XXXVill REPORT—1845. 
* 
sible gas, must, of course, cease to rest on any support derived from actual 
observation in the sidereal heavens, whatever countenance it may still receive 
in the minds of cosmogonists from the tails and atmospheres of comets, and 
the zodiacal light in our own system. But though all idea of its being ever 
given to mortal eye, to view aught that can be regarded as an outstanding 
portion of primeval chaos, be dissipated, it will by no means have been even 
then demonstrated that among those stars so confusedly scattered, no aggre- 
gating powers are in action, tending to draw them into groups and insulate 
them from neighbouring groups; and, speaking from my own impressions, 
I should say that, in the structure of the Magellanic Clouds, it is really difficult 
not to believe we see distinct evidences of the exercise of such a power. 
This part of my Father’s general views of the construction of the heavens, 
therefore, being entirely distinct from what has of late been called “ the 
nebulous hypothesis,” will still subsist as a matter of rational and philoso- 
phical speculation,—and perhaps all the better for being separated from the 
other. 
Much has been said of late of the Nebulous Hypothesis, as a mode of re- 
presenting the origin of our own planetary system. Anidea of Laplace, of 
which it is impossible to deny the ingenuity, of the successive abandonment 
of planetary rings, collecting themselves into planets by a revolving mass 
gradually shrinking in dimension by the loss of heat, and finally concentrating 
itself into a sun, has been insisted on with some pertinacity, and supposed to 
receive almost demonstrative support from considerations to which I shall 
presently refer. Iam by no means disposed to quarrel with the nebulous 
hypothesis even in this form, as a matter of pure speculation, and without 
any reference to final causes; but if it is to be regarded as a demonstrated 
truth, or as receiving the smallest support from any observed numerical rela- 
tions which actually hold good among the elements of the planetary orbits, I 
beg leave to demur. Assuredly it receives no support from observation of 
the effects of sidereal aggregation, as exemplified in the formation of globu- 
lar and elliptic clusters, supposing them to have resulted from such aggrega- 
tion. For we see this cause, working itself out in thousands of instances, to 
have resulted, not in the formation of a single large central body, surrounded 
by a few much smaller attendants, disposed in one plane around it,—but in 
systems of infinitely greater complexity, consisting of multitudes of nearly 
equal luminaries, grouped together in a solid elliptic or globular form. So 
far, then, as any conclusion from our observations of nebule can go, the re- 
sult of agglomerative tendencies may, indeed, be the formation of families of 
stars of a general and very striking character; but we see nothing to lead us 
to presume its further result to’ be the surrounding of those stars with plane- 
tary attendants. If, therefore, we go on to push its application to that extent, 
we clearly theorize in advance of all inductive observation. 
But if we go still farther, as has been done in a philosophical work of 
much mathematical pretension, which has lately come into a good deal of no- 
tice in this country*, and attempt “to give a mathematical consistency ” to 
such a cosmogony by the “ indispensable criterion” of “a numerical veritica- 
tion,’—and so exhibit, as “necessary consequences of such a mode of for- 
mation,” a series of numbers which observation has established independent 
of any such hypothesis, as primordial elements of our system—if, in pursuit 
of this idea, we find the author first computing the time of rotation the sun 
must have had about its axis so that a planet situate on its surface and form- 
ing a part of it should not press on that surface, and should therefore be in 
a state of indifference as to its adhesion or detachment—if we find him, in 
this computation, throwing overboard as troublesome all those essential con- 
* M. Comte, Phil. Positive, ii. 376. 
