hurl the charge of "materialism." Their doubts,
however, are not shared by our authors, thorough men of science as they
are, though their mode of dealing with the question may not be such as
we can well adopt. While upholding the doctrine of evolution, and all
the so-called "materialistic" views of modern science, they not only
regard the hypothesis of a future life as admissible, but they even go
so far as to propound a physical theory as to the nature of existence
after death. Let us see what this physical theory is.

As far as the visible universe is concerned, we do not find in it any
evidence of immortality or of permanence of any sort, unless it be in
the sum of potential and kinetic energies on the persistency of which
depends our principle of continuity. In ordinary language "the stars in
their courses" serve as symbols 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