POSTSCRIPT. 



Since the present edition was put through the press, it is 

 announced that Lord Rosse has discovered the resolvability of 

 the nebula in the sword of Orion, one of those on whose per- 

 sistency in the cloud-like character under every power of the 

 telescope, the speculations of Sir William Herschel as to the cos- 

 mogony were understood to rest. Of course, if this discovery be 

 confirmed, the Herschel speculations must be abandoned. 



It becomes important to specify the precise extent to which 

 such a change will affect the general views which I have endea- 

 voured to lay before the public. Let the reader first peruse with 

 attention the portion of this volume between pp. 5 and 25, and 

 the fifth edition of the Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation, 

 at pp. 25 and 29, and he will find that the possibility of an aban- 

 donment of Herschel's speculations was contemplated, as fraught 

 with no serious damage to the theory of an entire creation in the 

 manner of natural law. In the latter volume, published in Jan- 

 uary of the present year, the following sentence occurs in Italic 

 print : — " We might, then, entirely dismiss the nebular theory, 

 and stUl in the relations of the planets, and in the calculations as 

 to their oblate spheroidality, we should have overpowering proof 

 that the cosmical arrangements were produced in the way of 

 natural law" — the conclusion that God acted in this, and no 

 other more arbitrary manner, in his authorship of nature, being 

 the true and sole point which I aimed at establishing. 



The fact is, that Herschel and Laplace performed their several 



