that the more remote of the stars have existed, under the forms in which
we now see them, for an inconceivable number of years. So far back _at
least_, then, as the period when these stars underwent condensation,
must have been the epoch at which the mass-constitutive processes began.
That we may conceive these processes, then, as still going on in the
case of certain "nebulae," while in all other cases we find them
thoroughly at an end, we are forced into assumptions for which we have
really _no_ basis whatever--we have to thrust in, again, upon the
revolting Reason, the blasphemous idea of special interposition--we have
to suppose that, in the particular instances of these "nebulae," an
unerring God found it necessary to introduce certain supplementary
regulations--certain improvements of the general law--certain retouchings
and emendations, in a word, which had the effect of deferring the
completion of these individual stars for centuries of centuries beyond
the aera during which all the other stellar bodies had time, not only to
be fully constituted, but to grow hoary with an unspeakable old age.

Of course, it will be immediately objected that since the light by which
we recognize the nebulae now, must be merely that which left their
surfaces a vast number of years ago, the processes at present observed,
or supposed to be observed, are, in fact, _not_ processes now actually
going on, but the phantoms of processes completed long in the Past--just
as I maintain all these mass-constitutive processes _must_ have been.

To this I reply that neither is the now-observed condition of the
condensed stars their actual condition, but a condition completed long
in the Past; so that my argument drawn from the _relative_ condition of
the stars and the "nebulae," is in no manner disturbed. Moreover, those
who maintain the existence of nebulae, do _not_ refer the nebulosity to
extreme distance; they declare it a real and not merely a perspective
nebulosity. That we may conceive, indeed, a nebular mass as visible at
all, we must conceive it as _very near us_ in comparison with the
condensed stars brought into view by the modern telescopes. In
maintaining the appearances in question, then, to be really nebulous, we
maintain their comparative vicinity to our point of view. Thus, their
condition, as we see them now, must be referred to an epoch _far less
remote_ than that to which we may refer the now-observed condition of at
least t