COSMIC EVOLUTION 



The most magnificent nebula in the heavens is 

 that in Orion, its place being indicated by the 

 "star" as it appears to the naked eye which is 

 the middle one of the three that form the sword- 

 handle of the mighty huntsman. This superb ob- 

 ject really consists of six stars enmeshed in and 

 surrounded by a great nebula, which has thus al- 

 ready given birth to six suns. 



The Pleiades, which photographic astronomy 

 has resolved into a group of some fifty thousand 

 stars, were probably formed in a similar manner 

 from some nebula of ultra-titanic proportions. 



We learn, therefore, that a spiral nebula is formed 

 of more or less solid bodies destined to become 

 suns or planets surrounded by a rarer gas, which 

 ultimately attaches itself to them, so that there is 

 produced a system of revolving bodies separated 

 by empty space empty but for the presence of 

 the omnipresent ether. This is the present state 

 of our own system. But the evolutionist does not 

 imagine that it is final. In an ironical passage 

 Carlyle assures us that "to many a Royal Society 

 the creation of a world is little more mysterious 

 than the cooking of a dumpling," and that "La- 

 grange, it is well known, has proved that the 

 planetary system, on this scheme, will last forever." 

 The "scheme" is the theory of gravitation, by 

 which, and by which alone, as Carlyle goes on to 

 say, Laplace guesses that the planetary system 

 was made. But Lagrange had not taken all the 

 factors into consideration. It is a deduction from 

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