246 THE GROUNDWORK OF SCIENCE

nebula was churned into worlds supposing the solar system

did so arise. We may be asked : " How is it possible for

creatures such as men are, mere insects of a day, inhabiting

a floating atom in an obscure corner of the universe, to know

that anything is, and must be, absolutely true for all regions

of space and the most distant abysses of time?"

Yet, in fact, we know much more than even this. However

poor, feeble, and incompletely intellectual human nature may

be, it is nevertheless endowed with power to see necessary

limits to the action even of Omnipotence itself.

Let us suppose that our planet might have been the abode

of vegetable life only ; its hills and dales and plains abound-

ing in forests in which the voice of no songster could be

heard or even the hum of insect life. Let us also suppose

that the world might have been devoid of dry land and

covered everywhere by an ocean, in the waters of which

animal life existed exclusively and abounded. However

possible we may suppose each of these conditions to have

been, it is manifest that no power, however omnipotent

we may believe it to be, could ever have made both of these

possible states of our globe simultaneously actual. Such

considerations as these may help to give confidence to any of

our readers who, from want of thought, may have been dis-

posed to doubt their powers of perception as to necessary

truths and truths of a lower order. It is necessary, indeed,

to be careful not to declare anything to be certain till it

has been seen to be clearly and indubitably true ; but it

is no less necessary that we should not shrink from declaring

that to be true, the certainty of which is evident to our

minds, however wonderful it is, and however inexplicable

may be the fact of our knowledge of it. We are able to

explain how it is we know many things, but how we know

primary and fundamental truths which are self-evident and

necessarily incapable of proof must ever remain for us en-

nebula was churned into worlds supposing the solar system

did so arise. We may be asked : " How is it possible for

creatures such as men are, mere insects of a day, inhabiting

a floating atom in an obscure corner of the universe, to know

that anything is, and must be, absolutely true for all regions

of space and the most distant abysses of time?"

Yet, in fact, we know much more than even this. However

poor, feeble, and incompletely intellectual human nature may

be, it is nevertheless endowed with power to see necessary

limits to the action even of Omnipotence itself.

Let us suppose that our planet might have been the abode

of vegetable life only ; its hills and dales and plains abound-

ing in forests in which the voice of no songster could be

heard or even the hum of insect life. Let us also suppose

that the world might have been devoid of dry land and

covered everywhere by an ocean, in the waters of which

animal life existed exclusively and abounded. However

possible we may suppose each of these conditions to have

been, it is manifest that no power, however omnipotent

we may believe it to be, could ever have made both of these

possible states of our globe simultaneously actual. Such

considerations as these may help to give confidence to any of

our readers who, from want of thought, may have been dis-

posed to doubt their powers of perception as to necessary

truths and truths of a lower order. It is necessary, indeed,

to be careful not to declare anything to be certain till it

has been seen to be clearly and indubitably true ; but it

is no less necessary that we should not shrink from declaring

that to be true, the certainty of which is evident to our

minds, however wonderful it is, and however inexplicable

may be the fact of our knowledge of it. We are able to

explain how it is we know many things, but how we know

primary and fundamental truths which are self-evident and

necessarily incapable of proof must ever remain for us en-