First Origins. 3 



it. The system of visible things to-day thus virtually 

 has its authorship in the system of visible things 

 yesterday, and to-morrow that again of to-day, and 

 so on interminably, either backwards or forwards. 

 For the present is always both the end of, and the 

 beginning to, existence : an eternal hub of being, 

 whether earth or men existed or not. 



Again, the application of the restricted term author 

 — a term derived from the puny operations of men 

 on this planet — to universal operations, is another 

 instance of erroneous teaching, for we are comparing 

 what cannot be compared. Tracing the origin of 

 things to their furthest ken on orthodox lines, we 

 arrive, it is alleged, at an author who did the 

 impossible and inconceivable thing of creating the 

 present system of visible things from nothing. But, 

 unfortunately for this deduction, it also warrants us, 

 who see further than our fathers, to ask the equally 

 legitimate and more pertinent question, " Who amid 

 the eternal sequences was the author of this author ? " 

 and the mere fact that we can ask such a startling 

 genealogical question and get no intelligible answer, 

 disposes of the supposition in its entirety. Problems 

 of this nature are not quite so easy, nor are they in 

 quite the same category as tracing the pedigree of a 

 peer. 



A common question is : Was the beginning a chaos ? 

 — a time when there were no planets, stars or solar 

 systems, when all was a crude, unformed, inert mass 

 of matter waiting a Creator? But the answer 



