THE ORIGIN OF LIFE 61 



which is a contradiction in terms. It remains as the 

 only possible alternative that all things were created 

 by the Almighty Intelligent Will whom we call God. 

 But having settled so much, we have presented to 

 us a group of primary factors for the subsequent de 

 velopment. There are here, first, duration and ex 

 tension time and space, as we usually call them. 

 We say we believe in time and space, because we 

 know that we exist in them, but abstractly they are 

 as inconceivable to us as the Being who exists from 

 everlasting to everlasting, to whom one day is as a -\ - 

 thousand years, and a thousand years as one day, 

 whom the heaven of heavens cannot contain. Our 

 definite ideas of these mysterious entities are based 

 on things that extend and move. Time we may 

 know by the succession of our own thoughts or the 

 changes of external objects, space by the extension 

 of the visible universe. Matter and motion are 

 therefore our measures of extension and duration, 

 and apart from these we may hold with Kant that 

 time and space have no objective existence. But 

 matter and motion must have had a beginning, and 

 before that beginning time and space existed only in 

 the Infinite mind, while to us the bodies that consti 

 tute the visible heavens are for times and for seasons, 

 for days and for years ; yet without time and space 

 what remains to us except an immovable mathe 

 matical point ? In regard to time and space, there 

 fore, we may be agnostics if we please, for they are 



