Which First?

End of the World has so far been used indifferently to mean the end of mankind and the end of this globe he inhabits. The two are not the same, and except in a case like head-on collision, planet and people vanishing in vapour together, will not be simultaneous.

Either man will predecease his home. One of the great climatic climacteric disasters will suffice to destroy him while hardly more than ruffling the earth’s surface; or quite other factors, of a kind different from any yet alluded to, may, in conjunction with or independently of natural change, sweep life but not earth away.

Or, in certain strange circumstances, the race may outlive the world.