352 THE WORLD OF LIFE 



in the preface to his recent work, Worlds in the Making, 

 concludes thus : 



" My guiding principles in this exposition of cosmogonic 

 problems has been the conviction that the Universe in its essence 

 has always been what it is now. Matter, energy, and life have only 

 varied as to shape and position in space." 



This will be taken to mean, and I presume does mean, 

 " matter " and " life " as we know them on the earth, and to 

 exclude, as Haeckel does definitely, spirit and deity. The 

 general conception of all these writers seems to be, that it is 

 easier, simpler, more scientific, to assume that " matter, 

 energy, and life " as we see them, have existed, the same in 

 essence though in ever varying forms, from all eternity, and 

 will continue to exist to all eternity, than to assume any 

 intelligent power beyond what we see. 



Now the idea, that positing eternity for matter and for 

 organised life, and for all the forces of nature, overcomes 

 difficulties or renders their existence at the stage they have 

 now reached at all intelligible, is, I maintain, the very 

 opposite of the truth, and arises from a want of real 

 thought as to what " eternity " means. Take, first, " life " 

 culminating in " man." It is admitted that there has been 

 a continuous though not uniform progress from the first 

 organic cell up to man. To arrive at that end it has 

 admittedly occupied a very large portion of the duration of 

 the habitability of the planet, and of the sun as a heat and 

 life-giver. It is also assumed that, to ensure the persistence 

 of life when suns cool and planets are unsuitable, either the 

 germs of life must be carried through space (at the zero of 

 temperature) from one solar system to another till they 

 chance to alight upon one where the conditions of life are 

 suitable, or they must have developed again out of dead 

 matter. All this is overwhelmingly difficult, — but let us 

 grant it all. Let us grant also that there are forces and 

 energies capable of automatically building up progressively 

 developing forms of sentient life, such as have been built up 

 on the earth. Then, if these forces and energies have acted 

 from all eternity, they must have resulted in an infinite 

 life-development, that is, in beings inconceivably higher 



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