“I do not think so. I think the creation of the world was the result of the first vague struggle of the spirit of matter toward higher things. The senseless ferocity of blazing gas had calmed down, and the mind of matter, if I may use the term, had reached the dignity of expressing itself in form; and you will mark that the advance toward higher things was on the road from ferocity to kindliness; that the triumph of matter was not so much in the creation of the forms of hills and plains and mountains and seas from whirling oceans of molten material, as in the creation of those conditions of mildness necessary for the existence of life. “Yes, before life ever appeared, matter had developed abstract qualities, the benign had separated itself from the malignant, and, under the influence of the benign, Life first peeped out. “We date everything from that first budding of matter into what we call life. Yet in reality it was the last stage of a long journey, the last act of a long series of actions and reactions, the last triumph of benignity over ferocity in the first stage of the evolution of the world.” [Sidenote: The Benign] “What do you mean by Benignity?” “I use the word Benignity for all that makes for development of the simple into the complex, and the word Malignity for all that retards it. I will use the words Good and Evil if you like them better, and say that Good in those days was anything that helped forward the evolution of matter, Evil anything that retarded it. The sunray falling on the first jelly-fish was good, the storm that injured it was evil; and Good was good just because it enabled matter to build one storey higher, and Evil was evil just because it tried to pull that storey down. “Now you have followed me from the very beginning of the world to the first beginnings of life. Have I impressed you logically with one simple fact, that the journey of atoms from a mass of blazing gas to a world where life was just beginning to bud was along one path, and one path only, the path of development?” “Of course it was.” “And of the other fact are you equally assured?—that the journey from a whirling lava storm to a solid world of comparatively quiet seas and hills and plains and mountains was a glorious journey and a benign?” “Yes.” “Then we will start with matter on the new journey on which it set forth a million million years ago, using for its carriage the first jelly-fish.” [Sidenote: Life Appears] “It had laboured dimly to form the hills, the plains, and the seas, but that part of it which had laboured to form the seas, now that they were formed, found something more to do, found itself developing in a new and strange direction—that of life. “The energy of matter that had already constructed the solar system and had evolved the rocks and the sea found itself at last held up, cribbed, cabined and confined, with nothing to do.