THE NEBULAR HYPOTHESIS 47 



As to the question of viscosity I would fain doubt 

 whether an ounce, even of our best make of mucilage, 

 atomized into a cubical vacuum four hundred feet each 

 way would supply the tenacity demanded for a spoke 

 3 billion miles in length ! The last suggestion, namely, 

 that of inertial movement being inherent in each sep- 

 arate particle, seems to me to multiply by duodecillions 

 the original difficulty. It is surely easier to believe in 

 the uncaused motion of a given planet as a whole than 

 of its component particles dissociated! 



But the tax on credulity was not even then reached. 

 The planets not only revolve but rotate, and this motion 

 must also be explained. Accordingly scientists again 

 appealed to imagination rather than to common sense, 

 and fancied the particles of matter composing the neb- 

 ula to strike each other and the forming planets with 

 such nicety of precision and angle as to cause them to 

 turn on their axes! Once started, the law of inertia 

 was depended upon to keep the motion going. 



In short, the Nebular Hypothesis as proposed by 

 Laplace removed no difficulties whatsoever, but only set 

 up futile others. In its initial statement he frankly 

 assumed, as much as did Newton himself, a physically 

 uncaused motion for his matter. Second, he assumed 

 its incandescence, despite its envelopment by the un- 

 speakable cold of space, primarily, I believe, in order 

 speciously to convey the suggestion of viscosity; third, 

 he postulated an unnatural cloud-form ; fourth, he made 

 no attempt to explain how the nebula originated; fifth, 

 he took no account whatever of the fatally disturbing 

 factor of the sun's motion through space; and, sixth, 

 granting him all his egregious postulates, the machine 

 he invented was geared too high to keep going, even had 

 it ever got started. To speak frankly, the Nebular 

 Hypothesis, though so undeniably comprehensive and 



