xviii THE ELEMENTS AND LIFE 361 



rarest substances in nature — radium — and its extraordinary- 

 effects, points in the same direction. So far as known at 

 present, this substance may or may not be in any way 

 important either to the earth as a planet or for the develop- 

 ment of life upon it ; but the most obvious result of its 

 discovery seems to be the new light it throws on the nature 

 of matter, on the constitution of the atom, and perhaps also 

 on the mysterious ether. It has come at the close of a 

 century of wonderful advance in our knowledge of matter 

 and the mysteries of the atom. Many other rare elements 

 or their compounds are now being found to be useful to 

 man in the arts, in medicine, or by the light they throw on 

 chemical, electrical, or ethereal forces.* 



If now we take the occurrence of all these apparently 

 useless substances in the earth's crust ; the existence in toler- 

 able abundance, or very widely spread, of the seven metals 

 known to man during his early advances towards civilisation, 

 and the many ways in which they helped to further that 

 civilisation ; and, lastly, the existence of a few elements 

 which, when specially combined, produce a substance without 

 which modern science in almost all its branches would have 

 been impossible, we are brought face to face with a body of 

 facts which are wholly unintelligible on any other theory than 

 that the earth (and the universe of which it forms a part) 

 was constituted as it is in order to supply us, when the proper 

 time came, with the means of exploring and studying the 

 inner mechanism of the world in which we live — of enabling 

 us to appreciate its overwhelming complexity, and thus to 

 form a more adequate conception of its author, and of its 

 ultimate cause and purpose. 



I have already shown that the postulate of a past eternal 

 existence is no explanation, and leads to insuperable diffi- 

 culties. A beginning in time for all finite things is thus 

 demonstrable ; but a beginning implies an antecedent cause, 

 and it is impossible to conceive of that cause as other than 

 an all-pervading mind. 



1 While this chapter is being written I see it announced that two of the 

 rarest of the elements, lanthanium and neodynium, have been found to pro- 

 vide (through some of their compounds) light-filters, which increase the effici- 

 ency of the spectroscope in the study of the planetary atmospheres, and may thus 

 be the means of still further extending our knowledge of the universe. 





