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suit in infinite time of the necessary adaption of living 

 structures to the peculiarities of the conditions by which 

 they are surrounded ? 



Against this theory, then, its own absolute generali- 

 zation may be viewed as our first objection. In ulti- 

 mate abstraction, that is, the only agency postulated by 

 Mr. Darwin is time infinite time ; and as regards ac- 

 tually existent beings and actually existent conditions, 

 it is hardly possible to deny any possibility whatever to 

 infinitude. If told, for example, that the elephant, if 

 only obliged infinitely to run, might be converted into 

 the stag, how should we be able to deny ? So also, if 

 the lengthening of the giraffe's neck were hypothetically 

 attributed to a succession of dearths in infinite time 

 that only left the leaves of trees for long-necked ani- 

 mals to live on, we should be similarly situated as re- 

 gards denial. Still it can be pointed out that ingenuity 

 of natural conjecture has, in such cases, no less wide a 

 field for the negation than for the affirmation ; and 

 that, on the question of fact, nothing is capable of be- 

 ing determined. But we can also say more than that 

 we can say that any fruitful application even of infinite 

 time to the general problem of difference in the world is 

 inconceivable. To explain all from an absolute begin- 

 ning requires us to commence with nothing ; but to this 

 nothing time itself is an addition. Time is an entity, a 

 something, a difference added to the original identity : 

 whence or how came time ? Time cannot account for 

 its own self; how is it that there is such a thing as time ? 

 Then no conceivable brooding even of infinite time 

 could hatch the infinitude of space. How is it there is 

 such a thing as space ? No possible clasps of time and 

 space, further, could ever conceivably thicken into mat- 



