244 CREATIVE EVOLUTION iohaf. 



this external source of mutability the same question springs 

 up. True, it might be added that the number of worlds 

 capable of passing mutability to each other is unlimited, 

 that the sum of mutability contained in the universe is in- 

 finite, that there is therefore no ground on which to seek its 

 origin or to foresee its end. A hypothesis of this kind is as 

 irrefutable as it is indemonstrable; but to speak of an infinite 

 universe is to admit a perfect coincidence of matter with 

 abstract space, and consequently an absolute externality 

 of all the parts of matter in relation to one another. We 

 have seen above what we must think of this theory, and 

 how difficult it is to reconcile with the idea of a reciprocal 

 influence of all the parts of matter on one another, an 

 influence to which indeed it itself makes appeal. Again it 

 might be supposed that the general instability has arisen 

 from a general state of stability; that the period in 

 which we now are, and in which the utilizable energy is 

 diminishing, has been preceded by a period in which 

 the mutability was increasing, and that the alternations 

 of increase and diminution succeed each other for ever. 

 This hypothesis is theoretically conceivable, as has been 

 demonstrated quite recently; but, according to the cal- 

 culations of Boltzmann, the mathematical improbabil- 

 ity of it passes all imagination and practically amounts 

 to absolute impossibility. 1 In reality, the problem re- 

 mains insoluble as long as we keep on the ground of physics, 

 for the physicist is obliged to attach energy to extended 

 particles, and, even if he regards the particles only as 

 reservoirs of energy, he remains in space: he would belie 

 his role if he sought the origin of these energies in an extra- 

 spatial process. It is there, however, in our opinion, that 

 it must be sought. 

 Is it extension in general that we are considering in 



1 Boltzmann, Vorlesungen uber Gastheorie, Leipzig, 1898, pp. 253 ff. 



