hardly conceivable, especially when
the result of it is the inevitable destruction of the visible universe."

Pursuing this teleological argument, it is suggested that perhaps this
apparent waste of energy is "only an arrangement in virtue of which our
universe keeps up a memory of the past at the expense of the present,
inasmuch as all memory consists in an investiture of present resources
in order to keep a hold upon the past." Recourse is had to the ingenious
argument in which Mr. Babbage showed that "if we had power to follow
and detect the minutest effects of any disturbance, each particle of
existing matter must be a register of all that has happened. The track
of every canoe, of every vessel that has yet disturbed the surface of
the ocean, whether impelled by manual force or elemental power, remains
forever registered in the future movement of all succeeding particles
which may occupy its place. The furrow which is left is, indeed,
instantly filled up by the closing waters; but they draw after them
other and larger portions of the surrounding element, and these again,
once moved, communicate motion to others in endless succession." In like
manner, "the air itself is one vast library, on whose pages are forever
written all that man has ever said or even whispered. There in their
mutable but unerring characters, mixed with the earliest as well as
the latest sighs of mortality, stand forever recorded vows unredeemed,
promises unfulfilled, perpetuating in the united movements of each
particle the testimony of man's changeful will." [6] In some such way as
this, records of every movement that takes place in the world are each
moment transmitted, with the speed of light, through the invisible
ocean of ether with which the world is surrounded. Even the molecular
displacements which occur in our brains when we feel and think are thus
propagated in their effects into the unseen world. The world of ether is
thus regarded by our authors as in some sort the obverse or complement
of the world of sensible matter, so that whatever energy is dissipated
in the one is by the same act accumulated in the other. It is like the
negative plate in photography, where light answers to shadow and shadow
to light. Or, still better, it is like the case of an equation in which
whatever quantity you take from one side is added to the other with a
contrary sign, while the relation of equality remains undisturbed. Thus,
it will be noticed, from t