the agglomerations considered
as in their primary stages throughout the Universal sphere, and suppose
this incipient agglomeration to be taking place at that point where the
centre of our Sun exists--or rather where it _did_ exist originally; for
the Sun is perpetually shifting his position--we shall find ourselves
met, and borne onward for a time at least, by the most magnificent of
theories--by the Nebular Cosmogony of Laplace:--although "Cosmogony" is
far too comprehensive a term for what he really discusses--which is the
constitution of our solar system alone--of one among the myriad of
similar systems which make up the Universe Proper--that Universal
sphere--that all-inclusive and absolute _Kosmos_ which forms the subject
of my present Discourse.

Confining himself to an _obviously limited_ region--that of our solar
system with its comparatively immediate vicinity--and _merely_
assuming--that is to say, assuming without any basis whatever, either
deductive or inductive--_much_ of what I have been just endeavoring to
place upon a more stable basis than assumption; assuming, for example,
matter as diffused (without pretending to account for the diffusion)
throughout, and somewhat beyond, the space occupied by our
system--diffused in a state of heterogeneous nebulosity and obedient to
that omniprevalent law of Gravity at whose principle he ventured to make
no guess;--assuming all this (which is quite true, although he had no
logical right to its assumption) Laplace has shown, dynamically and
mathematically, that the results in such case necessarily ensuing, are
those and those alone which we find manifested in the actually existing
condition of the system itself.

To explain:--Let us conceive _that_ particular agglomeration of which we
have just spoken--the one at the point designated by our Sun's centre--to
have so far proceeded that a vast quantity of nebulous matter has here
assumed a roughly globular form; its centre being, of course, coincident
with what is now, or rather was originally, the centre of our Sun; and
its periphery extending out beyond the orbit of Neptune, the most remote
of our planets:--in other words, let us suppose the diameter of this
rough sphere to be some 6000 millions of miles. For ages, this mass of
matter has been undergoing condensation, until at length it has become
reduced into the bulk we imagine; having proceeded gradually, of course,
from its atomic and imperceptible state, into wh