While the nebulæ are more distant than many of the discrete stars revealed to us by the telescope, there is no reason to suppose that they are more distant than the star-clouds into which are merged the separate stars of the Milky Way, or the star-clusters seen in other portions of the sky. We know, in fact, that this is not so, for our telescopes show brilliant stars in very many cases which are components of the nebulæ themselves; and the fact that the nebulæ can be seen as having visible form, and not as mere points of light, is itself conclusive as to their relative distances. Hence we need not be surprised to learn that these forming spirals will result each in the production of a single solar system, and not a galaxy of suns, as was once supposed. Were such the case it would be impossible for us to observe the structure of the nebulæ at all, as their distances would be far too vast. Of the forms of the gaseous nebulæ Guillemin asks, “Is the spiral the original form of those gaseous matters, the condensation of which may give, or has given, birth to each individual of this gigantic association?” The same author says of these apparently regularly formed nebulæ, “It is impossible not to recognize in them so many systems.” Many of the spiral nebulæ were formerly supposed to be globular aggregations of nebulous matter only, and their spiral character came as a great surprise with the use of more powerful telescopes; and many—nay, most—of these apparently globular nebulæ have totally changed their appearance when viewed with instruments of higher power, while the spirals have become more and more pronounced in character with every increase of telescopic vision. Of one of such apparently globular nebulæ Guillemin says, “The center is like a large globular nebula with a very marked condensation, whence radiate branches arranged in the form of spirals. In several points of these branches other centers of condensation are noticed. Sir John Herschel had classed this among the nebulæ of rounded, globular form, doubtless because the central nebulosity was the only one revealed by his telescope.” The formation of the sub-centers in this nebula (which is between the Great Bear and Boötes) should be particularly noted in connection with the coalescence of planets as above described. In a note to Guillemin’s work, Professor Lockyer says, “The proper motion of nebulæ has not yet been inquired into, because everybody, looking upon them as irresolvable star-clusters, thought them infinitely remote. Now, however, that we know they are not clusters of stars, properly so called, it is possible that they may be much nearer to us than we imagine.”
In connection with the double-sun spiral nebula shown in the preceding illustration, Guillemin says, “We have noticed nebulæ accompanied by systems of double or multiple stars, placed in a manner so symmetrical in the midst of the nebulosity that it is impossible to doubt the existence of a real connection between the stars and the nebulæ.” And Flammarion says of these apparently globular nebulæ, when under the observation of more powerful telescopes, “In the place where pale and whitish clouds gave out a calm and uniform light, the giant eye of the telescope has discerned alternately dark and luminous regions,”—that is to say, they reveal the operation of the opposite forces of attraction and repulsion, and are spiral. While gaseous nebulæ may be of any conceivable form, the direction and operation of the forces which will determine their character as solar systems must be similar, just as with the forms of organic life, and the only nebulæ which reveal a distinct systematic development in harmony with a working solar system are the spiral. There is no difficulty whatever in tracing such a nebula through all its formative stages, as we have done, and we can, in fact, see painted on the background of the sky every step of the shifting tableau through which such forms must pass.
By the nebular hypothesis the whole course of development, of necessity, is rigidly forward to its culmination; but by employing the analogies presented to us in other operations of nature, we can readily account for variations, haltings, ineffectual efforts, uncompleted processes, and even reversals and redistributions into other secondary sources of energy. They equally comprise the agencies for the production of a single solar system or of a myriad, just as we see the vortical water-spouts or sand-storms either single, double, or multiple; they are flexible, as are all the processes of nature, and require no violent assumption of a prior physical basis known to us “ne’er before on sea or shore.” They also account for the deviation from the normal of the orbits of Neptune and Mercury, for the formation of the asteroids and Saturn’s rings, for the different eccentricities and inclinations of the orbits, for the forward axial rotation of the planets and their satellites, and even for their perturbations and abnormalities; they furnish a basis for Bode’s empirical law, for the distribution of the planets in size, for the origin of comets and meteor streams, for Kepler’s laws, for the equal and permanent relation of eccentricities and inclinations, and for the fixed axial position of the moon with reference to the earth; they account for the free oxygen in the planetary and free hydrogen in the solar atmosphere, they employ the variation of volume of the sun as a regulator instead of an independent generator of light and heat, and they are in entire conformity with the established principles which govern the electrical generation of active forces, their transmission to the sun, their transformation into light and heat, and their return to the regions of space, where they continue to act with potential energy to all eternity, as they must do if space itself is eternal; and we surely know that, if anything whatever is eternal, space must be so. This great ocean—the home, the domain, the workshop of creative energy—is the last retreat of the human intellect; here it may find rest, and here alone. While solar systems may afford in their circling planets a possible dominion for finite life, and in their suns their daily bread; in the infinite and all-embracing realms of space, filled with the potentialities of all created forms, thrilled with the impulses of all creative force, is to be found the unfailing source of all, the dominion of the eternal architect, before whom nature bends the obedient knee, waits to hear his mighty voice, or swiftly runs to do his royal bidding.
