34 THE PROBLEM OF EVOLUTION 



all incapable of solution. The first is the inde 

 structibility of matter and its laws. If this is con 

 sidered from the philosophical point of view it at 

 once appears bewildering. It is not possible to 

 connect the idea of endless existence with matter, 

 because in its very nature it is subject to change, 

 and only what is not subject to change can be 

 everlasting. 



Moreover, the problem of the origin of motion in 

 the universe is insoluble, as Du Bois-Reymond 

 pointed out many years ago. If everlasting matter 

 was of itself in a state of inertia, whence originated 

 its motion ? If, on the other hand, matter was of 

 itself in ceaseless motion, how has it come to pass 

 that we have not yet reached an equilibrium of all 

 forms of energy, and the rigidity of death throughout 

 the universe. 1 



Everywhere we meet with innumerable diffi 

 culties. As to the problem regarding the laying 

 down of the laws of nature, which cannot have 

 taken place spontaneously, it has been asserted that 

 these laws developed accidentally out of the original 

 chaos an assertion that even Darwin s followers 

 have rejected as incompatible with reason. Just 

 as only a mind capable of thought can form any 

 conception of the order of the universe, so only a mind 

 capable of thought can in the first instance have 

 produced that order. 



1 Cf. R. Stdlzle, Has Laplace s Theory of the Formation of the Universe 

 an Atheistical Tendency? (Natur und Kultur, iv. Nos. 9, 10, 11, 13). 



