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MYSTERIES OF TIME

AND SPACE.

NEWTON AND DARWIN.

It is singular that the theory which-of all those advanced since Newton established the law of gravitation---has given to thoughtful minds the grandest conceptions of Nature and the laws of Nature, should have been, of all theories perhaps ever suggested by man, the most thoroughly misunderstood. There can be no doubt that many who recognise the real significance of the theory of natural development, who know that its influence is by no means limited to biological evolution, but has been felt in the far wider-the infinitely wide-field of cosmical evolution, have been pained by the thought that with the widening of the domain of development, the belief in a power working in and through all things seems to be set on one side in the name of universal evolution. It is this thought-this fear it may be called perhaps which I propose to consider here. I shall endeavour to show that those who are perplexed by such doubts overlook the parallelism which exists between three lines along which men's thoughts have been carried an everincreasing distance, until it has become obvious that two of them at least must be infinite-that the fear expressed by those who see with anxiety the progress of evolutionary doctrine implies a hope that one of these lines may be

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finite while the others are essentially infinite, and are accepted as such without fear or trouble.

It was a new thought in the time of Copernicus, that men had hitherto underrated the extent of the universe, and had overrated the importance of our earth. The globe, which had seemed the one fixed orb for whose benefit the heavenly bodies had all been made, was found to be but one member of a family of orbs circling round a globe much larger than any of them. Thus the earth lost at once her central position, her quality as the world (the sole abode of life), her fixity, her importance in respect of the supposed superiority of her dimensions. When Newton had finally established the Copernican theory, the relative insignificance of the earth was demonstrated. The teachings of the telescope showed in turn the insignificance of the solar system. With every increase of light-gathering power the universe of stars grew larger and larger, even when as yet no scale had been obtained whereby to determine the distance separating star from star. With every improvement in the defining qualities and the measuring power of telescopes, the universe of stars grew larger and larger, independently of mere increase in number of stars; for though for a long time no measurement of star-distances could be effected, each failure with improved means to measure the distances of even the nearest stars showed that the scale of the stellar universe was larger than had before been imagined.

Larger and larger grew the universe, then, as men turned more and more powerful, more and more exact instruments to the survey of the heavens. When at length the distance of the nearest star was measured, and found to be more than twenty millions of millions of miles (more than three years'

1 It is worthy of notice that that theory could not be regarded as demonstrated until the law of attraction had been established. This law carries with it the disproof of the cycles and epicycles of the Ptolemaic system, because under the law of gravity bodies cannot move in such curves. Before the law was established, it was more probable that the planets all moved in simple curves, but not certain.

light-journey, though in each second light travels a distance exceeding nearly eight times the entire circuit of the earth), the number of stars was already known to exceed twenty millions. But more powerful telescopes have been made since. With every increase of telescopic power more stars come into view. With such a telescope as the great reflector of Parsonstown, at least a hundred millions of stars could be seen if every part of the stellar sphere could be scrutinised with that mighty telescopic eye.

But what, after all, is this? Now that we know how minute a creature man is, how insignificant his largest works compared with the globe on which he lives, how this globe. is but a point in the solar system, the solar system lost among countless millions of other suns with their attendant planets, how preposterous appears the thought that any instrument man can fashion can penetrate the real profundities of the universe! Seeing, as we do now, how utterly men's ideas of what the stars are fell short of the truth, and how more inadequate still were their conceptions of the real number of the stars when they trusted only to the natural eye, we should very ill have learned the lesson their errors teach us, if we in turn fell into the mistake of supposing that the telescopic eye can reveal more to us than the merest corner of the universe. Even of the universe of stars—that is, o the system of suns whereof our sun is a member this may be said. But how unlikely, how incredible, indeed, is it that there is but one system of suns, but one galaxy? The star-clouds may not be outlying galaxies, as the Herschels supposed. It seems clear that they are but parts of our own galaxy, whose grandeur and complexity are far greater than had been supposed. But who can doubt that beyond the limits of our own galaxy, beyond spaces bearing probably something like the same proportion to the size of the galaxy that the interplanetary spaces bear to the size of our earth, come other galaxies, some like, some unlike, our own, some as large, some smaller, but many doubtless far larger than the glorious

system of suns which appears infinite to our conceptions? 'As thus we tilt'-in imagination-over an abysmal world, a mighty cry arises that systems more mysterious, worlds more billowy, other heights, other depths are coming, are nearing, are at hand.' Who can wonder if from these awful depths men have turned in weariness of soul, nay, almost in affright, as when the Alpine traveller, peering over some fog-enshrouded precipice, sees down, as the mist rolls past, to deeper and deeper abysses, until he is compelled to turn from the contemplation of the ever-growing depth? It is not simply the vast in which men have learned to believe, not mere immensity, but the mystery of absolute infinity. On all sides our island home is surrounded by a shoreless sea of space. So great has been the oppression of this mystery of infinity that men like Helmholtz, Clifford, and others have attempted, by rejecting the elementary conceptions of space, to show that there may be limits to space -not merely limits to occupied space, but limits to space itself as though by closing his eyes, the traveller, oppressed by the vastness of the plain surface over which he voyaged, should endeavour to convince his mind that the end of his journey was close by him.

'Practically infinite,' as Huxley has expressed it, or absolutely infinite, space is (to all intents and purposes) infinite for us. But space and time are too intimately associated for us to imagine that space can be infinite and time finite; or that if occupied space grows, even under our survey, until we recognise that it is as infinite as space itself, time occupied by the occurrence of events (of whatever sort) can be otherwise than infinite too.

If we could reasonably doubt this we should yet find evidence as clear in this direction as with reference to space itself, though not so obvious to the senses. Everyone can understand the evidence of vast size presented by the universe as science is able to survey it; and everyone can see how the constant growth of the known universe points to the real universe as to all intents and purposes infinite. But not

everyone can understand the evidence of the antiquity of the universe, or the certain promise which its features afford of a duration in the future which must be, like the duration of the universe in the past, practically infinite. But even to those who cannot see the force of the evidence on these points, it is obvious, so soon as the idea has once been presented just as obvious as is the idea of infinite absolute space-that time itself, occupied by events or not so (if this could be imagined), must be absolutely infinite. The occurrence of events might perhaps be spoken of (not conceived very readily) as having an absolute beginning and proceeding onwards to an absolute end, this island of occupied time being lost in a shoreless ocean of void time; but none can reasonably speak even of a beginning or an ending of absolute time, far less conceive either thought.

Space, then, and time present themselves to our conceptions, and with the progress of research may be said to present themselves to our observation, as practically infinite. The earth, which has been displaced from her imagined. central position in space, has been displaced equally from her imagined central position in time. The ocean of time which had been supposed bounded on one side by the beginning of this earth's history and on the other by the close of the earth's career, is seen to bear somewhat the same relation to the earth's duration that the Pacific Ocean bears to the tiniest islet of the least important Polynesian group.

Now in the days when the earth was thought to be central and all-important in space, central also and allimportant in regard to time, a little knowledge-as limited and as imperfect-was possessed by men respecting the action of natural laws. They knew for example that animals, including man, pass through certain stages of development. They saw that the trees of the forest spring from seeds. They could trace further the growth and development of families of animals, the spread of vegetation over countries. and continents; the formation, on the one hand, of tribes,

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