I 



what meaning can any longer be attached to the 

 history of the Evolution of man out of protoplasm ? 

 If the Becoming of the world has really been in- 

 finite, no amount of history will bring us any nearer 

 to its real origin ; it is vain to sound the bottomless 

 abyss of the past with the puny plummet of science. 

 The Historical Method is futile, all theories of 

 Evolution are false, and the nature of things is 

 really unknowable. 



And if we refuse to admit these conclusions, we 

 must admit as the metaphysical postulate of the 

 Historical Method in all its forms, that things have 

 had an origin, and their history a beginning. And 

 so it appears that the ancient historians, who began 

 their histories with the beginning of the world, were 

 prompted by a correct and truly scientific instinct ; 

 they felt that unless they began at the beginning, 

 they would have to leave much obscure, and, that 

 if a beginning was in the nature of things unattain- 

 able, all would be left obscure, and all explan- 

 ations would ultimately come to nought. Thus the 

 vindication of a determinate beginning and a real 

 origin as the necessary pre-supposition of any hist- 

 orical account, commits us to the doctrine of a be- 

 ginning of the world, or at least of the present order 

 of things. But it does not directly compel us to as- 

 sert the finiteness of Time. Until the nature of the 

 infinity of Time has been investigated (in ch. ix. § 1 1), 

 we may here reserve judgment, all the more easily 

 that we do not perhaps really require to limit Time 

 for the purposes of the Historical Method. But we 

 can avoid it only by a supposition at least as dif- 

 ficult. The origin which the method requires need 

 not have an origin of Time ; it is conceivable that 

 the world existed for an infinity of time, and then 



