primitive matter may have been, it must, at any rate, have been so light, so rarefied, that, according to Helmholtz, at the remote epoch when our present planetary system was a mere nebulous haze pervading space in a vague and general way, it would have required several millions of cubic miles of it to weigh a single grain. This is a very cheerful thought, and ought to make us thankful for terra firma; but it scarcely leads us very far, and as no one seems to be agreed as to what the ultimate particles of matter are in themselves, we will not dwell upon it any longer at present. After all, it is only a question of raw material, and this we are not in a position to solve. Let us, in the interest of those who feel the problem of the Universe a weight too heavy to be borne, advance a stage backwards. How came the Universe into being at all? Here, it must be confessed, we seem to be temporarily foiled. Scientific men will tell us, confidently enough, that the simplest elements of matter were formed first after the condensation of the primeval aura, the combinations becoming more and more complex, until they

reached that subtle thing which is the Physical Basis of Life, and which, starting in water as a structureless speck of jelly, has reached its fullest development in man. This is interesting enough, but it does not quite touch the point. Whence came those primitive elements? Here is, or seems to be, the Universe; it is, or seems to be, a particularly solid and stubborn fact; its existence, or apparent existence, claims to be accounted for somehow; and the question confronting us is, How?

Help is immediately at hand. It is our premises that are wrong. Mr. Herbert Spencer

-a thinker who has absorbed and concentrated in himself the researches of well-nigh all his contemporaries, and, passing them through the crucible of his most capacious mind, has moulded them into a complete system of Synthetic Philosophy-tells us that there are three, and only three, ways in which the Universe can conceivably be accounted for. The first is that the Universe never came into being at all, because it was never out of being; it is self-existent, always has existed, cannot help

existing; there never was a time when it did not exist. This is the Atheistic theory; and, as Mr. Spencer shows clearly enough, it leaves us just where we were before. Self-existence necessarily means existence without a beginning, and by no mental effort can we conceive of this. The theory is therefore unthinkable; and even if it were not unthinkable it affords no solution of the mystery. Secondly, there are those who say that the Universe made itself. This is the Pantheistic theory, and a very amusing one it is. For mark, before a thing is made it is clearly non-existent; and we are asked to believe that, at a certain epoch in time, non-existence, or nothing, began to create itself into something; or, to put it conversely, that this something began to create itself before it existed, and that the result of its exertions was itself. A more delightful network of contradictions and absurdities assuredly was never woven; the idea is so hopelessly at variance with the laws of thought that it is difficult to put it into the Queen's English. It is true that the upholders of this theory attempt to modify

its grotesqueness by postulating what they call potential existence, which afterwards passed into actual existence; but it will not do. In the first place, the transition from potential to actual existence is as unthinkable as selfexistence, for the reason that it implies a change without a cause; in the second place, it entirely fails to tell us where potential existence itself first came from. We have now only one more theory to fall back upon, namely, that the Universe was created by a power outside itself. This is the Theistic theory. But, alas! even this involves unthinkabilities just as unthinkable as either of the other two. At the very outset we find that the real mystery, the production of something out of nothing, is still unaccounted for. We can easily imagine the formation of suns and worlds, which simply implies the arrangement of pre-existing elements; but whence came the pre-existing elements? And even if there were no elements, nothing but an immeasurable void, whence came that? Was it created? Was there ever a time when space itself was not?

Then there must have been a creating power, and that power self-existent. But self-existence is unthinkable in any form, whether as a selfexistent power or a self-existent Universe. Creation by external agency suggests the question, How came there to be an external agency? To account for this we are once more thrown back upon the old three theories we started with the creating power must be either selfexistent, self-created, or created by some other creating power; and all these hypotheses are just as unthinkable when applied to the creating power as when applied to the material Universe. We see, then, that all three theories respecting the origin of the Universe involve some absurdities, some impossibilities, and all of them

are unthinkable.

And thus we come within sight of our goal. For what is the conclusion in which we find ourselves landed? Let us put the arguments as follows:

I. There are only three conceivable methods by which the Universe can have come into existence.