Now one does not see, if the nebula had been exactly what the development men assert—simple, homogeneous matter—how they could ever have made such a composite world as this out of it, or indeed how they could make anything but itself out of it. No chemical actions or reactions can begin in a simple substance; there must always be at least two simple substances to make a compound. Heating or cooling a simple substance will never make it a compound. You may heat water in a boiler and cool it again as often as you please, but your heating and cooling will never make coffee out of it, unless you put coffee into it. So you may heat and cool your simple nebula to all eternity, but you will never get coffee out of it, much less coffee and coffee-pot, china and company, with the biscuits and butter; all which, and a great deal more, our philosophers contrive to churn out of the primeval homogeneous nebula.
But the progress of science has enabled us to show that the nebulæ, far from being simple, homogeneous matter, are compounded of as many ingredients as the flame of your lamp or gas light, which is combined of half a score of different substances. By the discovery of Spectrum Analysis we are able to analyze the chemical composition of the most distant flames, to tell whether they proceed from solids or gases in a state of combustion, and what are the gases and minerals consumed in them. As space forbids the details of this discovery here, I can only state the results, namely that some of the nebulæ consist of clouds of small solid stars, of which the nebula in Orion is an instance; but others consist of flames of gases, in all cases compound, and showing, besides the oxygenated flame, the lines which declare the presence of hydrogen, and of several metals. Thus it is proved, that no such eternal, homogeneous nebulæ are to be found in heaven, and consequently nobody could ever make worlds out of a substance which had no existence.
This theory of development was always a mere notion, a castle in the air, and never could be anything more. To say that it was mere moonshine would be to give it far too respectable a standing; for moonshine has a real existence, and may be seen and felt. But nobody ever saw or felt a homogeneous nebula. Indeed, its inventor never pretended that he, or anybody else, ever saw one; or saw it sailing off into moons, and planets, and suns, or ever would see any such thing. No scientific man has ever pretended that it was an established fact, or anything more than a theory, a notion. Young people, who are invited to hazard their souls on the strength of this miscalled scientific theory, should remember that it is not science, which means something a man knows, but merely a theory, which is some notion which he imagines.
It is an unsatisfactory notion. It does not answer the purpose of its inventors. As we have already seen, it gives us no account of the origin of the homogeneous matter of the nebula. It gives no answer to the questions, How did it get to be so hot, while all the space around it was so cold? Is the fire that heated it burning still, or is it exhausted for want of fuel? Were the germs of all the plants and animals in it while it was blazing at a white heat? If they were, how did they escape being burnt to ashes? If they were not, where did they come from? For there was nothing but that nebula then in existence. Did it contain within itself all the principles of things, all the forces now found in the worlds which grew out of it? If so, how came they there? If not, how did attraction, and repulsion, vegetable life, animal life, intellect, and free will, work themselves into that cloud of homogeneous gas?
Professor Tyndall thus exposes the absurdity of the supposition that the nebula contained the elements of mind: "For what are the core and essence of this hypothesis? Strip it naked and you stand face to face with the notion that not alone the more ignoble forms of animalcular or animal life, not alone the noble forms of the horse and lion, not alone the exquisite and wonderful mechanisms of the human body, but the human mind itself—emotion, intellect, will, and all these phenomena, were once latent in a fiery cloud. Surely the mere statement of such a notion is more than a refutation."[201]
It was only one of several contradictory notions. Thus a writer in the Atlantic Monthly, so far from accepting the notion that the sun and earth are solidifying and cooling down, as explanatory of the facts revealed by astronomy and geology, infers the very contrary from the acknowledged facts, namely, that we are coming up to the nebular condition, rather than developing from it. He writes as follows:
"The earth is progressing by excessively slow changes toward the solar and nebulous condition. Its history is a repetition of the solar, and a time must arrive when the surface, becoming incandescent, will be obscured only by casual dark pits in a brilliant atmosphere, a souvenir of the present darkness of the crust; yet during a certain period, within fixed limits of gravitating force and heat of mass, the human race may continue to exist; progressing, we may suppose, in force and fineness of organization. The race will perish, perhaps, in the order of nature, by failure or insufficient number of offspring, a principal cause of the extinction of superior races. The earth must become lone and voiceless long before the incandescence of the crust. Science may follow it into the condition of an attendant star, and then of an expanding nebula.
"In the cosmos all movements are cyclical, and recurrent, without change, save interchange among forms of motion. A universe which is, in its total, the same to-day as yesterday, and always, would appear idle and dull if it were not the footstool of divine force, upon which the creative will maintains a certain equipoise, necessary to the continued production of spiritual forms."
It is an impracticable notion, contrary to the first principle of mechanics, that action and reaction are equal.