"A time will come," he says, "when
this Universe and Nature itself will be extinguished. And just as of the
grandest kingdoms and empires of mankind and the marvellous things
achieved therein, very famous in their own time, no vestige or memory
remains to-day, so, in like manner, of the entire world and of the
vicissitudes and calamities of all created things there will remain not
a single trace, but a naked silence and a most profound stillness will
fill the immensity of space. And so before ever it has been uttered or
understood, this admirable and fearful secret of universal existence
will be obliterated and lost." And this they now describe by a
scientific and very rationalistic term--namely, _entropia_. Very pretty,
is it not? Spencer invented the notion of a primordial homogeneity, from
which it is impossible to conceive how any heterogeneity could
originate. Well now, this _entropia_ is a kind of ultimate homogeneity,
a state of perfect equilibrium. For a soul avid of life, it is the most
like nothingness that the mind can conceive.
* * * * *
To this point, through a series of dolorous reflections, I have brought
the reader who has had the patience to follow me, endeavouring always to
do equal justice to the claims of reason and of feeling. I have not
wished to keep silence on matters about which others are silent; I have
sought to strip naked, not only my own soul, but the human soul, be its
nature what it may, its destiny to disappear or not to disappear.
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