394 JAMES CLERK MAXWELL. [CHAP. XII. 



say that the light of the first day means the all-embracing 

 aether, the vehicle of radiation, and not actual light, whether 

 from the sun or from any other source. But I cannot sup- 

 pose that this was the very idea meant to be conveyed by the 

 original author of the book to those for whom he was 

 writing. He tells us of a previous darkness. Both light 

 and darkness imply a being who can see if there is light, 

 but not if it is dark, and the words are always understood 

 so. That light and darkness are terms relative to the 

 creature only is recognised in Ps. cxxxix. 12. 



As a mere matter of conjectural cosmogony, however, 

 we naturally suppose those things most primeval which we 

 find least subject to change. 



Now the aether or material substance which fills all the 

 interspace between world and world, without a gap or flaw 

 of x^Voiy inch anywhere, and which probably penetrates 

 through all grosser matters, is the largest, most uniform and 

 apparently most permanent object we know, and we are 

 therefore inclined to suppose that it existed before the 

 formation of the systems of gross matter which now exist 

 within it, just as we suppose the sea older than the in- 

 dividual fishes in it. 



But I should be very sorry if an interpretation founded 

 on a most conjectural scientific hypothesis were to get 

 fastened to the text in Genesis, even if by so doing it got 

 rid of the old statement of the commentators which has long 

 ceased to be intelligible. The rate of change of scientific 

 hypothesis is naturally much more rapid than that of 

 Biblical interpretations, so that if an interpretation is 

 founded on such an hypothesis, it may help to keep the 

 hypothesis above ground long after it ought to be buried 

 and forgotten. 



At the same time I think that each individual man 

 should do all he can to impress his own mind with the 

 extent, the order, and the unity of the universe, and should 

 carry these ideas with him as he reads such passages as the 

 1st Chap, of the Ep. to Colossians (see Lightfoot on Colos- 

 sians, p. 182), just as enlarged conceptions of the extent 



