4 RELICS OF PRIMEVAL LIFE 



of awakening primitive men to the comprehension 

 of their own place in the universe. 



However this may be, it is certain that modern 

 science at first took a different stand. 



The constancy of the motions of the heavenly 

 bodies, our great time-keepers, and of the changes 

 on the earth depending upon them, and the resolu- 

 tion of apparent perturbations into cycles of greater 

 or less length, impressed astronomers and physicists 

 with the permanence of the arrangements of the 

 heavens and their eternal circling round without any 

 change. In like manner, on the rise of geology, the 

 succession of changes recorded in the earth seemed 

 interminable, and Hutton could say that in the 

 geological chronology he could see " no vestige of a 

 beginning, no prospect of an end." 



But the progress of investigation has changed all 

 this, and has brought physical and natural science 

 back to a position nearer to that of the old cosmo- 

 gonies. Physical astronomy has shown that the 

 constant emission of heat and light from the sun 

 and other stars must have had a beginning, and is 

 hurrying on toward an end, that the earth and its 

 satellite the moon are receding from each other, 

 and that even the spinning of our globe on its 



