1875.] The Possibility of a Future Life. 473 
suddenly blazed up with an unwonted splendour and have 
after a time gradually faded away. These phenomena we 
can only interpret in a manner which foretells the ultimate 
fate of our earth, of its sister-planets, and of the sun itself. 
Again, we cannot fail to perceive that there is in all the 
forces of nature a gradual tendency to an equilibrium. One 
day that equilibrium will be attained. The last weight will 
have reached its level. The last molecule of matter will 
have satisfied its strongest affinity. All parts of the universe 
will be equally hot, and no light-wave will cross the regions 
of space. All these considerations throw a valuable, though 
indirect, light upon the origin of the universe. They com- 
pel us to infer that not merely this or the other heavenly 
body as now existing cannot have existed for ever, but that 
the whole must have had a beginning,—that the day was 
when it had not yet originated. 
Now there are, we know, three theories, and as far as we 
are able to imagine only three, concerning the origin of the 
universe,—the atheistic, the theistic, and the pantheistic. 
The first mentioned may be presented in a double form. 
Either it regards the universe as having existed from all 
eternity, or it considers it as having been self-created. In 
the light of modern science neither of these views can be 
pronounced tenable. Its present a¢tivity, as far as we know, 
gives the lie to its alleged infinite past. Nor can we conceive 
how a universal and equally diffused medium could at some 
given point of time suddenly differentiate itself and begin 
the process of world-building. Did the primal atoms or the 
ether possess such power it could not have remained latent. 
One refuge indeed remains, but this is in its nature doubt- 
ful inthe extreme. There may be some power by which this 
general tendency to an equilibrium is countera¢ted, and in 
such a case the universe as a whole may go on from eternity 
to eternity. But in all our researches we have hitherto met 
with no proof of its existence,—no trace of its operations. 
This may not indeed be held to justify us in absolutely deny- 
ing the-existence of sucha power or sucha process. But 
still less shall we be warranted in building upon it, as if 
demonstrated. The advocates of the atheistic hypothesis 
can surely not blame us if we here quote the old saying, De 
non apparentibus et non existentibus eadem est ratio. 
Such, then, is one of the results of modern physical science 
that it has rendered the idea of an eternally existing, or 
self-created, universe well-nigh unthinkable. 
But there is also another principle perhaps of even wider 
bearing than the idea of the conservation of force—a 
