ind. The advance of Science,
however, soon demonstrated--what to the philosophical instinct needed
_no_ demonstration--that the one movement is but a portion--something
more, even, than a consequence--of the other.

For my part, I have no patience with fantasies at once so timorous, so
idle, and so awkward. They belong to the veriest _cowardice_ of thought.
That Nature and the God of Nature are distinct, no thinking being can
long doubt. By the former we imply merely the laws of the latter. But
with the very idea of God, omnipotent, omniscient, we entertain, also,
the idea of _the infallibility_ of his laws. With Him there being
neither Past nor Future--with Him all being _Now_--do we not insult him in
supposing his laws so contrived as not to provide for every possible
contingency?--or, rather, what idea _can_ we have of _any_ possible
contingency, except that it is at once a result and a manifestation of
his laws? He who, divesting himself of prejudice, shall have the rare
courage to think absolutely for himself, cannot fail to arrive, in the
end, at the condensation of _laws_ into _Law_--cannot fail of reaching
the conclusion that _each law of Nature is dependent at all points upon
all other laws_, and that all are but consequences of one primary
exercise of the Divine Volition. Such is the principle of the Cosmogony
which, with all necessary deference, I here venture to suggest and to
maintain.

In this view, it will be seen that, dismissing as frivolous, and even
impious, the fancy of the tangential force having been imparted to the
planets immediately by "the finger of God," I consider this force as
originating in the rotation of the stars:--this rotation as brought about
by the in-rushing of the primary atoms, towards their respective centres
of aggregation:--this in-rushing as the consequence of the law of
Gravity:--this law as but the mode in which is necessarily manifested the
tendency of the atoms to return into imparticularity:--this tendency to
return as but the inevitable reaction of the first and most sublime of
Acts--that act by which a God, self-existing and alone existing, became
all things at once, through dint of his volition, while all things were
thus constituted a portion of God.

The radical assumptions of this Discourse suggest to me, and in fact
imply, certain important _modifications_ of the Nebular Theory as given
by Laplace. The efforts of the repulsive power I have considered as made
for