V MR. GLADSTONE AND GENESIS 189 



" Waste " is too vague a term to be worth con- 

 sideration. " Without form," intelligible enough 

 as a metaphor, if taken literally is absurd ; for a 

 material thing existing in space must have a super- 

 ficies, and if it has a superficies it has a form. 

 The wildest streaks of marestail clouds in the sky, 

 or the most irregular heavenly nebulae, have 

 surely just as much form as a geometrical tetra- 

 hedron ; and as for " void," how can that be void 

 which is full of matter ? As poetry, these lines 

 are vivid and admirable ; as a scientific statement, 

 which they must be taken to be if any one is 

 justified in comparing them with another scientific 

 statement, they fail to convey any intelligible 

 conception to my mind. 



The account proceeds : " And darkness was 

 upon the face of the deep." So be it ; but where, 

 then, is the likeness to the celestial nebulae, of the 

 existence of which we should know nothing unless 

 they shone with a light of their own ? " And the 

 spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters." 

 I have met with no form of the nebular hypothesis 

 which involves anything analogous to this process. 



I have said enough to explain some of the diffi- 

 culties which arise in my mind, when I try to 

 ascertain whether there is any foundation for the 

 contention that the statements contained in the 

 first two verses of Genesis are supported by the 

 nebular hypothesis. The result does not appear 

 to me to be exactly favourable to that contention. 



