100 Darwinism and Other Essays. 



let fall some expression which showed that in his 

 mind the hypothesis stood for a presumptuous at- 

 tempt to go back to the beginning of the universe 

 and give some account of its total past career in 

 terms of progress. But the nebular hypothesis, 

 as it is now held by evolutionists, does not make 

 any such attempt at all. The nebular hypothesis 

 traces, from indications in the present structure 

 of the solar system, the general history of the pro- 

 cess by which the system arose out of a mass of 

 vaporous or nebulous matter. That process has 

 been a species of evolution in so far as it has sub- 

 stituted a determinate and complicated for an in- 

 determinate and simple arrangement ; and in so 

 far as it has resulted in the production of the 

 earth or whatever other planet may be the abode 

 of conscious intelligence, it has been a kind of 

 progress judged with reference to human ends. 

 But so far from this evolution or progress being 

 set down as a universal or eternal affair, it is 

 most explicitly regarded as local and temporary. 

 Throughout the starry groups analogous changes 

 are supposed to be going on, but at different 

 stages in different systems, just as the various 

 members of a human society coexist in all stages 



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of youth, maturity, or decline ; while here and 

 there are nebulae in which the first steps of devel- 



