dom which guides, and has ever guided, the operations of nature.
But, while utterly denying what Mr Darwin would seem to point to—that Reason is a result of the functions of matter, and is a comparatively recent development in the history of this globe—Aristotle would equally deny the thesis of Paley, that Reason, in the form of an intelligent Creator, existed separately before this world, and constructed the world as a watchmaker constructs a watch. While he considered Reason to have existed from all eternity, he thought that the Universe, pervaded in all its parts by Reason, had also existed from all eternity. Thus all idea of the world having been created was quite eliminated from the thoughts of Aristotle. He said the world must have been eternal, for everything which is created, or comes into existence, comes into the "actual" out of the "possible." The egg and the seed are instances of the "possible," the fowl and the flower of the "actual." But there must always have been a fowl before there was an egg, and a flower before there was a seed. Therefore the actual must always have been first; and if this be the case with particular classes of things, we cannot conceive that the whole world was ever non-existent, and a mere possibility waiting to be called into existence ('Metaphys.' VIII. viii.)
Philosophers always acknowledge the difficulty which there is in conceiving a beginning. Aristotle escapes this difficulty by asserting that the Universe has existed eternally the same as it appears to us now. He says that there is only one Cosmos or Universe,
