VIII 



THE NEBULAE HYPOTHESIS 



WHAT militated most against the earlier accep- 

 tance of Newton's doctrine of the universality of 

 gravitation was the unreadiness of his genera- 

 tion, accustomed though it was to the acceptance of ideas 

 on faith, to believe that the force of gravity, any more 

 than any other force of which they knew, could act across 

 a void. It took the world of science half a century to as- 

 similate this generalization, familiar though it may now 

 seem to us. Unfortunately, the very fact that, in spite 

 of its initial season of incredibility, it nevertheless won 

 acceptance in the end, became a powerful lever in support 

 of wild hypotheses whose only merit lay in their novelty. 

 Since then, a premium seems to be placed on extrava- 

 gance in invention, regardless of the element of proba- 

 bility or plausibility, and the only rule that appears to 

 be recognized is, that inherited prejudices shall not be 

 antagonized or impugned. All comers are welcome who 

 will lend a hand at shoring up or patching up the su- 

 perstructure of theory, but woe to such as I who would 

 raze the crazy structure, in whole or in part, with intent 

 to broaden and strengthen the foundations. In this 

 chapter and the next my purpose is to give the reader as 

 clear an idea as possible of the various cosmogonical 

 theories that the hierarchy of science recognizes as or- 

 thodoxically sound and eligible, and then to criticize 

 them from a practical, rather than a technical, stand- 

 point. 



