Again, science suggests that the present process of material
aggregation is not finished, and possibly will only be when it
prevails universally. Hence the very distribution of the stars,
as we observe them, as isolated aggregations, indicates a
development which in the infinite duration must be regarded as
equally advanced in all parts of stellar space and essentially a
simultaneous phenomenon. For were we spectators of a system in
which any very great difference of age prevailed, this very great
difference would be attended by some such appearance as the
following:—
The aupearance of but one star, other generations being long
extinct or no others yet come into being; or, perhaps, a faint
nebulous wreath of aggregating matter somewhere solitary in the
heavens; or no sign of matter beyond our system, either because
ungathered or long passed away into darkness.[1]
Some such appearances were to be expected had the aggregation of
matter depended solely on chance encounters of particles
scattered through infinite space.
For as, by hypothesis, the aggregation occupies an infinite time
in consummation it is nearly a certainty that each particle
encountered after immeasurable time, and then for the first time
endowed with actual gravitational potential energy, would have
long expended this energy
[1] It is interesting to reflect upon the effect which an entire
absence of luminaries outside our solar system would have had
upon the views of our philosophers and upon our outlook on life.
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before another particle was gathered. But the fact that so many
fires which we know to be of brief duration are scattered through
a region of space, and the fact of a configuration which we
believe to be a transitory ore, suggest their simultaneous
aggregation here and there. And in the nebulous wreaths situated
amidst the stars there is evidence that these actually originated
where they now are, for in such no relative motion, I believe,
has as yet been detected by the spectroscope. All this, too, is
in keeping with the nebular hypothesis of Kant and Laplace so
long as this does not assume a primitive infinite dispersion of
matter, but the gathering of matter from finite distances first
into nebulous patches which aggregating with each other have
given rise to our system of stars. But if we extend this
hypothesis throughout an infinite past by the supposition of
aggregation of infinitely remote particles we replace the
simultaneous approach required in order to accotnt for the
simultaneous phenomena visible in the heavens, by a succession of
aggregative events, by hypothesis at intervals of nearly infinite
duration, when the events of the universe had consisted of fitful
gleams lighted after eternities of time and extinguished for yet
other eternities.
Finally, if we seek to replace the eternal instability involved
in Kant's hypothesis when extended over an infinite past, by any
hypothesis of material stability, we at once find ourselves in
the difficulty that from the known properties of matter such
stability must have been
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permanent if ever existent, which is contrary to fact. Thus the
kinetic inertia expressed in Newton's first law of motion might
well be supposed to secure equilibrium with material attraction,
but if primevally diffused matter had ever thus been held in
equilibrium it must have remained so, or it was maintained so
imperfectly, which brings us back to endless evolution.