324 THE. HISTORY OF CREATION. 
way as Lamarck’s Theory of Descent does in Biology, and 
especially in Anthropology. Both rest exclusively upon 
mechanical or unconscious causes (cause efficientes), in no 
case upon prearranged or conscious causes (cause finales). 
(Compare above, p. 100-106). Both therefore fulfil all the 
demands of a scientific theory, and consequently will remain 
generally acknowledged until they are replaced by better 
ones. 
I will, however, not deny that Kant’s grand cosmogeny 
has some weak points, which prevent our placing the same 
unconditional confidence in it as in Lamarck’s Theory of 
Descent. The notion of an original gaseous chaos filling 
the whole universe presents great difficulties of various 
kinds. A great and unsolved difficulty lies in the fact that 
the Cosmological Gas Theory furnishes no starting-point at 
all in explanation of the first impulse which caused the 
rotary motion in the gas-filled universe. In seeking for 
such an impulse, we are involuntarily led to the mistaken 
questioning about a “first beginning.” We can as little 
imagine a first beginning of the eternal phenomena of the 
motion of the universe as of its final end. 
The universe is unlimited and immeasurable in both 
space and time. It is eternal, andit is infinite. Nor can 
we imagine a beginning or end to the uninterrupted and 
eternal motion in which all particles of the universe are 
always engaged. The great laws of the conservation of 
force ® and the conservation of matter, the foundations 
of our whole conception of nature, admit of no other supposi- 
tion. The universe, as far as it is cognisable to human 
capability, appears asa connected chain of material phe- 
nomena of motion, necessitating a continual change of 
