GENERAL SUMMARY. 189 



of variation, it may be remembered that Heraclitiis, 

 ages ago, stated his theory that all things are per- 

 petually in a state of flux. In his obscure manner he 

 says, "Nothing is, but is always becoming;" and, 

 again, that the notion of life implies alteration, and it 

 presents itself to us as a condition of change. 



Words are but counters, dimly expressing our ideas. 

 The word creative is repugnant to the minds of many 

 when it implies that cause and effect as regards physical 

 matter are synchronous. "Creation " maybe adequately 

 replaced by almost any word that does not preclude 

 a conception (feeble though it be) of the awful Uncon- 

 ditioned, operating through laws in sequence. 



We are compelled to take time and its lapse as a 

 necessary factor in all phenomena, yet independent 

 abstract thinkers have conceived an idea of the past, 

 the present and the future as if one and the same.* 



" For was, and is, and will be, are but is : 

 And all creation is one act, at once, 



The birth of light 



Thus 

 Our weakness somehow shapes the shadow, 

 Time. 



The above remarks seem to be in accord with what 

 Mr. Gladstone wrote in 1885 : — " Not that I have the 

 horror with which some men of science appear to 

 contemplate a multitude of what they call sudden acts of 

 creation, — meaning, I suppose, the act which produces 

 something not connected by an unbroken succession 

 of measured stages." ... "A series with development 

 gives to design a wider expansion and an augmented 

 tenacity." (' Nineteenth Century,' Nov. 1885.) 



As to the existence of such hidden links, we may 

 well ask, with Chaucer, — 



" Why then should witlesse man so much misween 

 That nothing is, but that which he hath seen " ! 



Prof. Poulton, Mr. Merrifield, and others have so 

 recently discussed what conditions of environment 



* See Prof. O. Lodge's Address to the Physical Section of the British 

 Association at Cardiff, in 1891, 



