Millions of years will pass away,
and the earth, after having lain dead for a long winter, as it does
now for a few weeks under frost and snow, will, with all other
revolving planets, become absorbed in the sun, and the sun itself will
become absorbed in greater suns, Sirius and his like. In the matters
of grave moment, millions of years are but seconds; billions convey
very little to our minds. At the end of, let us say, some billion
years the ultimate moment towards which everything from the beginning
has been moving will be reached; and from that moment the tide will
begin to flow out again, the eternal dispersal of things will begin
again; suns will be scattered abroad, and in tremendous sun-quakes
planets will be thrown off; in loud earth-quakes these planets will
throw off moons. Millions of years will pass away, the earth will
become cool, and out of the primal mud life will begin again in the
shape of plants, and then of fish, and then of animals. It is like
madness, but is it madder than Christian doctrine? and I believe that
billions of years hence, billions and billions of years hence, I shall
be sitting in the same room as I sit now, writing the same lines as I
am now writing: I believe that again, a few years later, my ashes will
swing in the moveless and silent depths of the Pacific Ocean, and that
the same figures, the same nymphs, and the same fauns will dance
around me again.
Pages:
388
389
390
391
392
393
394
395
396
397
398
399
400
401
402
403
404
405
406
407
408
409
410
411