150 FROM NEBULA TO NEBULA 



types in all things of their respective classes, yet pos- 

 sess individual traits distinguishing them from all 

 others of their kind. And of all Nature's wonder* surety 

 the palm must go to Gravitation! Force emanating out 

 of nothing, uniform, all-pervading, instant, eternal, 

 the Hercules condemned forever to perform the labors 

 of the universe, to hold and draw the planets in their 

 orbits, to turn them on their axes, to stoke the suns, 

 to heap the tides, to scatter the rains, and even to point 

 the mariner's compass by the magnetism of tidal fric- 

 tion ! An unthinking, rigidly conditioned force, yet 

 not ending in monotony or ruin, as modern science pre- 

 dicts, but in order, automatism, perpetuity, and kaleid- 

 oscopic change! 



In reviewing what I have written I feel almost as 

 though I had been uselessly multiplying words to prove 

 principles that only require to be stated in order to 

 convince. The mere forming of the questions, indeed, 

 seem to me to prompt their true answers. Since, for 

 example, the sun is known to be travelling rapidly 

 through space, why should he not be doing so in obedi- 

 ence to gravitation, the only force we know capable 

 of the feat? Since the earth is one of the sun's retinue, 

 and falling with it, why should it not obey the every- 

 day law of physics, and turn its bottom in the direc- 

 tion of fall? Again, If all the planets are falling in 

 a body, why should they not mutually sustain and hin- 

 der each other by their gravitational guys, and so bring 

 about a common state of progressive equilibrium? If 

 gravitation can cause motion which by its stoppage 

 creates heat, how could anyone ever conjure up a doubt 

 that it can generate heat directly by its pressure? 

 When we know so well from daily experience that bal- 

 loons, ships, and objects generally dispose themselves, 

 when free to do so, heavy end down, why must we 

 illogically assume that the earth's tides are caused by 



