Our objection to regarding the visible universe as having endured from eternity is threefold. In the first place, this hypothesis, to be tenable, assumes the infinity of the visible universe. This, however, is a pure assumption. We may not be able to prove the contrary, but we perceive no reason why the visible universe should be regarded as infinite. No doubt, if scientific principle imperatively demanded the eternity of the present visible universe, we should be compelled to acknowledge its infinity as a consequence; but we shall see presently that scientific principle leads quite in the opposite direction. So that the weakness of the hypothesis in question is, that while it is contrary to scientific principle it likewise assumes the infinity of the visible universe, which is a pure assumption. Our second objection is that, in virtue of the principle of Continuity, we are compelled to believe in the infinite depth of nature, and hold that, just as we must imagine space and duration to be infinite, so must we imagine the structural complexity of the universe to be infinite also. To our minds it appears no less false to pronounce eternal _that aggregation we call the atom_, than it would be to pronounce eternal (Art. 85) _that aggregation we call the sun_. All this follows from the principle of Continuity, in virtue of which we make scientific progress in the knowledge of things, and which leads us, whatever state of things we contemplate, to look for its antecedent in some previous state of things also in the Universe. Our third objection is that which we have stated in Art. 163. It arises from the belief that the dissipation of the energy of the visible universe proceeds _pari passu_ with the aggregation of mass, and therefore that since the large masses of the visible universe are of finite size, we are sure that the process cannot have been going on for ever, or, in other words, the visible universe must have had its origin in time. 216. Let us therefore apply to that stupendous event, the production of the visible universe, not irreverently, but in hopeful trust, the principle of Continuity, and ask ourselves the question, What state of things also in the universe, what conceivable antecedent can have given rise to this unparalleled phenomenon—an antecedent, we need hardly say, which must have operated from the invisible universe? It is a great and awful phenomenon, but we must not shrink before size; we must not be terrified by the magnitude of the event out of reliance upon our principles of discussion.