185]
evolution theories true also? If the first evolution theory is true,
the evolved man will hardly know which to adore most, the Being that
could so endow matter, or the matter capable of such endowment.
There are some difficulties in the way of the acceptance of the
nebular hypothesis that compel many of the most thorough scientists
of the day to withhold their assent to its entirety. The latest, and
one of the most competent writers on the subject, Professor Newcomb,
who is a mathematical astronomer, and not an easy theorist, evolving
the system of the universe from the depth of his own consciousness,
says: "Should any one be sceptical as to the sufficiency of these
laws to account for the present state of things, science can furnish
no evidence strong enough to overthrow his doubts until the sun
shall be found to be growing smaller by actual measurement, or the
nebulae be actually seen to condense into stars and systems." In
one of the most elaborate defences of the theory, it is argued that
the hypothesis explains why only one of the four planets nearest
the sun can have a moon, and why there can be no planet inside of
Mercury. The discovery of the two satellites to Mars and of the
planet Vulcan makes it all the worse for these facts.
Some of the objections to the theory should be known by every thinker.
Laplace must have the cloud "diffused in consequence of excessive
heat," etc. Helmholtz, in order to account for the heat of the
contracting sun, must have the cloud relatively cold. How he and
his followers diffused the cloud without heat is not stated.
The next difficulty is that of rotation. The laws [Page 186] of
science compel a contraction into one non-rotating body--a central
sun, indeed, but no planets about it. Laplace cleverly evades the
difficulty by not taking from the hand of the Creator diffused gas,
but a sun with an atmosphere filling space to the orbit of Neptune,
and _already in revolution_. He says: "It is four millions to one
that all motions of the planets, rotations and revolutions, were at
once imparted by an original common cause, of which we know neither
the nature nor the epoch." Helmholtz says of rotation, "the
existence of which must be assumed." Professor Newcomb says that the
planets would not be arranged as now, each one twice as far from the
sun as the next interior one, and the outer ones made first, but
that all would be made into planets at once, and the small inner
ones
|