144 KANT'S UNIVERSAL NATURAL HISTORY 



matic constitution related to that centre. Every finite 

 period, whose duration has a proportion to the greatness 

 of the work to be accomplished, will always bring only a 

 finite sphere to its development from this centre; while 

 the remaining infinite part will still be in conflict with the 

 confusion and chaos, and will be the further from the 

 state of completed formation the farther its distance is 

 away from the sphere of the already developed part of 

 nature. In consequence of this, although from the place 

 of our abode in the Universe, we look out upon a world 

 wholly completed as it seems, and, so to speak, at an 

 infinite host of worlds which are systematically combined ; 

 yet, strictly speaking, we find ourselves only in the neigh- 

 bourhood of the centre of the whole of nature, where it 

 has already evolved itself out of chaos and attained its 

 proper perfection. If we could overstep a certain sphere 

 we would there perceive chaos and the dispersion of the 

 elements which, in the proportion in which they are found 

 nearer this centre, lose in part their crude state and are 

 nearer the perfection of their development, but in the 

 degree in which they are removed from the centre, they 

 are gradually lost in a complete dispersion. We would 

 see how the infinite space, co-extensive with the Divine 

 Presence, in which is to be found the provision for all 

 possible natural formations, buried in a silent night, is 

 full of matter which has to serve as material for the 

 worlds that are to be produced in the future, and of 

 impulses for bringing it into motion, which begin with a 

 weak stirring of those movements with which the immensity 

 of these desert spaces are yet to be animated. There 

 had mayhap flown past a series of millions of years and 

 centuries, before the sphere of the formed nature in which 



