196 FROM NEBULA TO NEBULA 



Another distinction between Laplace's and See's 

 points of view is, that whereas the former frankly pos- 

 tulated an inherent rotation of his nebula, the latter 

 thinks to help matters by adopting a tone of doctrinal 

 authority and finality, without deigning to offer either 

 argument or proof. Let me here quote a paragraph or 

 two from Dr. See 's article on Cosmogony in the Ameri- 

 cana (an article, by the way, in which he devotes fourteen 

 pages, out of the fifteen allotted, to the exploitation of his 

 own scheme, in entire exclusion of such rival inventions 

 as Darwin's Tidal-Evolution theory, Chamberlin's Plane- 

 tesimal hypothesis, Bickerton's Third-Body theory and 

 Svante Arrhenius's contributions to the same subject) : 



The dust carried away by repulsive forces gathers here and 

 there into clouds, and when such a mass settles the result is a 

 cosmical vortex, which whirls and slowly develops into a cosmical 

 system. Thus the stars by the expulsion of fine dust form neb- 

 ulae, and the nebulae in turn by condensation form stars and sys- 

 tems. The clusters, like the whirlpool nebulae, have a tendency 

 to spiral movement. The attendant bodies, however, are never 

 thrown off, but captured and added on from without. The heavy 

 bodies drift toward the centers of attraction already developed, 

 while the fine dust alone is diffused and carried away under 

 repulsive forces to form other nebulae which will sometime con- 

 dense into cosmical systems. 



The solar system was formed from a spiral nebula, revolving 

 and slowly coiling up under mechanical conditions which were 

 essentially free from hydrostatic pressure. And spiral nebulae 

 themselves arise from the meeting or mere settling of unsymmet- 

 rical streams of cosmical dust. The whole system of particles has 

 a sensible moment of momentum about some axis, and thus it be- 

 gins to whirl about a central point, and gives rise to a vortex. 

 In the actual universe the spiral nebulae are to be counted by the 

 million, and it is evident that they all arise from the automatic 

 winding up of cosmical dust, under the attraction of their mutual 

 gravitation. The two opposite branches of the spiral nebulae, so 

 often shown on photographs, represent the original streams of 

 cosmic dust which are coiling up and forming gigantic spiral 

 systems. * * * The dust carried away (from the stars) by repul- 

 sive forces gathers here and there into clouds, and when such a 

 mass settles the result is a cosmical vortex, which whirls and 

 slowly develops into a cosmical system. Thus the stars by the ex- 

 pulsion of fine dust form nebulae, and the nebulae in turn, by con- 



