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Письмо №67, стр. 35

beginnings. I mean the celebrated French astronomer Flammarion — "La Resurrection et la Fin des Mondes" (Chapter 4 res.). He speaks like a true seer. The facts are as he surmises with slight modifications. In consequence of the secular refrigeration (old age rather and loss of vital power), solidification and desiccation of the globes, the earth arrives at a point when it begins to be a relaxed conglomerate. The period of child-bearing is gone by. The progeny are all nurtured, its term of life is finished. Hence "its constituent masses cease to obey those laws of cohesion and aggregation which held them together." And becoming like a cadaver which abandoned to the work of destruction would leave each molecule composing it free to separate itself from the body for ever to obey in future the sway of new influences. The


Notes: 

Secular refrigeration The periodical cooling and consequent consolidation of the crust of the globe: a term formerly used by geologists in reference to the supposed central heat, and even fluidity of the globe, and to the phenomena of its gradual refrigeration.