We duly take note of the tenuity of the cosmic matter on which he operates, which at 3 grammes in weight to 1 cubic miriamètre would correspond to one grain in weight to 771,947,719,300 cubic feet of space, or 1 grain to a cube of 9173 feet—more than 3000 yards—to the side. We do this in order to remind him of what he says at page 151 of his work, when dealing with the rotation of the Kant-Laplace nebula—namely, that it is impossible to comprehend how an immense chaos, of almost inconceivable tenuity, could possess such a rotation from the beginning, and that for want of that inadmissible supposition nothing remains to fall back upon but the mouvements tourbillonnaires of Descartes. Thus he wants us to believe that his tourbillons could move in straight or curved lines, have motions of translation, could attract, restrain, and drive each other into all sorts of movements with the tenuity he has indicated; but that Laplace's nebula, with a density of 1 grain to a cube of 90 feet—or at most 150 feet—to the side, could not be conceived to have the single movement of rotation. And lastly, we repeat that if the centre of the chaos was almost empty, we do not see what induced the cosmic matter to fall into it in elliptic orbits.

Nos. 7 & 8. In these paragraphs, the main features are repetitions of the simple assertions made in all the others, that certain movements possessed by matter in one state would produce other movements in another state, without attempting to show how they all came to so far coincide with each other and form one harmonious whole, with movements in almost one single direction. It is clear that one side of the separated chaos might have acquired motion in one direction from the universal chaos with which it had been in contact, and that the opposite side might have acquired motion in exactly the opposite direction from the original chaos with which it had been in contact; and we are left to find out how these came to agree with each other in the end. And, going back to the beginning, we are left to find out where the mass, out of which he constructs his solar system, was stowed away, after it was separated from the original universal chaos. We can conceive of its being separated by condensation, in obedience to the law of attraction, from the surrounding chaos, in which case it might fall towards a centre, or that some parts of it might come to revolve round each other, and that finally the whole of these parts might come to rotate about a common centre; but that is evidently very different from the mode of formation of the solar system which M. Faye has advocated. It comes to be by far too like the nebula which Laplace supposed to be endowed with rotary motion from the beginning, probably because he did not see, or did not take the trouble to see, how such a motion could be produced. In any case, Laplace did not consider that the primary motion of rotation was the most important part of his hypothesis; neither was it, as it seems to have been in the case we have been considering. And he did not go much further than M. Faye in postulating primary motion, only he did it in a more effectual and business-like manner. He drew on the bank at once for all the funds he required, instead of having to draw afresh every time he found himself in difficulties, as has been the lot of his critic and successor.

Finally, M. Faye tries to show that after all his rings, flat or otherwise, converted or not converted into globes, had been formed according to his ideas, the greater mass by far of the chaos had fallen into the centre, and had formed the sun there last of all. Now, if the preponderating mass of the chaos had been outside of the field of his operations, up to the period when all his planets, satellites, etc. were formed, or at least laid out, it is more natural to suppose that the matter inside of his structure, if there was any, would be drawn outwards by the attraction of the greatly preponderating mass outside, than that any portion of it should have fallen in, in elongated ellipses, towards the insignificant mass that he supposes to have been inside his structure. This, of course, would be nearly exactly the reverse of the mode of formation he was trying to demonstrate, and clearly shows that he was working on unsound principles from the beginning to the end of his cosmogony. It had never occurred to him that matter could be attracted outwards as well as inwards, most probably because it would seem to him ridiculous to imagine that anything in the universe could gravitate upwards.

There are other theories of the formation of the solar system from meteorites and meteors, giving us the idea of its being made out of manufactured articles instead of originally created raw material, which does not in any way simplify the process. In some of them, the inrush of meteor swarms is invoked as the cause of gyratory motion, which places them in much the same category as impact theories. We know that broadcloth is made out of woollen yarn, but we also know how the yarn is made out of wool, and how it is woven into the cloth, whereas we are not told by what process, or even out of what the meteors and meteorites are made, although some of them are said to have thumb-marks upon them.

All these theories and cosmogonies may be very appropriately classified as variations of the nebula hypothesis, and like variations in another science, may be very brilliant, scientific, imaginative, grand, but after all the flights of fancy exhibited by them are set before us, we feel in a measure relieved when a return is made to the original air. They all assume original motion, varied, accidental, opportune, more dependent upon the will of the cosmogonist than on the laws of nature, which tend to confound rather than enlighten any one who tries to understand and bring them, mentally, into actual operation. Laplace assumed rotary motion for the whole of his nebula, and was thus able to account at once for the relation which exists among the planets in respect of distance from, and period of revolution around the sun—arising from the original rotation of the whole mass in one piece—a result which, in any impact theory, has to be accounted for separately, and, in plain truth, empirically in each case, and at each step.

Seeing, then, that we have not been able to find any cosmogony, or speculation, that gives us a more plausible idea of how the solar system has been formed, we shall try whether from the original nebula as imagined by Laplace, it is possible to separate the various members, and form the system in the manner described in his celebrated hypothesis. In other words, we shall endeavour to analyse the hypothesis.

[CHAPTER IV.]

PAGE
[ 72]Preliminaries to analysis of the Nebular hypothesis
[ 73]Definition of the hypothesis
[ 75]Elements of solar system. Tables of dimensions and masses
[ 78]Explanation of tables and density of Saturn
Volume, density and mass of Saturn's rings, general remarks
[ 79]  about them, and satellites to be made from them
[ 79]Future of Saturn's rings
[ 80]Notions about Saturn's satellites and their masses
[ 81]Nature of rings seemingly not well understood
[ 81]Masses given to the satellites of Uranus and Neptune. Explanations of
[ 82]Volumes of the members of the solar system at density of water