Year: 1864

The following is the conclusion of a re-
markable paper Of Prof. Helmholtz Of Bonn,
translated by Prof. Tyndall, and published


in the London Philosophical Magasine The
subject is ''The Natural Action of Natural
Forces" This extract on the great and
narrowly understood subject will prove in
teresting to the reader -


Men who are in the habit Of measuring
the greatness and the wisdomof the universe
by the duration and profit which it promises
to their own, shows what an insignificant
moment the duration of the existence ofour
race upon it constitutes. A Nineveh yes
sci, Roman sword, awakens in US the con-
ception of a gray antiquity. When the
European Museums show us Of remains of
Egypt and Assyria we gaze on with silent
astonishment, and despair Of being able to
carry our thoughts back to a period SO re
mote Still must the human race have ex
isted for ages, and multiplied itself, before
the pyramid of Nineveh was erected. We
estimate the duration of human history at
six thousand years; but immeasurable as
this may seem to us, what is it in compar-
isOn with the time which the earth carried
successive series of rank plants and mighty
animals, and no men; during which our
neighborhood Germany the amber-tree
bloomed and dropped its costly gun On the
earth Or in the sea while in Siberia, Europe
and North America, groves of tropical
plants fourished, where gigantic lizards,
and, after them, elephants, whose mighty
remains we find buried in the earth, found
home? Different geologists, proceeding
from different premises, have sought to es-
innate the duration of the above created
periods, and vary from million to five mil
lion years. All the time during which the
earth generated organic beings is again
small, when we compare it with the ages
during which the earth was ball of fused
rocks For the duration of its cooling from
two thousand to two hundred centiglade,
the experiments of Bishop upon basalt
show that about three hundred and fifty
millions Of years would be necessary. With
regard to the time which the first ncbulous
mass condensed into our planetary system,
our most daring con)ectures must cease.
ioto of, h,,t ohn
ripple in the course of time. For much
longer series of years than that during
which man has already occupied this world,
the existence of the present state of inor-
ganc to natural favorable to the duration of
man seems to be secured, so that for our
selves and for long generations after us we
have nothing to fear. But the same forces
of air and water, and the whole volcanic in
terror, which produced former geological
revolution, and buried one series of living
forms after another,a act still upon the carth's
crust. They will, most probably, 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 more complete living forms,
as the lizard and the mammoth have given
place to US and our fellow creatures which
now exist. Thus the thread which has
conducted US to universal law of Nature.
permits long but not an endless existence
lit 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 high moral
problems before it. the bearer ofwhich it Is,
and in the completion of which it fnlills its
destiny"