MATERIALISTIC EVOLUTION. ere THE 'Eamon OP TER SPECTATOR.")
STR,—May a very humble and very puzzle-pated seeker after. truth lay before the present-day Materialistic leaders of thought a difficulty that has haunted him for some time ? I am taught that matter is eternal, and I am told that from the beginning matter has contained. within itself the promise and potency of- all life that now is ; and I suppose that from the beginning. matter has exercised. this power of evolution, because if it has. been moved to its exercise at some moment of its being, that brings in an outside force which sots ue all astray again.
Well, Sir, I do not know how many centuries, or cycles of centuries, are supposed to be required for the development of :suns, and stars, and planets, . and the British Association, from the lowest and simplest conceivable form of matter— a, few millions of years do not much matter, when we are dealing with eternities—but however many millions many be required, there is room enough for them in the eternal past to have come and gone an infinite number of times, and in the eternal future still room an infinite number of times for them to come and go. Is sit so P Are all things going round in this everlasting, tremendous circle P Have we all happened over aud over again in the ages past P I remember, in one of Marryat'a novels, a *boatswain who professed this circular creed. In my childish days, I thought the boatswain was a little cracked ; to my more matured judgment, he stands
generation (though, as an out as a man in advance of his
evolutionist, I do not quite understand how such a thing can be), and. a leader of the thoughts of men,—I am, Sir, &c.,
W. W. II.
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