30 From Matter to Man. 



—*' (3) All origins and beginnings to either First 

 Causes, Deities or phenomena, in whatsoever science, 

 religion, mythology, or philosophy framed, involve an 

 uncaused, uncreatable, and indestructible basis ; an 

 alpha and omega of being, out of which, of which, and 

 in which, all existences, First Causes, Energies, and 

 phenomena have ever been and must necessarily 

 ever be eternally fashioned.N Hence, all origins or 

 evolutions must be secondary to the eternal basis} 

 As the only basis we can accurately postulate is thus 

 an eternal material one, a condition amply fulfilled 

 by the indestructible, ever moving and ever law- 

 governed substance of the universe ; so the only 

 ultimate origin can be but a transformation of 

 this material basis, a kaleidoscopic change of 

 state from one natural phenomenon to another 

 eternally. 



In conclusion, an ultimate origin to things is im- 

 possible, because what is ever is. The what is never 

 can be the what is'nt. The eternal must be the 

 eternal. Not the eternity of the neo-Berkeleyan, 

 who pictures it as "time becoming lost in the un- 

 imaginable infinite of endlessness," but the ceaseless 

 or cyclic eternity of to-day, which unrolls the present 

 as a painted panorama, either back to the infinite 

 past or forward to the infinite future. For the 

 yesterday, to-day and to-morrow of earth are but 

 one to the universe as a whole. Man as a planetary 

 ephemeron may consistently enough speak of a 

 yesterday, a to-day, and a to-morrow, for these are 



