Such hypotheses, for example, as that of
the existence of a primitive, orderless chaos; of a passive and
sluggish eternal matter moulded, with but partial success, by
archetypal ideas; of a brand-new world-stuff suddenly created and
swiftly shaped by a supernatural power; receive no encouragement, but
the contrary, from our present knowledge. That our earth may once have
formed part of a nebulous cosmic magma is certainly possible, indeed
seems highly probable; but there is no reason to doubt that order
reigned there, as completely as amidst what we regard as the most
finished works of nature or of man.** The faith which is born of
knowledge, finds its object in an eternal order, bringing forth
ceaseless change, through endless time, in endless space; the
manifestations of the cosmic energy alternating between phases of
potentiality and phases of explication. It may be that, as Kant
suggests,*** every cosmic [9] magma predestined to evolve into a new
world, has been the no less predestined end of a vanished predecessor.
**Ibid., vol. iv. p. 138; vol. v. pp. 71-73.
***Ibid., vol. viii. p. 321.
II.
Three or four years have elapsed since the state of nature, to which I
have referred, was brought to an end, so far as a small patch of the
soil is concerned, by the intervention of man.
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