RELIGION AND SCIENCE 241 



be incomplete ; it is for those who come after to 

 build the upper stories. 



This cannot be helped. What we build, we must 

 build firmly ; on what is yet to be built, science 

 cannot pronounce, except to say that she knows 

 that it will be congruous with what has gone before. 



What general principles, then, do we assume ? 

 We assume that the universe is composed throughout 

 of the same matter, whose essential unity, in spite 

 of the diversity of its so-called elements, the recent 

 researches of physicists are revealing to us ; we 

 assume that matter behaves in the same way wherever 

 it is found, showing the same mode of sequence of 

 change, of cause and effect. We assume, on fairly 

 good although indirect evidence, that there has been 

 an evolution of the forms assumed by matter ; that, in 

 this solar system of ours, for instance, matter was 

 once all in electronic form, that it then attained to 

 the atomic and the molecular ; that later, colloidal 

 organic matter of a special type made its appearance, 

 and later still, living matter arose. That the forms 

 of life, simple at first, attained progressively to greater 

 complexity ; that mind, negligible in the lower forms, 

 became of greater and greater importance, until it 

 reached its present level in man.^ 



Unity, uniformity, and development are the three 

 great principles that emerge. We know of no 

 instance where the properties of matter change, 

 1 See Danysz, '21. 



