is, nevertheless, the measure of the
density, and thus inversely of the condensation, of the Sun, throughout
the processes detailed.

Having shrunk, however, so far as to fill only the orbit of our Earth,
the parent sphere whirled from itself still one other body--the Earth--in
a condition so nebulous as to admit of this body's discarding, in its
turn, yet another, which is our Moon;--but here terminated the lunar
formations.

Finally, subsiding to the orbits first of Venus and then of Mercury, the
Sun discarded these two interior planets; neither of which has given
birth to any moon.

Thus from his original bulk--or, to speak more accurately, from the
condition in which we first considered him--from a partially spherified
nebular mass, _certainly_ much more than 5,600 millions of miles in
diameter--the great central orb and origin of our solar-planetary-lunar
system, has gradually descended, by condensation, in obedience to the
law of Gravity, to a globe only 882,000 miles in diameter; but it by no
means follows, either that its condensation is yet complete, or that it
may not still possess the capacity of whirling from itself another
planet.

I have here given--in outline of course, but still with all the detail
necessary for distinctness--a view of the Nebular Theory as its author
himself conceived it. From whatever point we regard it, we shall find it
_beautifully true_. It is by far too beautiful, indeed, _not_ to possess
Truth as its essentiality--and here I am very profoundly serious in what
I say. In the revolution of the satellites of Uranus, there does appear
something seemingly inconsistent with the assumptions of Laplace; but
that _one_ inconsistency can invalidate a theory constructed from a
million of intricate consistencies, is a fancy fit only for the
fantastic. In prophecying, confidently, that the apparent anomaly to
which I refer, will, sooner or later, be found one of the strongest
possible corroborations of the general hypothesis, I pretend to no
especial spirit of divination. It is a matter which the only difficulty
seems _not_ to foresee.[6]

[6] I am prepared to show that the anomalous revolution of the
satellites of Uranus is a simply perspective anomaly arising
from the inclination of the axis of the planet.

The bodies whirled off in the processes described, would exchange, it
has been seen, the superficial _rotation_ of the orbs whence they
originated, for a _revolution_