Physical Limitations 317 



faith in regard to the future, and thus to become the founda- 

 tion for a law of conduct. A growth of knowledge of this 

 kind too, has been the base of the structure of the modern 

 sciences generally. 



Now a characteristic of this evolution of knowledge is 

 that its every increase shows not only a fuller understanding 

 of the present, and of that part of the past which was 

 recently the present, but it repeatedly shows the point where 

 a beginning was imagined was not the true place of begin- 

 ning, but was the position of a highly evolved product, from 

 some beginning much more remote than had been supposed ; 

 so that the real beginning recedes and goes again into 

 mystery. The Hebrew story of the creation of man stands 

 in marvellously true, — not absolutely true, — relation to that 

 time from which it was reasoned; but in its first incident 

 later wisdom sees not the beginning, but a climax, of the 

 human evoluion in the world; and the briefly described 

 events which preceded it, stretch back into a past of time 

 incredibly long, now found to be effective ages, where early 

 knowledge saw only preliminary incident. And so, in 

 natural science, the elementary nature of the material world 

 had explanations time after time, in terms sufficing for 

 the age producing them, but each time has been followed 

 by another, which has learned that the things termed ele- 

 ments were not fundamental, but were resolvable into simpler 

 and earlier things, so that they stood, not as the beginnings, 

 but as advanced forms of matter. The simple minds 

 which ascribed primal value to fire, water, earth and air, 

 or those which later so named sulphur, mercury and salt, 

 were no more wrong in their day than are, and will be. 



