200 FROM NEBULA TO NEBULA 



sisting medium" which Doctor See so trustfully adopts 

 as the corner stone for his cosmogonical edifice, or shall 

 we say, as the barrier on which he relies for turning back 

 the charging planets and training them to course in 

 rounded paths. 



But the learned gentleman has been guilty of even a 

 worse solecism; he has incautiously fallen into the same 

 blunder for which he blames Laplace and precisely the 

 same which he expressly set out to correct and redeem! 

 When he says : " When such a mass settles, the result is a 

 cosmical vortex, which whirls and slowly develops into a 

 cosmical system',, what else can he have in mind than 

 that the planets derive their orbital revolutions from be- 

 ing component parts of the nebula and gyrating integrally 

 with it? Such being the case, it becomes a physical and 

 logical impossibility for the planet to "encounter resist- 

 ance" from the materials of the nebula itself, quite as 

 much so as that one cannot overrun his own shadow. 



In order to encounter such resistance, the planet 

 would have to differentiate its velocity from that of the 

 nebulous matter (that is, the resisting medium itself), a 

 proceeding which would involve asserting, first, that the 

 planet had a velocity independent of the nebula, thus 

 reopening the whole question as to the origin of its 

 motion ; or, second, that the planet was traveling beyond 

 the speed-limit prescribed by the law of areal motion ; or, 

 third, that the planet was accelerated by some unknown 

 additional force, or, fourth, that, the medium was lagging 

 and itself transgressing the law of conservation of areas. 

 In fine, Doctor See virtually tells us four contradictory 

 things, all in a single breath, namely: (1) That the plan- 

 ets are (under the area! law) gyrating pari passu with 

 the nebular element; (2) that they are outrunning it and 

 so incurring resistance from it; (3) that, by reason of 

 this resistance, they are thereby retarded and forced to 

 lag in the rear, and (4) that, by reason of being so re- 

 tarded, they drop to lower levels where they mystically 

 acquire fresh acceleration! If all these things are indeed 

 true, and true all at the same time in Doctor See's con- 

 sciousness, then must he himself be the paragon he speaks 



