Page:The Religious Aspect of Philosophy (1885).djvu/269

244 permits progress rather than renders it necessary. Progress is an incident of a certain thermal process, a kind of episode in the history of the dissipation of the energy of our particular mass of matter, and thus, in so far as we yet know, a present occurrence just in our neighborhood, a local item in the news of the universe. Now these are the familiar facts whose meaning we want to enforce in an often neglected aspect.

But, one says, all this has been anticipated hundreds of times. It is really unfair to insist upon such things. For at least here, at least now, the world does realize our moral needs by showing us progress. Is not this all that we need? May we not be content with the few millions of years of growth that remain to our race before the earth grows cold? Is it not foolish to look into futurity so curiously? What matters it whether chaos comes again in far-off ages?

But we still insist. We desire, vainly or justly, yet ardently, that the world shall answer to our moral needs not by accident, not by the way, not for a time, but from its own nature and forever. If we can see that present progress is an indication of the nature of the universe, that the present is a symbol or a specimen of eternity, we shall be content. But if this is not so, if present progress is seen to be a mere accident, an eddy in the stream of atoms, then present progress is a pleasant fact to contemplate, but not a fact of any deep significance. Still we shall be crying in the darkness for support and finding none. For nature will say to each of us; “I