indefinitely from the lifeless? Where was it, when the world was only a dusty chaos of whirling gas and cinders? What started it? What gave it the thrust, the bias, to roll so ceaselessly and so eccentrically. To look forward is easy—the final inertia, when the last atom of energy has been shaken out of the disintegrating atom—when the clocks stand still and time’s arrow has neither point nor shaft—but the beginning!
One thing is certain. If I begin to think like this, I shall never write another bestseller. Heaven preserve us from random speculation! Our own immediate affairs are as important as the loves of the electrons in this universe of infinitesimal immensities, and as far as we are concerned. …
[The remainder of this letter, being of a very intimate nature, is not available.]