NEBULAR HYPOTHESIS. 185 



large meteoric stone. How comes this mass to 

 be covered with motion and organization, with life 

 and happiness? What primitive cause stocked 

 it with plants and animals, and produced all the 

 wonderful and subtle contrivances which we find 

 in their structure, all the wide and profound 

 mutual dependencies which we trace in their 

 economy ? Was man, with his thought and feel- 

 ing, his powers and hopes, his will and con- 

 science, also produced as an ultimate result of 

 the condensation of the solar atmosphere? Ex- 

 cept we allow a prior purpose and intelligence 

 presiding over this material " primitive cause," 

 how irreconcilable is it with the evidence which 

 crowds in upon us on every side ! 



3. In the next place, we may observe concern- 

 ing this hypothesis, that it carries us back to the 

 beginning of the present system of things ; but 

 that it is impossible for our reason to stop at the 

 point thus presented to it. The sun, the earth, 

 the planets, the moons were brought into their 

 present order out of a previous state, and, as is 

 supposed in the theory, by the natural operation 

 of laws. But how came that previous s^ate to 

 exist ? We are compelled to suppose that it, in 

 like manner, was educed from a still prior state 

 of things ; and this, again, must have been the 

 result of a condition prior still. Nor is it possible 

 for us to find, in the tenets of the nebular 

 hypothesis, any resting place or satisfaction for 



