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or destruction of that which is a reality of existence to-day. And if it is impossible to think that this world can ever be totally destroyed in the future, it must be equally impossible to think that it could ever have been destroyed in the past. In different language, the world we live in and perceive must have existed yesterday as fully as it exists to-day, and also, and in the same manner, and for the same reasons, the day before yesterday, the day before that, and so on and so forth, till we find ourselves plunged into the bewildering domain of what is implied in the infinity of time that is known as the past. The conclusion we arrive at, then, is that there never was a moment of time in the past when the world might be said to have had no existence; that is to say, in different words, that the universe we live in is eternal. The question: Who made it ?,' then, is one which never can arise in rational metaphysics.
The next question is, what does this eternity of the world signify, since we perceive changes going on all round us? It was this aspect of things which led Buddha to regard all things, without an exception, as evanescent and imperma
nent.
But it is obvious that a notion like this can never find support in science or philosophy, inasmuch as the law of conservation of matter and
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