_Modern science knows nothing of a beginning, and, moreover, holds it to be unthinkable. In this it stands in direct opposition to the theological dogma that God created the universe out of nothing; a dogma still accepted by the majority of Protestants and binding on Roman Catholics. For the doctrine of the Church of Rome thereon, as expressed in the Canons of the Vatican Council, is as follows: "If any one confesses not that the world and all things which are contained in it, both spiritual and mental, have been, in their whole substance, produced by God out of nothing; or shall say that God created, not by His free will from all necessity, but by a necessity equal to the necessity whereby He loves Himself, or shall deny that the world was made for the glory of God: let him be anathema."_ 3. The primary substance is indestructible. _The modern doctrine of the Conservation of Energy teaches that both matter and motion can neither be created nor destroyed._ 4. The universe is made up of indivisible particles called atoms, whose manifold combinations, ruled by unalterable affinities, result in the variety of things. _With modifications based on chemical as well as mechanical changes among the atoms, this theory of Leucippus and Democritus is confirmed. (But recent experiments and discoveries show that reconstruction of chemical theories as to the properties of the atom may happen.)_ 5. Change is the law of things, and is brought about by the play of opposing forces. _Modern science explains the changes in phenomena as due to the antagonism of repelling and attracting modes of motion; when the latter overcome the former, equilibrium will be reached, and the present state of things will come to an end._ 6. Water is a necessary condition of life. _Therefore life had its beginnings in water; a theory wholly indorsed by modern biology._ 7. Life arose out of non-living matter. _Although modern biology leaves the origin of life as an insoluble problem, it supports the theory of fundamental continuity between the inorganic and the organic._ 8. Plants came before animals: the higher organisms are of separate sex, and appeared subsequent to the lower. _Generally confirmed by modern biology, but with qualification as to the undefined borderland between the lowest plants and the lowest animals. And, of course, it recognises a continuity in the order and succession of life which was not grasped by the Greeks. Aristotle and others before him believed that some of the higher forms sprang from slimy matter direct._ 9. Adverse conditions cause the extinction of some organisms, thus leaving room for those better fitted. _Herein lay the crude germ of the modern doctrine of the "survival of the fittest."_