10 THE BODIES OF SPACE, 



gible kind, that law was concerned. The work may be said 

 to have been done by the will of God, expressed in the form 

 of the law of gravitation. When we come to consider the 

 motions, and regard them as necessarily results of an im- 

 ptilse, we are apt to suppose some immediate and more direct 

 or arbitrary application of Divine Power necessary : but this 

 cannot bear a second consideration. The motions, as well as 

 the arrangements, are inextricably wrought up in relation with 

 the magnitudes ; a totally different mode of their origin is 

 therefore inconceivable. Having, moreover, in gravitation, a 

 general source of motion, and knowing in what various ways and 

 to what various results a motive power may be applied, see, for 

 a familiar example, the wheels of a clock revolving under the 

 influence of a weight, all difficulty in supposing an actual 

 origin of a natural kind for the motions of the heavenly bodies 

 vanishes, however obscure our notions may remain as to the 

 process concerned in the case. Thus, everything leads us to 

 the belief that there was a previous form of matter, out of 

 which were educed the present forms and motions of the bodies 

 of space, in the manner of, though certainly not by any self- 

 dependent efficacy in, Natural Law. 



At this point "we might rest, for in the general conclusion 

 that the orbs were formed and arranged in such a manner, 

 enough has been gained for the present object. It is worth 

 while, however, to touch slightly on the ideas which have 

 passed through certain eminent minds, with respect to the 

 births of these bodies. 



The first idea of what has been called the Nebular Cos- 

 mogony arose with Sir William Herschel, in consequence of 

 the observations which he made regarding a class of heavenly 

 bodies, to which the appellation of nebulae had been applied, 

 in reference to their cloud-like appearance. Some of these bodies 

 were ascertained, by a high telescopic power, to be only astral 

 systems, like our ow*n, placed at such a vast distance, that the 

 individuality of the stars composing them was lost to ordinary 

 perception. Others resisted the highest telescopic power which 

 the astronomer applied, and, from various considerations, he 

 came to regard them (it has since appeared, erroneously) as 

 masses of diffused luminous matter. In these he further dis- 

 covered a variety of appearances, marking what seemed a 

 gradation of characters, as if they had been in various degrees 

 of condensation ; and hence he was led to surmise that they 

 were solar systems in the process of being formed out of a 



