character. But consider the legitimate _reductio ad absurdum_ of an ember raked from a fire 1000 years ago. Is it not yet cooled down to the constant temperature of its surroundings? And we may evidently increase the time a million-fold if we please. It appears as if we must regard eternity as outliving every progressive change, For there is no convergence or enfeeblement of time. The ever-flowing present moves no differently for the occurrence of the mightiest or the most insignificant events. And even if we say that time is only the attendant upon events, yet this attendant waits patiently for the end, however long deferred. Does the essentially material hypothesis of Kant and Laplace account for an infinite past as thinkably as it accounts for the infinite future? As this hypothesis is based upon material instability the question resolves itself into this:-- Is the assumption of an infinitely prolonged past instability a probable or possible account of the past? There are, it appears to me, great difficulties involved in accepting the hypothesis of infinitely prolonged material instability. I will refer here to three principal objections. The first may be called a metaphysical objection; the second is partly metaphysical and partly physical, the third may be considered a physical objection, as it is involved directly in the phenomena presented by our universe. The metaphysical objection must have presented itself to every one who has considered the question. It may 290 be put thus:--If present events are merely one stage in an infinite progress, why is not the present stage long ago passed over? We are evidently at liberty to push back any stage of progress to as remote a period as we like by putting back first the one before this and next the stage preceding this, and so on, for, by hypothesis, there is no beginning to the progress.