If this is so--as who can for a moment doubt?--a sudden enormous increase in the sun's heat, though not making the supply received by those planets much greater than, or even equal to, the supply which we receive from the sun, would prove as fatal to living creatures there as to living creatures on our earth. If, then, the sun increased in splendour as the stars have increased which the astronomers call new stars or temporary stars, there would be an end of life upon this earth; and nothing short of either the spontaneous development of life, or of the creation of various forms of life, could people our earth afresh. Science knows nothing of spontaneous generation, and believers in revelation reject the doctrine. Science knows nothing of the creation of living forms, but believers in revelation accept the doctrine. Certain it is that if our sun ever undergoes the baptism of fire which has affected some few among his brother suns, one or other of these processes (if creation can be called a process) must come into operation, or else our earth and her companion worlds would for ever after remain absolutely devoid of life. But if our sun, without suffering so great a change, underwent a change of less degree, it might well happen that though there would be enormous destruction of life upon the earth and other planets, some life (presumably the strongest and best) would survive. In that case, after a long period of time, the earth would again be well peopled, and it might even be that the various races of terrestrial creatures would be improved, by the desolation which the great solar conflagration had wrought. It is somewhat curious, considering how little there is in the ordinary progress of events to suggest the idea, that most of the ancient systems of cosmogony recognised the periodical destruction of living creatures on the earth by fire as well as by water. Each form of destruction was supposed to be brought about by planetary influences. The Ecpyrosis, or destruction by fire, was effected when all the planets were in conjunction with Cancer; the Cataclysm, or destruction by flood, when all the planets were in conjunction with Capricorn. Each form of destruction was supposed also to purify the human race. "Towards the termination of each era," writes Lyell, speaking of these old ideas, "the gods could no longer bear with the wickedness of men, and a shock of the elements or a deluge overwhelmed them; after which calamity Astrea again descended on the earth, to renew the golden age." The Greeks undoubtedly borrowed all such doctrines from the Egyptians, who "believed the world to be subject to occasional conflagrations and deluges, whereby the gods arrested the career of human wickedness, and purified the earth from guilt. After each regeneration mankind was in a state of virtue and happiness, from which they gradually degenerated again into vice and immorality."