Does the essentially material hypothesis of Kant and Laplace account for an infinite past as thinkably as it accounts for the infinite future?  As this hypothesis is based upon material instability the question resolves itself into this:—­ Is the assumption of an infinitely prolonged past instability a probable or possible account of the past?  There are, it appears to me, great difficulties involved in accepting the hypothesis of infinitely prolonged material instability.  I will refer here to three principal objections.  The first may be called a metaphysical objection; the second is partly metaphysical and partly physical, the third may be considered a physical objection, as it is involved directly in the phenomena presented by our universe.

The metaphysical objection must have presented itself to every one who has considered the question.  It may

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be put thus:—­If present events are merely one stage in an infinite progress, why is not the present stage long ago passed over?  We are evidently at liberty to push back any stage of progress to as remote a period as we like by putting back first the one before this and next the stage preceding this, and so on, for, by hypothesis, there is no beginning to the progress.

Thus, the sum of passing events constituting the present universe should long ago have been accomplished and passed away.  If we consider alternative hypotheses not involving this difficulty, we are at once struck by the fact that the future of material development is free of the objection.  For the eternity of unprogressive events involved in the future on Kant’s hypothesis, is not only thinkable, but any change is, as observed, irreconcilable with our ideas of energy.  As in the future so in the past we look to a cessation to progress.  But as we believe the activity of the present universe must in some form have existed all along, the only refuge in the past is to imagine an active but unprogressive eternity, the unprogressive activity at some period becoming a progressive activity—­that progressive activity of which we are spectators.  To the unprogressive activity there was no beginning; in fact, beginning is as unthinkable and uncalled for to the unprogressive activity of the past as ending is to the unprogressive activity of the future, when all developmental actions shall have ceased.  There is no beginning or ending to the activity of the universe.

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There is beginning and ending to present progressive activity.  Looking through the realm of nature we seek beginning and ending, but “passing through nature to eternity” we find neither.  Both are justified; the questioning of the ancient poet regarding the past, and of the modern regarding the future, quoted at the head of this essay.