CHAPTEK XXV. 



FURTHER CONSIDERATIONS AS TO THE EVOLUTION OF 

 LIFE-FORMS. 



FROM what has developed thus far, it would seem 

 that " origin" is a word which can have meaning 

 only locally. The total World-Energy is a process which 

 is perfect,, eternal, unchanging. As such, all possible 

 change, including the complementary aspects of begin- 

 ning and ceasing, is perpetually involved in the World- 

 Energy. Creation, in its totality, is the one eternal Fact. 

 It is in the manifold aspects of Creation that change 

 appears. And since time is the form of change, it is 

 only in the manifold aspects of Creation that time has 

 any reality. 



Evidently, too, it is the aspect of change that must 

 be the first to appeal to finite minds.* Hence it is that 

 in all cosmogonies Creation has been figured as taking 

 place in time, and, therefore, as having a beginning. 

 Even Mr. Spencer represents Evolution as a time-process, 

 and only guardedly indicates that were it possible to 

 really conceive the ( ' Unknowable " in its totality, it 

 could be conceived only as eternal. 



Of course, if one has made an open profession of the 

 religion of agnosticism, he must, if he would be at all 



*"Mind," as such, is infinite in its very nature. Each individual created 

 mind is finite in respect of the degree in which it has realized this infinite 

 ideal nature common to all minds. 



