96 From Matter to Man. 



remember that all the heavenly bodies are con- 

 stitutionally weightless, that it is merely the presence 

 of other bodies like themselves, which, by attracting 

 them, endows them with weight or gravity, and that, 

 as a matter of fact, the immense distances which 

 separate them from each other render them practi- 

 cally like feathers floating in the currents of the void 

 susceptible to the slightest influences, we can easily 

 perceive how a run-away planet's course would be 

 determined, not by any inherent " impulsion," but by 

 the direction from it of the nearest or most powerful 

 sidereal body coupled with the relative position of 

 each other's polarities. It only requires, therefore, 

 the introduction of innumerable suns and satellites 

 into the void, no matter how created,* but all com- 

 posed of magnetic atoms and endowed with polarities, 

 to constitute such a mysterious universe as our own. 

 A cosmos peopled with bodies falling to one another 

 and sometimes colliding, but usually avoiding this 

 fatality by repelling each other with their poles and 

 joining in a brotherly dance round each other until 

 the planetary day of doom. 



As a further speculation : — It the heavenly bodies 

 are magnets possessing magnetic and electric pro- 

 perties, the question may be asked, Is their light as 

 seen by us not more or less electric ? Are the stars 

 at night not myriads of electric lamps? 



Still further, in the light of hypotheses to follow, 

 may not the Solar System be a vast electric and 



* See The Evolution of Worlds. 



