EVOLUTION THE MASTER-KEY 



modern amplification and development of the 

 ancient saying of the Ionian Thales, the father 

 of philosophy, "Ex nihilo nihil fit." But it says 

 more than he said; for, while it agrees that from 

 nothing nothing can be made, it also declares that 

 though all the forces in the universe, save one 

 infinitesimal iota, were ranged to destroy that 

 puny exception, they would fail. It is indeed a 

 very great testimony to the powers of the human 

 mind that, while the familiar "law" of the eternal 

 permanence of matter is perishing before our eyes, 

 we can yet assert that the sum of things is constant 

 and incapable of the smallest diminution through- 

 out unending time. 



I cannot conclude this chapter on the basis of 

 evolution without reference to that which gives 

 the law of the conservation of energy its supreme 

 importance. The crude popular theism of this and 

 preceding ages conceives of the Deity as having 

 called his creation into existence at a given point 

 or week in past time. Before that event, nothing 

 was, save the Deity alone. This belief is incom- 

 patible with the law of the conservation of energy, 

 which yields the inference that there never was 

 an act of creation ; for energy is from eternity to 

 eternity. But the serious student is well aware 

 that time is not an entity at all, but merely, as 

 Kant partly showed, one of the forms of our per- 

 ception. When once we have realized that time is 

 merely the way in which we express our conscious- 

 ness of change, the vulgar idea of creation is seen 

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