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its former condition of potential by no process of which we can have any conception.

Our speculation is that we, as spectators of evolution, are witnessing the interaction of forces which have not always been acting.  A prematerial state of the universe was one of unfruitful motions, that is, motions unattended by progressing changes, in our region of the ether.  How extended we cannot say; the nature of the motions we know not; but the kinetic entities differed from matter in the one important particular of not possessing gravitational attraction.  Such kinetic configurations we cannot consider to be matter.  It was possible to construct matter by their summation or linkage as the configuration of the crystal is possible in the clear supersaturated liquid.

Duration in an ether filled with such motions would pass in a succession of mere unfruitful events; as duration, we may imagine, even now passes in parts of the ether similar to our own.  An endless (it may be) succession of unprogressive, fruitless events.  But at one moment in the infinite duration the requisite configuration of the elementary motions is attained; solely by the one chance disposition the stability of all must go, spreading from the fateful point.

Possibly the material segregation was confined to one part of space, the elementary motions condensing upon transformation, and so impoverishing the ether around till the action ceased.  Again in the same sense as the

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stars are simultaneous, so also they may be regarded as uniform in size, for the difference in magnitude might have been anything we please to imagine, if at the same time we ascribe sufficient distance sundering great and small.  So, too;, will a dilute solution of acetate of soda build a crystal at one point, and the impoverishment of the medium checking the growth in this region, another centre will begin at the furthest extremities of the first crystal till the liquid is filled with loose feathery aggregations comparable in size with one another.  In a similar way the crystallizing out of matter may have given rise, not to a uniform nebula in space, but to detached nebula, approximately of equal mass, from which ultimately were formed the stars.

That an all-knowing Being might have foretold the ultimate event at any preceding period by observing the motions of the parts then occurring, and reasoning as to the train of consequences arising from these nations, is supposable.  But considerations arising from this involve no difficulty in ascribing to this prematerial train of events infinite duration.  For progress there is none, and we can quite as easily conceive of some part of space where the same Infinite Intelligence, contemplating a similar train of unfruitful motions, finds that at no time in the future will the equilibrium be disturbed.  But where evolution is progressing this is no longer conceivable, as being contradictory to the very idea of progressive development.  In this case Infinite Intelligence