r by
machinery, of the perpetual motion men, in defiance of the first law of
mechanics, that action and reaction are equal.

Moreover, he proposes to raise the power by making the gas cool at one
part of the surface faster than at another, and so to make a vortex
around that spot, which would set the whole mass to revolving. But no
conceivable reason can be alleged why the homogeneous mass should begin
to cool at one place faster than another, or indeed why an eternally hot
mass should ever begin to cool at all. But, letting that pass, to make
the required vortex for the rotation of the whole mass, it should not
begin to cool at any part of the surface, but at the center, where, as
every engine driver who ever saw a condenser, and every woman who ever
cooled a dish of mush knows, it could not possibly begin to cool till
the outside mass had become cold; and so no motion could be produced.
This is so well known in the machine shops that it is rare to find a
machinist own the theory.

But even a more fatal objection has been raised by one of the most
eloquent expounders of the theory. Mr. Spencer shows us that the mass,
condensing under the influence of gravitation, so far from cooling _must
necessarily evolve heat_. He is perfectly clear and decided on this
matter, _that the condensing mass could never, by any possibility, begin
to cool, but must begin to heat, and go on heating till it burst out in
a blaze_. He says: "Heat must inevitably be generated by the aggregation
of diffused matter into a concrete form; and throughout our reasonings
we have assumed that such generation of heat has been an accompaniment
of nebular condensation."[202] "While the condensation and the rate of
rotation are progressively increasing, the approach of the atoms
necessarily generates _a progressively increasing temperature_. As this
temperature rises light begins to be evolved, and ultimately there
results a revolving sphere of fluid matter radiating intense light and
heat--a sun."[203]

This, it will be perceived, is exactly the reverse of the original
nebular theory of a cooling globe, or spheroid of homogeneous nebular
matter, diffused by intense heat, and cooling down into suns, and moons,
and planets. So far as the Spencer system is accepted, it displaces La
Place's theory, and the inventor accordingly works out a new theory of
his own, and equally inconsistent with known facts and principles. But
as Mr. Spencer candidly owns that