146 KANT'S UNIVERSAL NATURAL HISTORY 



creation is never finished or complete. It has indeed 

 once begun, but it will never cease. It is always busy 

 producing new scenes of nature, new objects, and new 

 worlds. The work which it brings about has a relationship 

 to the time which it expends upon it. It needs nothing 

 less than an eternity to animate the whole boundless range 

 of the infinite extension of space with worlds, without 

 number and without end. We may say of it what the 

 sublimest of the German poets writes of Eternity : 



"Infinity! What measures thee? 



Before thee worlds as days, and men as moments flee ! 

 Mayhap the thousandth sun is rounding now ; 

 And thousands still remain behind ! 

 Even as the clock its weight doth wind, 

 A sun by God's own power is driven ; 

 And when its work is done, again in heaven 

 Another shines. But thou remain'st ! To thee all numbers bow." 



VON HALLER. 



It is not a small pleasure to sweep in imagination beyond 

 the boundary of the completed creation into the region of 

 chaos, and to see the half crude nature in the neighbour- 

 hood of the sphere of the developed world losing itself 

 gradually through all stages and shades of imperfection, 

 throughout the whole range of unformed space. But it will 

 be said: Is it not a reprehensible boldness to put forward an 

 hypothesis, and to laud it as a subject for the entertainment 

 of the understanding, which, perhaps, is only too arbitrary 

 when it is asserted that nature is developed only in an 

 infinitely small part, and that endless ranges of space are 

 still involved in a conflict with chaos in order to bring forth 

 through the succession of future ages whole hosts of worlds 

 and systems, and to present them in all their proper order 

 and beauty? I am not so devoted to the consequences of 



