igS PIONEERS OF EVOLUTION. 



indefinitely remote period by each planetary and 

 stellar mass, which since an indefinitely distant 

 period in the past has been slowly evolving; the 

 cycle of its transformations being thus completed. 



14. This rhythm of evolution and dissolution, 

 completing itself during short periods in small ag- 

 gregates, and in the vast aggregates distributed 

 through space completing itself in periods immeasur- 

 able by human thought, is, so far as we can see, uni- 

 versal and eternal each alternating phase of the 

 process predominating now in this region of space 

 and now in that, as local conditions determine. 



15. All these phenomena, from their great fea- 

 tures down to their minutest details, are necessary 

 results of the persistence of force under its forms of 

 matter and motion. Given these as distributed 

 through space, and their quantities being unchange- 

 able, either by increase or decrease, there inevitably 

 result the continuous redistributions distinguishable 

 as evolution and dissolution, as well as all these spe- 

 cial traits above enumerated. 



1 6. That which persists unchanging in quantity, 

 but ever changing in form, under these sensible ap- 

 pearances which the universe presents to us, tran- 

 scends human knowledge and conception is an un- 

 known and unknowable power, which we are obliged 

 to recognise as without limit in space and without 

 beginning or end in time. 



All that is comprised in the dozen volumes which, 

 exclusive of the minor works and the Sociological 



