afr NEBULA TO NEBULA 



Let us inquire, then, what progress science has really 

 made toward solving some of these 



PARAMOUNT ASTRONOMICAL PROBLEMS 



1. The Origin and Maintenance of Celestial Mo- 

 tions. 



2. The Law of Gravitation. 



3. The Source of the Sun's Heat. 



4. The Genesis of the Solar System. 



5. The Origin and Nature of Comets. 



6. The Causes of the Tides. 



7. The Individual Characteristics of the Planets. 



8. Stellar Problems in General. 



9. The Destiny of the Universe. 



CELESTIAL MOTIONS 



Newton, in common with his backward age, believed 

 implicitly in the Mosaic cosmogony, namely, that only six 

 millenniums before him Jehovah had created the heavens 

 and the earth and, as part of the creative plan, launched 

 the moon in her orbit around the earth and the planets in 

 their orbits around the sun. In this way he felt himself 

 absolved from the otherwise logical necessity of assign- 

 ing definite physical causes for the origin of those mo- 

 tions. A century or so after Newton's death, however, 

 when Geology had proved the immense age of our globe, 

 men's conceptions of nature underwent a great philo- 

 sophic change. Newton's idea of a personal Creator 

 bowling worlds about began to look altogether too naive 

 to an agnostic age, and scientists started to cast about for 

 a natural explanation. Such an " explanation" they 

 promptly found; but in naivete it infinitely surpasses 

 Newton's conception, and might with better propriety 

 have emanated from the brain of Mrs. Stowe's Topsy, 

 who " just growed". This explanation is, forsooth, noth- 

 ing more or less than the bald assertion that the assumed 



