EVOLUTION THE MASTER-KEY 



tradiction in the cosmos ; that there is no fact in- 

 consistent with any other; that just as all the " ele- 

 ments" can be resolved into manifestations of one 

 truly elementary entity, and just as all forms of 

 activity heat, light, electricity, and so forth 

 are known to be mutually convertible forms of 

 energy, so all phenomena, multifarious though 

 they be, are yet expressions of a supreme unity. 

 So, as no one accuses the Athanasian Creed of 

 absurdity because it makes many definite state- 

 ments about Him whom it calls incomprehensible, 

 we may be spared petty criticism in making this 

 definite statement about the unknowable (which 

 we might just as well call the incomprehensible) 

 that it is not many, but one. 



In the second place, to admit the doctrine of the 

 conservation of energy is to assert that we may 

 know the unknowable to be "eternal and un- 

 created"; for these are precisely the qualities 

 which that doctrine attributes to phenomena. It 

 is true that the law of the conservation of energy 

 merely asserts that energy is indestructible, and 

 that there is no iota of energy which is not, though 

 apparently new, a transformation of pre-existent 

 energy. The inference that all energy has always 

 been is not only justifiable and consistent with the 

 oldest known generalization ex nihilo nihil fit 

 but is, indeed, a truth of the highest certainty, 1 

 since the negation of it is inconceivable. Fur- 



1 See chapter xvi., "The Test of Truth." 

 35 2 



