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Page 51
THE NEBULAR HYPOTHESIS.
"And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon
the face of the deep."--_Genesis_ i. 2.
[Page 180]
"A dark
Illimitable ocean, without bound,
Without dimension, where length, breadth, and height,
And time, and place are lost."--MILTON.
"It is certain that matter is somehow directed, controlled, and
arranged; while no material forces or properties are known to be
capable of discharging such functions."--LIONEL BEALE.
"The laws of nature do not account for their own origin."--JOHN
STUART MILL.
[Page 181]
IX.
_THE NEBULAR HYPOTHESIS._
The method by which the solar system came into its present form
was sketched in vast outline by Moses. He gave us the fundamental
idea of what is called the nebular hypothesis. Swedenborg, that
prodigal dreamer of vagaries, in 1734 threw out some conjectures of
the way in which the outlines were to be filled up; Buffon followed
him closely in 1749; Kant sought to give it an ideal philosophical
completeness; as he said, "not as the result of observation and
computation," but as evolved out of his own consciousness; and
Laplace sought to settle it on a mathematical basis.
It has been modified greatly by later writers, and must receive
still greater modifications before it can be accepted by the best
scientists of to-day. It has been called "the grandest generalization
of the human mind;" and if it shall finally be so modified as to pass
from a tentative hypothesis to an accepted philosophy, declaring
the modes of a divine worker rather than the necessities of blind
force, it will still be worthy of that high distinction.
Let it be clearly noted that it never proposes to do more than to
trace a portion of the mode of working which brought the universe
from one stage to another. It only goes back to a definite point,
never to absolute beginning, nor to nothingness. It takes matter
from [Page 182] the hand of the unseen power behind, and merely
notes the progress of its development. It finds the clay in the
hands of an intelligent potter, and sees it whirl in the process of
formation into a vessel. It is not in any sense necessarily
atheistic, any more than it is to affirm that a tree grows by vital
processes in the sun and dew, instead of being arbitrarily and
instantly created. The conclusion reached depends on the spirit of
the observer. Newton could say, "This most beautiful system of the
sun, planets, and comets could only proceed from the counsel and
dominion of an intelligent and powerful being!" Still it is well to
recognize that some of its most ardent defenders have advocated it
as materialistic. And Laplace said of it to Napoleon, "I have no
need of the hypothesis of a god."
The materialistic statement of the theory is this: that matter
is at first assumed to exist as an infinite cloud of fire-mist,
dowered with power latent therein to grow of itself into every
possibility of world, flower, animal, man, mind, and affection,
without any interference or help from without. But it requires
far more of the Divine Worker than any other theory. He must fill
matter with capabilities to take care of itself, and this would
tax the abilities of the Infinite One far more than a constant
supervision and occasional interference. Instead of making the
vase in perfect form, and coloring it with exquisite beauty by
an ever-present skill, he must endow the clay with power to make
itself in perfect form, adorn itself with delicate beauty, and
create other vases.
The nebular hypothesis is briefly this: All the matter composing
all the bodies of the sun, planets, and satellites once existed
in an exceedingly diffused state; [Page 183] rarer than any gas with
which we are acquainted, filling a space larger than the orbit of
Neptune. Gravitation gradually contracted this matter into a
condensing globe of immense extent. Some parts would naturally be
denser than others, and in the course of contraction a rotary
motion, it is affirmed, would be engendered. Rotation would flatten
the globe somewhat in the line of its axis. Contracting still more,
the rarer gases, aided by centrifugal force, would be left behind as
a ring that would ultimately be separated, like Saturn's ring, from
the retreating body. There would naturally be some places in this
ring denser than others; these would gradually absorb all the ring
into a planet, and still revolve about the central mass, and still
rotate on its own axis, throwing off rings from itself. Thus the
planet Neptune would be left behind in the first sun-ring, to make
its one moon; the planet Uranus left in the next sun-ring, to make
its four moons from four successive planet-rings; Saturn, with its
eight moons and three rings not made into moons, is left in the
third sun-ring; and so on down to Vulcan.
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