This theory differs from Buffon's much as a low pressure engine, deriving most of its power from the condenser, differs from one of high pressure. La Place does not explode the boiler to make his planets, but merely runs his train so fast as to break an axle every now and then, when the wheel runs off with the velocity it has got, and keeps its track as well as if it had an engineer to guide it, grows into a little locomotive by dint of running, and after a while breaks an axle too—breaking is a hereditary failing of these suns and planets that had no God to make them—and the wheels thus thrown off supply it with moons and rings, like Saturn's. The illustration is not nearly so absurd as the theory, inasmuch as a locomotive is an incomparably less complicated contrivance than a planet. However the nonsense was cradled in the halls of philosophy by means of antiquity, and distance.
As no fiction was too marvelous for the credence of the Greek, if it were only a hundred years old, or located beyond the Euxine, so to our development philosopher any impossibility may be accepted, if it can only be dissolved into gas, and located a good many millions of miles away; and to make it an article of faith on which he will risk his soul, it is only necessary to give it a remote antiquity. No Papist ever insisted more on antiquity as the solvent of all absurdity. Antiquity, distance, and expansion are his trinity, with which all absurdities become scientific facts.
Herschel had discovered numbers of nebulæ, or luminous clouds, in the distant heavens shining with a distinct light, but which, with the highest magnifying power he could apply, presented no trace of stars. Some nebulæ, it is true, his largest telescope resolved, like our own Milky Way, into beds of distinct stars; but there were others—for instance, one in the belt of Orion—visible to the naked eye as a cloud, but which his forty feet telescope only displayed as a larger cloud, without any shape of stars. Now, reasoning upon the matter, he found that if these nebulæ were composed of stars as large as those distinctly visible, they must be immensely distant to be indistinguishable by his telescope, and exceedingly numerous and close together to give a cloud of light visible to the naked eye. In fact, the suns of those firmaments must be so close to each other as to present a blaze of glory, and complexities of revolution inconceivable to the dwellers on earth. But as this daring idea seemed incredible, even to his giant mind, he thought the appearance of these nebulæ might be more rationally accounted for by supposing that they were not stars at all, but simply clouds of gaseous matter, like the matter of comets, from which he supposed that stars were formed by a long process of condensation and solidification. He thought this theory was favored by the fact, that nebulæ are generally seen in those portions of the heavens that are not thickly strewn with stars; and also by the various forms of these clouds. Some were merely loose clouds, without any definite form; others seemed gathering toward the center. In some, of a roundish, or oval form, the central mass seemed well defined. In a few, the process seemed nearly complete, a bright star shining in the midst of a faint nebulous halo. Here, then, it was said, we see the whole progress of the growth of stars; their development from the gaseous nebulous fluid into solid, brilliant suns. La Place accepted Herschel's discoveries as conclusive proof of the truth of his theory, and it was generally accepted by the scientific world. Oddly enough, Infidels seem not to have noticed that those appearances of condensation toward the center, which seemed to Herschel so strongly in favor of his theory of the nebulous fluid, were diametrically opposed to La Place's requirements of condensation at the circumference; and these two contradictory notions were supposed to support each other, and to furnish a solid basis for the development hypothesis.
This theory, as stated by Herschel, and expounded by Nichol, Dick, and other Christian writers, is not necessarily Atheistical. On the contrary, they allege that it furnishes us with greater evidences of the power of God, and gives us higher ideas of his wisdom, to suppose a system of creation by development, under natural law, than by a direct exercise of his will. Undoubtedly, had God so pleased he could have made suns from fire-mists, according to some plan which his infinite wisdom could devise, and his omnipotent power could execute; but it is beyond the possibilities even of omniscience and omnipotence to make worlds, or to make anything but nonsense, according to La Place's plan. Had God so pleased, to make firmaments grow as forests do, and if he should please to enable us to discover such celestial growth in some distant part of heaven, we should have the same kind of evidence of his being, power, wisdom, and goodness in this creation by natural law which we now have from his providence by natural law, in the growth of the fruits of the earth, and as much greater an amount of it as the heavens are greater than the earth. The first beginning of primeval elements demands a Creator. The contrivance of the law of development proclaims a Contriver. The force by which it operates—whether that of gravity or chemical reaction—must be the force of an Agent.
The development theory, then, fails to account for the origin of the universe, or even of our own world. Herbert Spencer, its most eloquent expounder, admits this. He says: "It remains only to point out that while the genesis of the solar system, and of countless other systems like it, is thus rendered comprehensible, the ultimate mystery continues as great as ever. The problem of existence is not solved; it is simply removed farther back. The Nebular Hypothesis throws no light on the origin of diffused matter; and diffused matter as much needs accounting for as concrete matter. The genesis of an atom is not easier to conceive than the genesis of a planet. Nay, indeed, so far from making the universe a less mystery than before, it makes it a greater mystery. Creation by manufacture is a much lower thing than creation by evolution. A man can put together a machine, but he can not make a machine develop itself. The ingenious artisan, able as some have been, so far to imitate vitality as to produce a mechanical piano-forte player, may in some sort conceive how, by greater skill, a complete man might be artificially produced; but he is unable to conceive how such a complex organism gradually arises out of a minute, structureless germ. That our harmonious universe once existed potentially as formless, diffused matter, and has slowly grown into its present organized state, is a far more astonishing fact than would have been its formation after the artificial method vulgarly supposed. Those who hold it legitimate to argue from phenomena to noumena, may rightly contend that the Nebular Hypothesis implies a First Cause as much transcending 'the mechanical god of Paley,' as this does the fetish of a savage."[200]
The Nebular Hypothesis, then, can not exist without God. However, as it seems to remove him to a great distance from this present world, both in space and time, it has become popular with Atheists.
The Nebular Hypothesis, as presented by Atheists, imagines a state of primeval matter as simple, or homogeneous, of which science presents no example, in heaven or on earth.
This homogeneous condition of matter is the very foundation of the theory. Spencer reasons at great length, that all progress is from the simple to the differentiated. And it is indispensable for the Atheists to prove that the primeval world was composed of matter perfectly simple and homogeneous. If they alleged that it was composed of several ingredients, nobody would believe them that this compound was eternal. There is no conviction of common sense stronger than that every compound has been put together by some compounder.
They could not persuade a child that a plum pudding made itself, or that a steamship filled with passengers existed so from eternity, much less a planet with a much larger crew and company. They therefore alleged that the first matter of the universe was perfectly homogeneous and simple. When common people objected that no such thing was to be seen in this world nowadays, since all things here—stones, water, air, earth, plants, animals—are compounded and built up out of a great variety of matters, they claimed that this is the result of the growth of our planet; but that the nebulæ, which astronomers see far away in the sky, are young suns and planets, just beginning to condense, and that the gas they consist of is the genuine, simple, homogeneous matter out of which this world, and all worlds, originally made themselves. They thought the nebulæ were so very far away that nobody would ever go there to see and come back to contradict them; and so they were quite safe in pointing to them as examples of homogeneous matter.