First Origins. 5 



as specks of dust dancing in a sunbeam. The centre 

 is everywhere, the circumference nowhere."* 



If then our investigations involve the principle of 

 universal disorderliness now, no necessity calls for our 

 postulating the universe either more or less disorderly 

 at any antecedent time; consequently, there is only 

 one intelligible escape from the dilemma (if dilemma 

 there be, seeing it is of man's own making), and that 

 is to predicate, on the orthodox and only possible 

 mode of reasoning at the present time — an uncatised 

 basis of things. We differ, however, from the 

 orthodox as to the basis. Thus, we enunciate as 

 indisputable that the universe as a whole, and not as 

 an incomplete or incomprehensible part, is uncaused ; 

 that it never had or could have had a Creator, that 

 it never had a beginning, even as it never can have 

 an end ; hence, that it never was and never can be 

 more chaotic, disorganised, and unformed than it is 

 now. True it is that progress and improvement may 

 occasionally be registered on one or other of the 

 myriads of worlds, but this is counterbalanced by 

 equal rack and ruin in others; hence, from the very 

 conditions of eternal existence' by which opposites 

 are irrevocably locked together — as growth and decay, 

 aggregation and disintegration, cause and effect, life 

 and death — the universe as a whole, ever has been, 

 now is, and ever shall be, as it is. 



This assumption of a perpetual universe in 

 perpetual motion, and that motion a perpetual 



* " Philosophy" {Trans.), p. 460. Andre Lefevre. 



