54 



METAPHYSICS 



achievement and improvement in the u state of things," 

 and which, in virtue of the sustained and ever-recurring 

 increments in adaptation of means to ends and working 

 efficiency, must inevitably lead on to degrees of perfection 

 in the future state of things as well, which must eventuate 

 in or lead to infinite advantages and advancement all 

 round for that period embraced in what will be^ in 

 comparison with which, by an effort of the scientific 

 imagination, we feel ourselves compelled to estimate the 

 is and has been as only a beginning and an earnest. 

 If this be true, regarding the first three questions what 

 is, has been, and will be ? and we fail to realise that it can 

 be otherwise than we have ventured to state what answer 

 can be given that can in any degree meet the last question, 

 "but it doth not yet appear what we shall be?" or in 

 the faintest degree express the profundity of meaning 

 embraced in its absolute transcendentalism of nature, 

 the extent of its thought provocativeness, and the faith- 

 inspiring power in the existence of the unseen and 

 eternal verities which lie hid, but which we are constrained 

 to admit realisable, within its cryptic folds and ample 

 proportions ? Verily, there can be no answer given, even 

 from the highest levels reached by the combined forces 

 of knowledge in their most daring efforts to reach the 

 goal of the farthest knowable ; we must, therefore, having 

 done our best to satisfy ourselves that there can, as yet, 

 be no answer given which will convey an appreciable 

 meaning, resign ourselves in faith, that it will at last be 

 answered in " the fulness of time," and where the fulness 

 and completion of the entire circle of events embraced 

 in the title of our thesis have been evolved. 



Who, as we have elsewhere said, of the most far-seeing 

 moderns, could have foretold, had he lived contemporarily 

 with the first created living thing, and had seen its remains 

 deposited in a geological stratum which has now become 

 palasontolpgical, that intelligent and, as we now dare to 

 contend, immortal man would in time appear and leave 

 his mark on the latest stratum ? 



