THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY2 The Lives and Opinions

S 7 8 THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY
cause may produce a vast variety of results, and help to differentiate the
world; a word ami:*, like Marie Antoinette's, or an altered telegram at
Ems, or a wind at Salamis may play an endless role in history. And
there is the law cf ''Segregation" ': the parts of a relatively homogeneous
whole, being driven separate into different areas, are shaped by diverse
environments into dissimilar products,
as the English become Americans,
or Canadians, or Australians, according to the genius oMhe place.
In these many ways the forces of nature build the variety of this evolving
world.
But finally, and inescapably, comes "Equilibration." Every motion,
beins* motiDn under resistance, must sooner or later come to an end;
every rhythmic oscillation 'unless externally reinforced) suffers some
loss of rate and amplitude. The planets ride through a lesser orbit, or
will ride, than once they rode: the sun will shine less warmly and brightly
as the centurie* pass away; the friction of the tides will retard the rota-
tion of the earth. This globe, that throbs and murmurs with a million
niotionsj and luxuriates into a million forms of riotously breeding life,
will some day move mere leisurely in its orbit and its parts; the blood
v.ill run cooler and more slowly in our desiccated veins; we shall not
harry any more: like dying races, we shall think of heaven in terms of rest
and not of life; we shall dream of Xirvana. Gradually, and then rapidly,
equilibration will become dissolution, the unhappy epilogue of evolution.
Soc22iies \\ill disintegrate, masses will migrate, cities will fade into the
dark hinterland cf peasant life; no government will be strong enough to
hold the loosened pans together;
social order will cease to be even remembered.
And in the individual too, integration will give way to dis-
into that diffuse
ruption; and that coordination which is life will pass
disorder which is death. The earth will be a chaotic theatre of decay, a
gloomy drama of energy in irreversible degradation; and it will itself be
resolved into the dust and nebula from which it came. The cycle of evolution
and dissolation will be complete. The cycle
will begin again, and
endless times again; but always this will be the denouement Memento
man is written upon the face of life; and every birth is a prelude to
decay and death.
First Principles is a magnificent drama, telling with almost classic calm
the story of the rise and fall, the evolution and dissolution, of planets and
life and man: but it is a tragic drama, for which the fittest is
epilogue
Hamlet's word "The rest is silence." Is there any wonder that men and
women nurtured on faith and hope rebelled against this summary of
existence? We know that we must die; but as it is a matter that will take
care of itself, we prefer to think of life. There was in Spencer an almost
.Schopenhauerian sense of the futility of human effort. At the end of his
triumphant career he expressed his feeling that life was not worth living