112 FKOM NEBULA TO NEBULA 



If the earnest reader will now be good enough to close 

 his eyes for a minute or two and clearly picture to himself 

 our solar system segregated falling and having fo- 

 cussed upon it the thousand millions of stellar gravita- 

 tional strands (like so many guy ropes in the hands of 

 workmen setting in place a corner-stone), all, in a certain 

 sense, pulling together, and yet, also, straining at cross 

 purposes, with an effect of ceaseless unwinding; and if 

 he will then rehearse the list of multiple planetary ' ' con- 

 cordances" enumerated by Brewster and Young as 

 "transcending gravitational explanation," he can 

 scarcely fail to perceive, as if by intuition, the physical 

 necessity for the following actualities : 



1. The vorticle gyration of the system as a whole, 

 or unit. 



2. Such gyration on the part of each subordinate 

 system. 



3. Gyration, generally speaking, in the same direc- 

 tion. 



4. Constant tendency and approximation toward 

 orbital rotundity. 



5. Similar tendency and approximation to one 

 plane, partly because of centrifugalization, but mainly 

 because of the constant struggle toward ensemble equi- 

 librium. 



6. Impingement of vortices, resulting in erratic 

 evolutions at their margins of interference. 



7. Elongated orbits and high inclinations as indi- 

 cative of comparatively recent advent into our balanced 

 order. 



8. Gyroscopic reaction of the solar system, connot- 

 ing for the sum a curvilinear orbit and betokening likewise 

 the identity of his period of revolution with that of the 

 precession of the equinoxes. 



9. Conservation of the moment of momentum. 



10. Tendency to axial rotations in the same sense as 

 the orbital revolutions. 



