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THE KEY. OF KNOWLEDGE.
bodies. Thus, what is the beginning to us might be the end to others in some other planets. The eternal drama goes on and on in this manner, unceasingly and for ever. On our own planet, in daily life, we see the same principle illustrated. What is the seed to-day becomes the tree to-morrow, and the seed again the day after, to become the tree once more. Can we ask, which was the first--the seed or the tree? The tree is in the seed, and the seed is in the tree. There is no question of which was the first, the seed or the tree? There is no room for a first cause in the cycle of Eternity. One can think of a beginning of forms, but what beginning can be ascribed to the substances themselves? Sir Oliver Lodge is right when he says :
* We may all fairly agree, I think, that whatever really and fundamentally exists, so far as bare existence is concerned, be independent of time. It may go through many changes, and thus have a history; that is to say, must have definite time-relations, so far as its changes are concerned; but it can hardly be thought of as either going out of existence, or as coming into existence, at any given period, though it may completely change its form and accidents; every thing basal must have a past and a future of some kind or other, though any special concatenation or arrangement may have a date of origin and of destruction" ("Life and Matter'). i The notion that the universe was miraculously created only about 6,000 years ago, entertained by Christian theologians, has been demonstrated to be false by Scientific research. Haeckel sums up the result of scientific enquiry on this point in the following words :--
"To the brilliant progress of modern geology we owe three extremely important results of general import. In the first place, it has excluded from the story of the earth all question of miracle, all question of supernatural agencies, in the building of the mountains and the shaping of the continents. In the second place, our idea of
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