[77] The word Creation must here be construed strictly, so as to signify a true Beginning;--the idea that is of a law-governed _materies mundi_, a substantial force, and movement evoked into primary Existence. The prospect of final change yet to be, is thus similarly connected by a living philosopher (Helmholtz) with the history of our world's Past:-- "We estimate the duration of human History at 6,000 years; but immeasurable as this time may appear to us, what is it in comparison with the time during which the earth carried successive series of rank plants and mighty animals, and no men; during which in our neighbourhood the amber-tree bloomed, and dropped its costly gum on the earth and in the sea; when in Siberia, Europe, and North America groves of tropical palms flourished; where gigantic lizards, and after them elephants, whose mighty remains we still find buried in the earth, found a home? Different geologists, proceeding from different premises, have sought to estimate the duration of the above-named creative period, and vary from a million to nine million years.----The time during which the earth generated organic beings is again small when compared with the ages during which the world was a ball of fused rocks. For the duration of its cooling from 2,000° to 200° Centigrade the experiments of Bishop upon basalt show that about 350 millions of years would be necessary.----And with regard to the time during which the first nebulous mass condensed into our planetary system, our most daring conjectures must cease. The history of man, therefore, is but a short ripple in the ocean of time.----For a much longer series of years than that during which he has already occupied this world, the existence of the present state of inorganic nature favourable to the duration of man seems to be secured, so that for ourselves and for long generations after us we have nothing to fear. But the same forces of air and water, and of the volcanic interior, which produced former geological revolutions, and buried one series of living forms after another, act still upon the earth's crust. They more probably will bring about the last day of the human race than those distant cosmical alterations of which we have spoken, forcing us perhaps to make way for new and more complete living forms, as the lizards and the mammoth have given place to us and our fellow-creatures which now exist.