66 FROM NEBULA TO NEBULA 



means down. I wish the reader to realize as vividly as 

 possible that in surveying our system from a point south 

 of it he is looking down on the action of a whirlpool, 

 physically as real as the surface of water emptying from 

 a wash-bowl. Due to the suction of the Prime Eesultant, 

 the weight is constantly slipping away, more at the center 

 than elsewhere, necessitating continuous readjustment of 

 the systemal balance. Due to its mobility and molecular 

 attraction, the water in the basin reacts as a unit to cen- 

 tral suction, and, in the same manner, the movability of 

 the planets and their mutual gravitational attractions 

 enable them to constitute themselves into a gravitational 

 unit and sub-units, with similar power to readjust their 

 common balance by a process which may be described as 

 one of progressive equilibrium. There is the great whirl- 

 pool embracing the system as a whole, and there are also 

 the eddies within it of Jupiter and his satellites, Saturn 

 and his rings, and the rest. Or, if you like, you may think 

 of our system as a prodigious clock, without visible 

 springs, pinions, or hands, and with mere points to mark 

 the various divisions of time, being driven by the force 

 of its own fall. As the earth is a simple body conforming 

 to the law of lowest center, so the earth and moon to- 

 gether form a compound body seeking their lowest 

 common center of gravity, and so, too, do the sun and all 

 the planets and their retinues summed together con- 

 stitute a complex body, riding upon one common center 

 of gravity. Where does the series end, or has it an end? 

 May not our system be but a member of a system next 

 greater, that of another larger still, and so on up to star- 

 streams and the great whirling tire of the Milky Way it- 

 self, welding the entire universe, be it finite or infinite, 

 into a single correlated Whole, all under the unifying, 

 organic law of BALANCE f 



Now, with this key in hand, let us resurrect the dif- 

 ficulties which confronted us before. Take the instance 

 of the earth and moon; what keeps them apart? As I 

 stated before, no two bodies in the universe are attracted 

 precisely with the same force nor to identically the same 

 point in space. Follow, if you please, that ray of the 



