240 FKOM NEBULA TO NEBULA 



Between Darwin pere and Darwin fits there lay an 

 antipodal distinction. The former was a pioneer in the 

 true sense, caring little for established opinions, but 

 everything for the realities of Nature. The latter, on the 

 contrary, gave the lie to Nature and servilely followed 

 on the heels of Tradition. What chance, think you, has 

 the cause of progress, when one such as he, having ut- 

 tered the statement : ' ' The equilibrium theory of tides is 

 nearly as much wrong as possible in respect to the time of 

 high water. In fact in many places it is nearly low water 

 at the time the equilibrium theory predicts high water. 

 It would seem then as if the tidal action of the moon was 

 actually to repel the water instead of attracting it, and we 

 are driven to ask whether this result can possibly be con- 

 sistent with the theory of universal gravitation" yet 

 deliberately flew in the face of the truth and rushed on in 

 the same old rut? 



So Darwin, following perversely in the footsteps of 

 the mistaken Newton and Kant, pursued the following 

 train of hyper-speculative reasoning : 



Since, according to Kant, the day is longer (or at 

 least theoretically ought to be longer) than it was a mil- 

 lenium ago, there was probably a time millions of years 

 ago when the earth rotated on her axis much more swiftly 

 than she does now. Granting this supposition, there is 

 no reason why we may not suppose, further, that she even 

 rotated in from three to four hours ; at least there is no 

 one in a position to disprove it. However, this supposi- 

 tion is orthodoxically permissible ; for, according to La- 

 place, the earth-moon system was originally a spheroidal 

 nebula rotating on its axis, and, by common acceptation, 

 it rotated faster and faster in the course of its shrinking. 

 Suppose, then, that when the nebular earth had shrunk to 

 a girth not much larger than it has at present, it had al- 

 ready formed a weak crust and, incidentally, was rotating 

 in the brief period mentioned. In that case it is possible 

 that the earth may have flung off the moon with sufficient 

 violence to detach her permanently from the planet and 

 make a satellite of her. It is not necessary to stipulate 



