THE NEBULAR HYPOTHESIS 219 



the material of Neptune's ethereal ring. Not to weary 

 the reader with too much detail, let me give a few cal- 

 culated results. The attraction of the sun on a given 

 particle as distant from him as Neptune is about one 

 fourteen-hundred-thousandth as great as that of our 

 earth on a like particle at her surface. It is only about 

 one-fourth as great as that of the moon upon the ring on 

 your finger, and is proportionally about equivalent to 

 that of the attraction of your own body upon the clock 

 resting on the mantel a few feet from you. 



Now, gravitational attraction is one thing, but tan- 

 gential torsion by it is altogether another. It is quite 

 admissible to conceive of the particles of which we are 

 speaking as being held back by their gravitational at- 

 traction from escaping into outer space; but it demands 

 the maximum of credulity, scientific or otherwise, to 

 believe that the friction between particles so sparse and 

 minute as here demonstrated, and cohering only by grace 

 of a vivid fancy, could ever, under any circumstances, 

 sustain a general torsional motion. To refer again to our 

 illustration, this friction is relatively the same as the act 

 of turning around on your heels (while still preserving 

 the intervening distance) would have on the clock, not to 

 draw it toward you, remember, but to rub it to one side 

 no, even less, because the air intervening between the 

 clock and you is many thousands of times denser than the 

 postulated nebula, and a proportionately stronger fric- 

 tional medium. 



Again, Laplace made no attempt to explain how his 

 unique nebula came into existence he merely postulated 

 it. According to modern molecular theories, be they true 

 or false, the molecules are perpetually seeking freedom 

 and to scatter themselves as thinly as possible through 

 the wide reaches of space. Yet here we have our doctri- 

 naires soberly telling us, that not only did the Laplacian 

 molecules, without any particular reason, congregate into 

 a vast heap, but that they cohered to each other with a 

 tenacity many thousands of times more firm and rigid 

 than the staunchest steel! Moreover, after the rings 



