Although, therefore, in a strictly mechanical sense, there is a conservation of energy, yet, as regards usefulness or fitness for living beings, the energy of the universe is in process of deterioration. Universally diffused heat forms what we may call the great waste-heap of the universe, and this is growing larger year by year. We have [he continues] regarded the universe, not as a collection of matter, but rather as an energetic agent--in fact, as a lamp. Now it has been well pointed out by Thomson,[39] that looked at in this light, the universe is a system that had a beginning and must have an end; for a process of degradation cannot be eternal. If we could view the universe as a candle not lit, then it is perhaps conceivable to regard it as having been always in existence; but if we regard it rather as a candle that has been lit, we become absolutely certain that it cannot have been burning from eternity, and that a time will come when it will cease to burn. We are led to look to a beginning in which the particles of matter were in a diffuse chaotic state, but endowed with the power of gravitation, and we are led to look to an end in which the whole universe will be one equally heated inert mass, from which everything like life or motion or beauty will have utterly gone away. It is doubtless true that attempts have been made to show that this conclusion is not final, and that there may be resources whereby Nature is able to recoup herself, and to draw upon some bank unknown to us for her missing store. As we have seen, Professor Haeckel simply takes for granted that some such means of recuperation exist and operate, and he is not wholly without countenance from others. Thus, no less an authority than Sir William Crookes addressing the Chemical Society as its president, thus expressed himself:[40] If we may hazard any conjectures ... we may I think premise that the heat radiations propagated outwards, ... by some process of nature unknown to us, are transformed at the confines of the universe into the primary--the essential--motion of chemical atoms, which the instant they are formed, gravitate inwards, and thus restore to the universe the energy which would be lost to it through radiant heat. Hence Sir William Thomson's startling prediction falls to the ground.