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BOOK IV. OBJECTIONS TO THE DISSOCIATION 

 HYPOTHESIS. 



# 

 CHAP. XIV. THE CHEMISTRY OF SPACE. 



I HAVE now to refer to certain objections which have been urged 

 against the views to which I have been giving expression during the 

 last thirty years, views which seemed to me to indicate a way out of 

 the tangle in which both laboratory, solar and stellar spectroscopic 

 work have one after the other landed me, and as I have shown in the 

 immediately preceding chapters, others after me, engaged in somewhat 

 similar inquiries. 



The objections to which it is of most importance to refer in this 

 place have to do with the stellar evidence. I have supposed, and I 

 think legitimately, until the contrary is proved that is, the onus pro- 

 hindi lies with objectors that the materials out of which, on the 

 Meteoritic Hypothesis, worlds are eventually formed, are similar in all 

 parts of space. Neither Kant nor Laplace thought of differentiating 

 the ultimate chemistry of the material, and indeed the only view of 

 special differences which has been put forward to my knowledge in 

 recent years was a subtle one suggested by a learned divine to account 

 for miracles. On this theory, in certain parts of space miracles might 

 happen, in others not ; and the movement of the solar system through 

 space provided us with the necessary changes of this condition. 



But quite recently this view has been extended to the chemical 

 conditioning of space, and the first most general objection I have to 

 meet is that the various spectral differences which it has been my duty 

 to chronicle as defining the various groups of stars, are not brought 

 about by temperature, but are due simply to the fact that the chemistry 

 of space varies, so that in consequence of their locus of origin and 

 their environment, some stars may be composed chiefly of the cleveite 

 gases, others of hydrogen, others of calcium, others of iron, others of 

 carbon, and so on. 



But it is assumed that there may be some cases, not so extreme 

 as these, so that only the relative composition may vary from star to 

 star. This view of space divided into chemical parishes is supposed to 

 be supported by the alleged localisation of stars of the same type in 

 particular parts of space (as indicated by proper motions, &c.). 



