CHAP. xi. ASTRONOMY AND COSMIC THEORIES. 109 



But the continued motions of these atoms and their 

 combinations will set up in the unmodified ether 

 the special vibrations of heat and electricity, which, 

 reacting on matter, will lead to that vast series of co- 

 ordinated changes we recognize as the laws and 

 phenomena of nature. Whether gravitation could 

 possibly arise from the initial impulse given to the ether 

 is doubtful; but in this vortex-theory, of which Lord 

 Kelvin is the chief exponent in this country, we have the 

 most important attempt yet made to get near to the be- 

 ginnings of the universe. It is, of course, essentially in- 

 conceivable, as are all fundamental conceptions. The 

 incompressible, frictionless, universal fluid is inconceiv- 

 able; the origin of its infinity of atomic vortex motions 

 is inconceivable; as are the translatory motions, the in- 

 finity of combinations, the complexity of chemical 

 actions, the productions of the varied kinds of ether- 

 vibrations, and of gravitative force; and when we have 

 fully grasped all these inconceivabilities there remains 

 the still greater inconceivability of how life, conscious- 

 ness, affection, intellect, arose from this infinite clash of 

 ethereal vortex-rings ! 



The conception is, however, a grand one; and, to- 

 gether with the meteoritic hypothesis as to the immediate 

 antecedents of the visible universe, must rank among the 

 great intellectual achievements of our century. Yet 

 they bring us no nearer to the First Cause of this vast 

 cosmos in which we live; and most minds will feel that 

 we never can get nearer to it than in " the consciousness 

 of an Inscrutable Power manifested to us through all 

 phenomena," which Herbert Spencer considers to be the 

 logical and the utmost outcome of the most far-reaching 

 human science. 



