If we can obtain so complete a knowledge of matter and motion, by a scientific study of them, as will enable us, with that knowledge alone, to explain their origin and account for the sequences they involve, then there is no more mystery. There are no ‘ultimates’ to explain. Our knowledge covers all that is, in space and time. The ‘Absolute’ itself is a meaningless superfluity, and the mysterious ‘power’ that is philosophically invoked can have no true place, for all is explicable without it. A beginning is inevitable to a philosophy of material evolution. Then ‘in the beginning’ what? How in the zero, in which there were no ‘concrete forms’ and no ‘preceding histories,’ did the first movement towards the plenished arch of heaven and the fruitful earth arise? Concentration and diffusion, it is affirmed, are universally observed physical processes. The latest science in tracing back the genealogies of various objects finds that ‘their components were once in diffused states, and, pursuing their histories forwards, finds diffused states will be again assumed by them.’[6] Clearly, then, ‘matter’ is assumed to exist at the ‘beginning.’ It certainly _may_ have had a ‘preceding history;’ and to ignore this is to come, at the outset, perilously near to a philosophy ‘that stands self-convicted of inadequacy.’ [Footnote 6: _First Principles_, p. 280.] A diffused state of matter is, it thus appears, the earliest point of the beginning that physical evolution can descry. This is the nebular hypothesis of Laplace; without doubt a majestic theory, but a theory still. Science has welcomed it to work with; and it explains, or aids in the interpretation of, much; but, that it should be taken so for granted as to be considered a demonstrated or even undisputed and established fact of modern science, we may be permitted to doubt; and it must have had a ‘preceding history.’ It takes us to a point in measureless past duration, where all that is now concrete matter is assumed to have been in a gaseous state. It is not even contended that it is an original condition. Such an almost infinite mass of nebulous matter must have been due, if existent, to heat, and to heat of an intensity that defies our range of conception. But whence did such heat come? ‘Heat’ is demonstrated to us now as a rhythmic ‘mode of motion;’ one of the phenomena of nature to be accounted for. Verily, heat is a phenomenon with a ‘preceding history,’ and yet at the outset its presence is assumed in the cosmic cloud.