EECENT COSMOGONIES 237 



In the first place, how does he theoretically get his 

 planets into gyratory motion? I answer, by assuming 

 them throughout their period of growth as being com- 

 ponent parts of the nebula and partaking, as such, of its 

 ensemble motion. What else can he mean than this when 

 he says: "When such a mass settles, the result is a 

 cosmical vortex "f Again, if he does not mean this, then 

 he has obviously failed altogether in accounting for the 

 planetary revolutions at all, and it devolves upon him 

 to find some independent explanation; failing in which 

 latter quest he leaves the whole business in as dense a 

 cloud of darkness as he found it. 



Now, since, by premiss, the planets are obeying the 

 law of areas, and since they are doing so because the 

 nebular cloud in which they are immersed is so doing, 

 how in the name of commonsense can the planetary body 

 meet with any resistance whatsoever? If we assume that 

 the body is traveling faster than the immediately sur- 

 rounding nebulous matter, then it is transgressing the law 

 of areas by going too fast, or else the nebulous matter is 

 coursing too slowly to conform to the law. In brief, by 

 the mere act of positing in his very first premiss the 

 possibility of the planetary bodies encountering nebular 

 resistance, he stultifies his whole scheme and treats the 

 law of areas as a scrap of paper. 



Proceeding thus, Doctor See "solves" nearly every 

 imaginable enigma that has baffled astronomers in the 

 past ; but I shall not pursue the ungrateful task of criticis- 

 ing his weird speculations further than to cite a single 

 sample of his art of deductive reasoning from his chosen 

 premises : 



The extreme roundness of the orbit of Neptune is a clear 

 indication that this planet moved for a long time against a vast 

 amount of nebulous resistance. Therefore, it is very improbable 

 that our planetary system terminates with Neptune. In all prob- 

 ability there are several more planets beyond the present boundary 

 of the system, some of which may yet be discovered. 



Now it so happens that Mercury, the innermost planet, 

 which ostensibly has had many thousands of times more 

 schooling at the hands of this alleged resisting medium 



