Year: 1859

The following is the conclusion of a re-
markabe paper by Prof Helmholtz, of Bonn,
translated by Prof Tyndall, and published
in the London Philosophical Magazine.-
The subject is-"The Natural Action of Ma
tural Forces" This extract on a grea: and
narrowly understood subject, will prove in
teresting to the reader:


"Men are in the habit of measuring the
greatness and the wisdom of the universe by
the duration and profit which it promises to
their own race; but the past history of the
earth already shows what an insignificant
moment the duration of the existence of
our race upon it constitutes A Nineveh
vessel, Roman sword, awakes in us the con
ceptlon OF a gray antiquity. What the
museums OF Europe show US of the remains
of Egypt and Assyria we gaze on with silent
astonlshment 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 Ninevah could have been
erected. We estimate the duration of hui
man history at six thousand years; but, i'm
measurable as this may appear to us, what is
1t 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 neghborhood, Ger
many the ambertree bloomed and dropped
its costly gum on the earth and in the sea;
when in Siberia, Europe and North America,
groves of tropical palms flourished; where
gigantic lizards, and after them elephants,
whose mighty remains we still find buried
in the earth, found home?


different geologsts, proceeding from diff
terent premises, have sought to estimate the
duration of the above created period, and
vary from million to nine million years.-
At the time during which the earth generat-
ed 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 experiments
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 CON
densed into our planetary system our most
daring conlectures must cease. The history
of man, therefore, IS but short ripple in
the ocean of time. For much longer series
of years than that during which man has a,
ready occupied this world, the existence of
the present state Of inorganic nature tavora-
bic to the duration of man seems to be secur-
ed, SO that for ourselves ard for long gene
rations after US W. have nothing to tear-
Bat the same forces Of air and water, ana OF
the vo canic interior, which produced for
mer geological revolutions and burie1 one
series of lvng forms after another, act still
upon the earti.'s 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 lizard and the mammoth
have given place to us and our tellowcrea-
lures which now exit. Thus the thread
which has conducted us to universal law
OF nature, to our own race permits 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 sing y 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, fulfIls lis 6ostinvn