Book contents
- Frontmatter
- PREFACE
- Contents
- PART I THE UNKNOWABLE
- PART II LAWS OF THE KNOWABLE
- I LAWS IN GENERAL
- II THE LAW OF EVOLUTION
- III THE LAW OF EVOLUTION (CONTINUED)
- IV THE CAUSES OF EVOLUTION
- V SPACE, TIME, MATTER, MOTION, AND FORCE
- VI THE INDESTRUCTIBILITY OF MATTER
- VII THE CONTINUITY OF MOTION
- VIII THE PERSISTENCE OF FORCE
- IX THE CORRELATION AND EQUIVALENCE OF FORCES
- X THE DIRECTION OF MOTION
- XI THE RHYTHM OF MOTION
- XII THE CONDITIONS ESSENTIAL TO EVOLUTION
- XIII THE INSTABILITY OF THE HOMOGENEOUS
- XIV THE MULTIPLICATION OF EFFECTS
- XV DIFFERENTIATION AND INTEGRATION
- XVI EQUILIBRATION
- Frontmatter
- PREFACE
- Contents
- PART I THE UNKNOWABLE
- PART II LAWS OF THE KNOWABLE
- I LAWS IN GENERAL
- II THE LAW OF EVOLUTION
- III THE LAW OF EVOLUTION (CONTINUED)
- IV THE CAUSES OF EVOLUTION
- V SPACE, TIME, MATTER, MOTION, AND FORCE
- VI THE INDESTRUCTIBILITY OF MATTER
- VII THE CONTINUITY OF MOTION
- VIII THE PERSISTENCE OF FORCE
- IX THE CORRELATION AND EQUIVALENCE OF FORCES
- X THE DIRECTION OF MOTION
- XI THE RHYTHM OF MOTION
- XII THE CONDITIONS ESSENTIAL TO EVOLUTION
- XIII THE INSTABILITY OF THE HOMOGENEOUS
- XIV THE MULTIPLICATION OF EFFECTS
- XV DIFFERENTIATION AND INTEGRATION
- XVI EQUILIBRATION
Summary
§ 130. And now towards what do these changes tend? Will they go on for ever? or will there be an end to them? Can things increase in heterogeneity through all future time? or must there be a degree which the differentiation and integration of Matter and Motion cannot pass? Is it possible for this universal metamorphosis to proceed in the same general course indefinitely? or does it work towards some ultimate state, admitting no further modification of like kind? The last of these alternative conclusions is that to which we are inevitably driven. Whether we watch concrete processes, or whether we consider the question in the abstract, we are alike taught that Evolution has an impassable limit.
The re-distributions of matter that go on around us, are ever being brought to conclusions by the dissipation of the motions which effect them. The rolling stone parts with portions of its momentum to the things it strikes, and finally comes to rest; as do also, in like manner, the various things it has struck. Descending from the clouds and trickling over the Earth's surface till it gathers into brooks and rivers, water, still running towards a lower level, is at last arrested by the resistance of other water that has reached the lowest level.
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- First Principles , pp. 440 - 486Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2009First published in: 1862