ON THE CREATION AND GOD. 9 



the reverse of that required by the hypothesis. It would 

 seem that either Uranus received a temporary tilt over 

 in his orbit at the moment when each of his rings was 

 disengaged, or else some great perturbation or other 

 exceptional experience occurred to each of his progeny 

 after they were born. And the same must be said of 

 Neptune, whose single moon moves in a more decidedly 

 retrograde order. 



Moreover the conditions, if any, under which such a 

 ring could be thrown off from a rotating sphere of cool- 

 ing vapour have not been investigated mathematically, 

 nor is there any experiment in point,* while under the 

 conditions supposed by Laplace, it has been objected that 

 in the absence of all cohesion between the particles of 

 vapour, the throwing off the ring in the manner alleged 

 was in fact impossible. Finally, the existing nebulse do 

 not manifest that symmetry of outline which is requisite 

 if they are destined to condense into suns and planets. 

 All which objections, together with others that might be 

 urged, tend to discredit the hypothesis very considerably 

 in the forms propounded by its originators. 



The authors of The Unseen Universe have given an 

 improved statement of the nebular hypothesis. They 

 begin with a chaos of atoms compelled to order by the law 

 of gravitation, instead of reaching it slowly by chance 

 after many false starts and failures as in the system of 

 Democritus. We are told that " the original state 'of 

 the visible universe was a diffused or chaotic state, in 

 which the various particles were widely separated from 

 one another, but exerting on one another gravitating 

 force, and therefore possessed of potential energy. As 



* That of Plateau, sometimes adduced, of a sphere of oil rotating 

 in water, is no confirmation, as it relates to a different thing in a 

 different medium, and on an infinitely smaller scale. See Jevons's 

 Principles of Science. 



