Sacramento daily record-union. [volume] (Sacramento [Calif.]) 1875-1891, 1888-05-19
DEATH OF WORLDS.
THEY ARE FINITE, AND MUST
CEASE TO BE.
The Necessity for Greater Economy
in Treating the Heat Reserve
The End Near.
Orchard A. Proctor in courier-Journal ]

ANIMALS and races OF ANIMALS, have but
| finite periods of existence. OF old, indeed,
the 6niteness of what men regarded as the
universe itself was an accepted doctrine
A beginning of all things was recognized,
and set not many thousands of years back
while the coming of all things was ex-
pected, usually within brief period, and
sometimes during the lifetime of men ac-
tually living. But such ideas, belonging
to times when men regarded the earth as
the whole world land small enough
earth they suspected her to be-, and i'm
agined the sun, moon and stars merely
made for the benefit of her inhabitants.
have no relation to the ideas of modern
science, from which they are separated by
the whole distance which separates the
confidence of ignorance from the scrutiniz-
ing doubtfulness of sound knowledge.
| When astronomy became science and the
true nature of other worlds and other
suns began to be recognized, men for a
long time still failed to extend to the
larger lives of suns and worlds the
consideration which they had learned TO
apply to all forms of animal and vegeta-
BILE life. When they did SO they perceived
that as surely as all things known to them
on the earth have but finite periods OF
life, passing through periods of prepare
ton before they are fit for their
life work, and after their life work
death, SO surely must worlds and suns
have their stages of preparation on the
one hand, their period of decay and death
on the other. For to suppose otherwise
would be to imagine that from finite stores
of force Infinite supplies of energy could
be obtained, which can no more be posi-
BILE on the large scale than on the small.
The finite can not produce the infinite,
and worlds and suns are finite, however
vast In all their aspects they may appear
to our minds (which are not only finite, but
limited within barrow bonds, so far as pow
ers of conception are concerned). 1t is
true we talk Of things infinite as we could
conceive them, and without the power of
really conceiying periods counted by years
or distances measured by miles, we speak
Of infnity of space and of eternity as If
these words expressed familiar ideas. But
this does not alter the real facts. Worlds
and suns absolutely beyond our powers of
/, imagining are nevertheless in all respects
finite; they occupy finite portions of space
their powers are finite; hence they can
last but finite time.
Yet l have heard the thought that
worlds and suns must die spoken of as a
sad and gloomy doctrine as if the human
race had some reason to be anxious-as
a race though not individually = when
looking forward to the time when the
earth will grow old and the sun lose his
life-giying powers.
If science could merely point out that
! hundreds Of thousands, nay millions of
years must elapse ere either event takes
place, it might, perhaps, be still urged
with some reason that to creature like
man docking before and after" this did
but set the end farther of, not otherwise
altering its interest for US. But an
rightly weighed, should deprive the
future dying out of earth and sun of all
interest for the human race, except such
interest as we take in the glories of the
| galaxy of suns, in the practically infinite
durations of the cycles of the stellar mo-
tions, and so forth-that interest purely
scientific, not personal at ALL
That the periods by which the future
lives alike of world and sun are to be
measured are long, may be regarded as
! demonstrated by what we have learned
from the earth on which we live 1t is
! singular that the earth should contain in
this respect the record both of her own
past and of the past Of the sun; but such
is demonstratably the fact. The processes
of which the earth's strata speak as tax
ing place in the past were such pre-
eisely as are taking place now. Not only
in the record of past life in the earth does
our earth speak of long past ages, though
Darwin was doubtless right in pointing out
that the earth gives no stronger or clearer
evidence of the duration of her life than
In her record of forms OF life which must
have required millions nay, tens OF
millions of years for their development.
But the various strata of the earth's crust,
formed as they were by processes such
as are still at work, tell us of measur-
able time intervals which can be appre-
ciated land must be accepted) even by
those who reject the theory of evolution,
and therefore might in their ignorance
regard the varied forms of life recorded
in fossils as telling us nothing about the
progress of time. Rain, wind, snow and
storm, frost and thaw, glacier, river and
cataract, did their work in the past even
as they do their work now. And even
| though that work may in the past have
gone on at rate different-either in ex-
cess or defect-from what is now observed.
the results. so far as the earth's past are
| concerned, can be little affected, while so
far as the totality Of work done by the sun
upon the earth is concerned they are not
affected at all. Even if we reject the esti-
mate of the ablest biologists, according to
which the earth's strata tell of at least
hundred millions of years of sun-work
(such work as the sun at present does upon
the earth), We must still admit as abso-
lutely certain that the record tells of tens
OF millions of years during which the
earth has been the scene of such processes
as are now going on, and the abode of
forms of life upon her surface have de-
scended, while they tell with equal clear
ness of tens of millions of years during
which the sun has been at work. even as at
present, pouring light and heat, and with
them life, upon the earth and her fellow
worlds within the solar system
Since such periods Of life belong to the
past alike of the earth and of the sun, we
may fairly infer that-first, they belong
also to other worlds and other suns: and
secondly, they belong also to the future of
this world and of the sun, which is the
true source of all the forms of life, animal,
vegetable and mechanical, existing upon
! her surface.
! The same story is told by the MOON
When we examine that one orb within the
scan of science, which tells at once of the
past and of the future Of world life, which
shows US the records of the earliest forms
OF volcanian energy upon a planet, and the
traces also of the gradual decay of planet
life until death replaced it, we find clear
| evidence of processes such as have long
since taken place upon the earth, and evil
dence as clear as processes which are still
to come. In each case the record mani
testify extends over hundreds Of thousands.
if not millions, of years. ct must be re-
membered that in the moons history mill
ions of years would correspond to tens Of
millions Of years in the history OF the
earth.) We can see how, after passing
some such stage as the earth is passing
| through now, the moon for vast periods OF
| time was passing onward toward decay and
then through long ages, tending to the
condition of death in which we see her
now. There is no reason for supposing
that our earth's old age will be relatively
/ less lono-lastinp: and TO say that Is IN say