ON EVOLUTION. 279 
quo to be without beginning and yet terminable,—in other 
words, both eternal and temporal,—they cannot maintain the 
proposition that, having lasted an eternity, it has come to an 
end, without binding themselves, as rational beings, to 
account for so marvellous an incident, or at least to offer some 
suggestion that may seem to throw light upon its cause. A 
similar obligation must, of course, be acknowledged if the 
other supposition be adopted. To whichever of them the 
preference be given, it cannot be evaded. Let the instability 
ascribed to the imagined equilibrium be such that less than 
the millionth part of the force transmitted by the impact of 
- the tiniest mote which sunbeams ever rendered visible might 
suffice to overthrow it, the disturbance must arise from some- 
thing ; it implies, but it cannot be simply and purely due to, 
instability. The cause, whatever it may be, is plainly ex 
hypothest something extraneous to the system of balanced 
forces. Had it, then, in this point of view an effect that 
might be compared to that of the kiss by which the princess 
in the fairy tale is released from a trance of a hundred years’ 
duration, and wakes up, together with her court and house- 
hold? Did it find entrance into a universe of sleeping atoms, 
which must otherwise have slumbered on through all eternity, 
and breaking, as it were, the mysterious spell that had kept 
them motionless for ages, rouse up their suspended energies 
to evolutional activity ? However amply, in other respects, 
the theory which presents in idea an unstable equilibrium 
might satisfy the demands of the philosophical inquirer, an 
indispensable requisite has clearly been omitted—there is no 
suscitant force. 
7. An attempt will perhaps be made to meet this objection on 
the ground that we are under no necessity of assuming the 
actual existence of an original state of exact equilibrium ; 
for it has been argued that, ‘‘ whether that state with which 
we commence be or be not one of perfect homogeneity, the 
process must equally be towards a relative heterogeneity.”* Is 
it then allowed in the words I have just quoted that the fact 
I suppose to have been assumed is after all uncertain, that 
possibly there never was an exact equilibrium? Well, but if 
it be true, as the writer asserts, “that not only must the 
homogeneous lapse into the non-homogeneous, but that the 
more homogeneous must tend ever to become less homo- 
geneous,’ the concession is fatal to the theory, unless it may 
* First Principles, by Herbert Spencer, ch, xiii. § 109. 
td 
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