64 FROM NEBULA TO NEBULA 



like the planets, afterward waxing into bodies of great 

 magnitude ; others, like the satellites, into orbs of lesser 

 size, and yet another giant world the sun. But con- 

 currently with this process of agglomeration, from the 

 very beginning, we must conceive of our cloud (picture 

 it as large at the outset as you please) as in the act of 

 falling and gradually accelerating in velocity, incidentally 

 resolving itself into a main vortex, and many subordinate 

 vortices, under the torsional and suctional influence of 

 the Prime Resultant. 



2. Or, secondly, we may view the sun as first de- 

 veloping to his full stature and later exploding at inter- 

 vals ; each time throwing out a small fraction of his mass 

 to form a nebula. During the earlier of these crises we 

 may postulate the nuclei of all the planets and satellites, 

 or of as many of them as we choose, to have come into 

 being and, under the constraining hand of the Prime 

 Eesultant, to have finally resolved themselves into an 

 equilibrated general unit and subordinate units. This 

 order once firmly established, we may picture a long 

 series of violent disruptions of the luminary, each result- 

 ing in a tenuous nebulous cloud filling the Neptunian 

 orbit,and then conceive of these nebulae as being succes- 

 sively swept up by the gravitational suctions of the 

 circling planets a chain of events not yet ended. 



3. We may differentiate between the superior and 

 inferior planets, drawing the genesis of the latter from 

 the sun, under the second described method, and postu- 

 lating the former as independently evolved at a con- 

 siderable distance away, and subsequently sucked bodily 

 into the solar maelstrom. 



There is no fundamental inconsistency between these 

 methods, and there is good reason to believe that each of 

 them has borne a share in the general result. Thus, the 

 first may suggest the initial step, the second may account 

 for the asteroids, and for the ore-pockets found on the 

 earth's surface, and the third may serve to elucidate 

 Bode's law and supply the answer to the more general 



