236 TIME, SPACE, AND INVISIBLE WORLDS. 



thousand years to reach us, must needs intensify our conceptions 

 of the Universe, and prepare our minds for the bewildering truth 

 that within that radius, on every side of this our infinitesimal globe, 

 Planets large and small, millions in number, are now evolving like 

 our Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune, or are already evolved 

 like our Mercury, Venus, Mars, or Earth. As man cannot prescribe 

 limits to Creation, neither should there be pause or limit to his 

 mental efiforts to grasp ever more and more of the illimitable. 

 Whilst Professor Cleland contends that evolution of the human 

 body has already reached its climax (as shown in the front curving 

 in of cranium and brain, forming an arch of about one hundred 

 and eighty degrees, of irregular cylindrical shape, commencing at 

 point of communication of skull with spinal canal round to point 

 above the nose, the extremes being thus nearly parallel), and that 

 " the pinnacle of matter " is now reached, and the great object of 

 its creation now attained, in the evolution of mind ; so in the 

 present outgoings of thought and aspiration towards the Infinite, 

 we see one of the signs that mind, in its loftier branches, has 

 already outgrown the physical capacities of its tenement, and is 

 now preparing to commence a new and higher course of evolution. 

 In the question of evolution of Suns and worlds, it is natural 

 that much emphasis should be laid upon analogy. Analogies and 

 probabilites may be regarded as instances, examples, or side-lights 

 of that which is described as the great law of Continuity, and 

 which we may look upon as the final expression of the oneness 

 and harmony of all Nature. Drummond has defined the law of 

 Continuity by picturing a world without it, that is, one in which law 

 and order are not continuous, and therefore, in which dis-continuity 

 exists. In such a world, cause and effect would cease ; no 

 dependence could be placed upon anybody or anything, everything 

 happening by accident or chance. Sun might rise one day in the 

 north and set in the east ; another day at midnight, or not at all. 

 Moon might appear full when it ought to be crescent, or rising 

 when it ought to be setting. Jupiter might appear horned, and 

 Venus with rings and satellites. The Stars, no longer " fixed," 

 might wander hither and thither, carrying confusion inextricable 

 into all the Cardinal points and signs. Some years might be all 

 summer and others all winter. The laws of light and gravitation 



