease The history of man, there
fore, is but short ripple in the ocean of time
For much longer series of years than that dur
ing which man has already occupied this world
the existence of the present state of inorganic
nature favorable to the duration of man seems
to be secured, so that for ourselves and for long
generations after us we have nothing to fear
But the same forces of air and water, and of the
volcanic interior, which produced former geo.
logical revolutions, and buried one series of
living forms after another, act still upon the
earths crust. They more probably will bring
about the last day of the human race than those
distant cosmical alterations of which we have
spoken, and perhaps force us to make way for
new and more complete living forms, as the liz
ard and the mammoth have given place to us
and our fellow creatures which now exist. Thus
the thread which has conducted us to a univer-
sal law of nature, to our own race permits a
long but not an endless existence: it threatens
it with day of Judgment, the dawn of which is
still happily obscured. As each of us must
singly endure the thought of his DEATH the race
must endure the same. But, above the forms of
life gone by, the human race has higher moral
problems before it, the bearer of which it is, and
in the completion of which it fulis its destiny"