Vainly does the strained intellect seek to overtake an ever-receding commencement, and toil to gain some adequate grasp of an apparently endless succession.

A beginning there must have been, though we can never hope to fix its point.

Even speculation droops her wings in the attenuated atmosphere of a past so remote, and the light of imagination is quenched in the darkness of a history so ancient.

In _time_, as in _space_, the confines of the universe must ever remain concealed from us, and of the end we know no more than of the beginning.

Inconceivable as is to us the lapse of "geological time," it is no more than "a mere moment of the past, a mere infinitesimal portion of eternity." Well may "the human heart, that weeps and trembles," say, with Richter's pilgrim through celestial space, "I will go no farther; for the spirit of man acheth with this infinity.