CHAPTER XIV.
THE MOSAIC COSMOGONY.
“One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh: but the earth abideth for ever.”—[Bible.]
Thus, as we have seen, through countless future ages will the sun, with his incandescent envelope of hydrogen, and the planets, with their life-sustaining atmospheres of oxygen, fulfil their appointed times and courses. But if we could conceive that all atmospheres, solar and planetary, were suddenly blotted out and forever annihilated, so that these great orbs thenceforth rolled along as they do now, but only as black globes in an ocean of space of Stygian darkness, new atmospheres would at once begin to be formed, and these would soon again surround the sun and planets, precisely like those which now exist.
Sweeping along in darkness, the force of gravity would gather around each of these bodies vast accumulations of aqueous vapor and other gases condensed from the attenuated matter of surrounding space. The planets, by their axial rotations, would again generate from these regions, newly occupied as the system drifted along through space, electrical energy of enormous quantity and potential. Earth would again hear the mighty mandate, “Let there be light,” and from her poles to her equator the skies would blaze with brush-light auroras. Suddenly, with a mighty leap, the pent-up currents would flash across to their opposite electric pole, the auroras would gradually die away, and instantly the molecules of hydrogen would begin to sift out at the solar and those of oxygen at the planetary terminals. The electrical currents driving their furious pathway through the rapidly gathering hydrogen envelope, the sun would first begin to faintly flicker with hazy, nebulous light; the light would gather intensity, and soon flash and glow with energy; the solar nucleus within would become intensely heated and liquefied or partially volatilized, and again the solar streams of incandescent heat and light would radiate forth on every side; the commingled gases, oxygen and nitrogen, would once more surround each planetary globe, and we should have a new solar envelope just as we now see it, and new planetary atmospheres like our own; and then, and not till then, would the opposing generative forces permanently counterbalance each other and electrolytic decomposition become practically stationary, except to compensate for the slight variations constantly liable to occur in the complicated running of the mechanism. So the mutilated crustacean re-grows his lost claws, and so our own gaping wounds are healed by the great vis medicatrix naturæ. The most stable of all things is mutually balanced instability; perhaps there is no other form of stability.
The “Nebular Hypothesis” of Laplace concerns itself only with the aggregate matter of which our solar system is composed, and the force of gravity, including cohesion, ignoring the action of the equally powerful force of repulsion. But there is another nebular hypothesis much older than that of Laplace and far more scientific, for it utilizes both the force of gravity and cohesion and the radiant force of repulsion in the generation of our solar system. We refer to what is known as the Mosaic cosmogony. Whatever the origin of this magnificent narrative may have been, whether written down by Moses originally, or by him derived from the sacred learning of Egypt, with which he was fully acquainted, or by the Egyptian scribes drawn from Ethiopia, and still further back from the sacred traditions of India, it bears internal evidence, when properly rendered from the Hebrew record, of a knowledge of these stupendous phenomena (which no human eye could ever have beheld) which is most remarkable. The commonly accepted versions do not clearly bring out the full meaning of the original,—indeed, it would have been impossible for the earlier translators to have done so,—but when critically and etymologically rendered, very surprising coincidences with the succession of events as they must actually have occurred, and the principles involved in the successive stages of creation, will be found in nearly every part of the record.