that order and stability
are secured, and the process by which they have been obtained.... Now the
assertion that the peculiarities which make the solar system stable and the
earth habitable have flowed naturally and necessarily from the simple
mutual gravity of the several parts of nebulous matter is one which greatly
requires proof, but which has never received it. In saying this, we do not
challenge the proof of the nebular theory itself. That theory may or may
not be true. We are quite willing to suppose it true--to grant that it has
been scientifically established. What we maintain is, that even if we admit
unreservedly that the earth and the whole system to which it belongs once
existed in a nebulous state, from which they were gradually evolved into
their present condition conformably to physical laws, we are in no degree
entitled to infer from the admission the conclusion which Comte and others
have drawn. The man who fancies that the nebular theory implies that the
law of gravitation, or any other physical law, has of itself determined the
course of cosmical evolution, so that there is no need for believing in the
existence and operation of a divine mind, proves merely that he is not
exempt from reasoning very illogically. The solar system could only have
been evolved out of its nebulous state into that which it now presents if
the nebula possessed a certain size, mass, form, and constitution, if it
was neither too fluid nor too tenacious--if its atoms were all numbered,
its elements all weighed, its constituents all disposed in due relation to
one another; that is to say, only if the nebula was in reality as much a
system of order, which Intelligence alone could account for, as the worlds
which have been developed from it. The origin of the nebula thus presents
itself to reason as a problem which demands solution no less than the
origin of the planets. All the properties and laws of the nebula require to
be accounted for. What origin are we to give them? It must be either reason
or unreason. We may go back as far as we please, but, at every step and
stage of the regress we must find ourselves confronted with the same
question, the same alternative--intelligent purpose or colossal chance."

Now, so far as Comte is here guilty of the fallacy I have already dwelt
upon of building a destructive argument upon a demonstration of mere
orderly processes in nature, as distinguished from a demonstration of the
natural ca