8 THE CREED OF SCIENCE, RELIGIOUS AND MORAL. 



condensed into our earth, for instance, must have been 

 at least the diameter of the earth's orbit, that is, some 

 two hundred millions of miles, in breadth. But now, 

 even if we suppose this enormous ring to have been suc- 

 cessfully expelled after the manner described by Laplace 

 a supposition not without its difficulties ; if we suppose 

 it to have subsequently condensed as it certainly would, 

 and to have broken up as it probably would ; the 

 further suppositions that we must make constitute a 

 demand on our scientific faith that is scarcely justified by 

 either physical science or analogy. For we are asked to 

 believe that all the sundered parts, probably extremely 

 numerous, some of them separated by the interval of the 

 earth's orbit, and all of them necessarily moving with 

 great velocity in the same direction, at length, after 

 paroxysmal efforts due to the action of gravity, found 

 themselves together again in one symmetrical sphere of 

 vapour, moving orderly round the sun. The exercise of 

 faith required is great ; for physical science would rather 

 predict that the broken parts of such a ring, instead of 

 coalescing into a single sphere, would, as the authority 

 just quoted affirms, " condense into a swarm of smaller 

 bodies like the asteroids," or like those still smaller, 

 which compose, according to conjecture, the rings of 

 Saturn. And then we must believe that this precarious 

 process of generating worlds repeated itself without acci- 

 dent again and again ; the rings of Saturn showing the 

 only abortive attempt. The earth also was a sphere of 

 vapour which, in shrinking, left behind a ring, which in 

 its turn condensed, broke up, joined again, and finally 

 formed our moon. And Jupiter must have been thus 

 successfully delivered of his numerous progeny of eight. 

 But a much more serious difficulty presents itself in the 

 case of Uranus, whose moons move in a direction nearly 



