_Can we on scientific grounds trace back the evolution of the universe to an absolute first condition?_—As has been repeatedly stated, all inquiries into the evolutionary history of the stellar universe begin in the middle of a process. Evolution is a process. The changes that now occur arose out of preceding changes, and these, preceding changes out of changes still prior, and so on indefinitely back into the unknown past. This chain of causation—this succession of change—of consequent and antecedent—could not in this manner have extended back to infinity, or else the present stage of the universe’s evolution ought to have been reached infinite ages ago. The evolution of things must therefore have had a beginning in time. Professor Winchell, in his final generalisation to his work, “World Life,” has stated this matter so clearly and forcibly that I cannot do better than here quote his words on the subject. “We have not,” says Professor Winchell, “the slightest scientific grounds for assuming that matter existed in a certain condition from all eternity, and only began undergoing its changes a few millions or billions of years ago. The essential activity of the powers ascribed to it forbids the thought. For all that we know—and, indeed, as the _conclusion_ from all that we know—primal matter began its progressive changes on the morning of its existence. As, therefore, the series of changes is demonstrably finite, the lifetime of matter itself is necessarily finite. There is no real refuge from this conclusion; for, if we suppose the beginning of the present cycle to have been only a restitution of an older order effected by the operations of natural causes, and suppose—what science is unable to comprehend—that older order to be a similar re-inauguration, and so on indefinitely through the past, we only postpone the predication of an absolute beginning, since, by all the admissions of modern scientific philosophy, it is a necessity of nature to run down.”