OF NATURE. 551 



hensive spirit the idea that the whole course of nature 

 would appear to a mind vastly more knowing than the 

 human mind, but not essentially different from it, in the 

 form of an intricate mathematical formula, in which only 

 the necessary values of the co-ordinates of time and 

 space would have to be introduced in order to afford a 

 positive knowledge of the largest as well as the minutest 

 phenomena. 



Neither the nebular hypothesis nor that which has 

 subsequently been termed the Laplacian world-formula 

 seem to have attracted much attention at the time. 

 Both the astronomical theory of the Universe and the 

 doctrine of Probabilities offered to students of science 

 such an enormous number of definite mathematical 

 problems leading to so many fruitful theories that the 

 scientific mind hardly grasped the ultimate philosophical 

 conclusions which were indicated rather than fully 

 explained. ^ 



But in the further course of the century, when the 

 desire arose to supplant in the popular mind the fanciful 

 systems of the " Philosophy of Nature " by a sober and 

 practical mechanical theory, the suggestions of Laplace 

 were variously taken up, elaborated, and criticised.^ 



^ The nebular hypothesis owes 

 its introduction into philosophical 

 literature in this country to Her- 

 bert Spencer, who, in one of his 

 earliest Essays (" Westminster Re- 

 view,' July 1858), made it do service 

 in the interest of the development 

 hypothesis, or what he had already, 

 in the year 1852 ('Leader,' Jan. 1852 

 and May 1854), termed the "theory 

 of Evolution." In Germany the 

 larger cosmical view, which the neb- 

 ular hypothesis afforded, received 



additional support when Helmholtz 

 brought forward his theory of the 

 generation and maintenance of the 

 heat of the sun through the con- 

 tinued action of gravitational forces 

 (see his Lecture, ' Ueber die Wech- 

 selwirkung derNaturkraefte,' 1854). 

 Before that time it is remarkable 

 how little attention it received on 

 the part of scientific authorities 

 of the first order. Thus neither 

 Whewell in his ' History of the 

 Inductive Sciences ' nor Humboldt 



