48 From Matter to Man. 



in marriage or divorce it is ever the same. In a sense, 

 it is indestructible, for a is always a. 



Vital as indestructibility thus is as a scientific 

 premiss, it falls far short of its significance as a philo- 

 sophical principle, for its bearing on the philosophy of 

 evolution, the problem of existence and the science of 

 life, is unparalleled. For example : — 



(a) Through the eternal existence of the noumenon, 

 or the substratum of phenomena, it involves the 

 eternal existence, hence uncreatability of the con- 

 stituents of the universe; hence also the absence of 

 an origin to the universe, as already affirmed. 



(b) It dispenses with a First Cause, or agent of 

 creation outside of or independent of matter, for 

 otherwise, as already shown, we would only be shifting 

 the origin of matter to a cause whose origin was equally 

 inexplicable with that of the thing caused ; to a 

 Creator more enigmatical than the eternal functions 

 of the thing created ; hence, only solving a minor 

 mystery by concocting a greater. Indestructibility 

 thus constitutes matter to be itself the only first cause 

 of the universe. In other words, matter is not only 

 the maker of the universe, but is alone the universe. 

 Matter obeys the voices of nature because it also 

 commands them ; it executes because it also 

 determines. 



(c) Indestructibility prescribes a limit to both science 

 and philosophy by defining the boundaries of the 

 knowable in the cosmos, thus limiting the generation 

 of nonsense, metaphysical or otherwise, by precluding 



