th.

287

A SPECULATION AS TO A PREMATERIAL UNIVERSE [1]

"And therefore...these things likewise had a birth; for things
which are of mortal body could not for an infinite time back...
have been able to set at naught the puissant strength of
immeasurable age."--LUCRETIUS, _De Rerum Natura._

"O fearful meditation! Where, alack! Shall Time's best jewel
from Time's chest lie hid?" --SHAKESPEARE.

IN the material universe we find presented to our senses a
physical development continually progressing, extending to all,
even the most minute, material configurations. Some fundamental
distinctions existing between this development as apparent in the
organic and the inorganic systems of the present day are referred
to elsewhere in this volume.[2] In the present essay, these
systems as having a common origin and common ending, are merged
in the same consideration as to the nature of the origin of
material systems in general. This present essay is occupied by
the consideration of the necessity of limiting material
interactions in past time. The speculation originated in the
difficulties which present themselves when we ascribe to these
interactions infinite duration in the past. These difficulties
first claim our consideration.

[1] Proc. Royal Dublin Soc., vol. vii., Part V, 1892.

[2] _The Abundance of Life._

288

Accepting the hypothesis of Kant and Laplace in its widest
extension, we are referred to a primitive condition of wide
material diffusion, and necessarily too of material instability.
The hypothesis is, in fact, based upon this material instability.
We may pursue the sequence of events assumed in this hypothesis
into the future, and into the past.

In the future we find finality to progress clearly indicated. The
hypothesis points to a time when there will be no more
progressive change but a mere sequence of unfruitful events, such
as the eternal uniform motion of a mass of matter no longer
gaining or losing heat in an ether possessed of a uniform
distribution of energy in all its parts. Or, again, if the ether
absorb the energy of material motion, this vast and dark
aggregation eternally poised and at rest within it. The action is
transferred to the subtle parts of the ether which suffer none of
the energy to degrade. This is, physically, a thinkable future.
Our minds suggest no change, and demand none. More than this,
change is unthinkable according to our present ideas of energy.
Of progress there