EVOLUTION OF THE UNIVERSE. 605 
emergence which has recently arisen, and which purports to explain the 
creative rise in evolution, the coming of life and mind and spirit—this 
philosophy has appeared to be based on a miracle or a series of miracles. 
The quantum physics has come to the relief of this school, which surely 
teaches a significant truth. According to quantum doctrine the roots 
of life and mind lie imbedded deep down in the ultimate structure of this 
universe, and they are not mere singular apparitions of an unaccountable 
character, arising accidentally in the later phases of evolution. : 
To me the significance of the new physics for philosophy seems to lie 
particularly in this linking of the deep down beginnings with the most 
advanced achievements of the universe. The apparent huge gaps in 
evolution, requiring a miracle of leaps at more than one stage, are thus 
shown to be a gross exaggeration. We see the universe gradually pushing 
to the front certain features and characters which have been there all the 
time from the very beginning, although in most primitive and scarcely 
recognisable form. 
One concluding remark. We cannot say that the universe has been 
built up from these units or any ultimate units in the course of its 
evolution. We can only say that these are the ultimate elements which 
we find on analysis. The universe may for ever have been a complex 
affair, a closely knit structure of some sort or other as the law of Entropy 
would seem to indicate. It may even have been one vast quantum, as 
the Abbé Lemaitre suggests. But in the evolution of this mass there has 
been relative movement of parts or features ; some have pushed more to 
the fore with time, and there is no doubt that life and mind are features 
that have thus emerged from the mass, with the increase of entropy. 
M. wv’ Asse G. Lemaitre. 
I propose to give some answer to the two questions raised by Sir James 
Jeans, which so clearly summarise the present state of the problem of the 
evolution of the universe. I will begin with the second question, because 
I think that its solution may throw some light on the first one: “Is the 
universe expanding at about the rate indicated by the spectra of the 
nebule,’ the atomic constants not being modified by some artificial change 
of gauge? I add these words, because it is clear that any artificial ex- 
pansion could be provided by arbitrarily varying the units of length, time, 
and mass. Expansion of the universe is in some sense relative: it is 
relative to the whole set of essential properties of matter being assumed 
to be constant. 
The expansion of the universe is a matter of astronomical facts inter- 
preted by the theory of relativity, with the help of assumptions as to the 
homogeneity of space, without which any theory seems to be impossible. 
I shall not discuss the legitimacy of this interpretation, as I do not know 
any definite objection made against it and this is not the place ; and it is 
not necessary to give a new popular version of the leading principles of 
the theory of relativity. I shall rather try to show that the universe 
must be expanding, or rather that the most necessary processes of 
evolution are contradictory to the view that space is and has always been 
static. 
