of permanence, yet we have found reason to regard them as but
temporary phenomena. So, in the language of our authors, "if we
take the individual man, we find that he lives his short tale of
years, and that then the visible machinery which connects him
with the past, as well as that which enables him to act in the
present, falls into ruin and is brought to an end. If any germ or
potentiality remains, it is certainly not connected with the
visible order of things." In like manner our race is pretty sure
to come to an end long before the destruction of the planet from
which it now gets its sustenance. And in our authors opinion even
the universe will by and by become "old and effete, no less truly
than the individual: it is a glorious garment this visible
universe, but not an immortal one; we must look elsewhere if we
are to be clothed with immortality as with a garment."

It is at this point that our authors call attention to "the
apparently wasteful character of the arrangements of the visible
universe." The fact is one which we have already sufficiently
described, but we shall do well to quote the words in which our
authors recur to it: "All but a very small portion of the sun's
heat goes day by day into what we call empty space, and it is
only this very small remainder that is made use of by the various
planets for purposes of their own. Can anything be more
perplexing than this seemingly frightful expenditure of the very
life and essence of the system? That this vast store of
high-class energy should be doing nothing but travelling outwards
in space at the rate of 188,000 miles per second is hardly
conceivable, especially when the result of it is the inevitable
destruction of the visible universe."