324 FROM NEBULA TO NEBULA 



expedition, do you see no logical reason for assuming a 

 priori that, balked in producing molar movements, it 

 may under the wise management of Nature be diverted 

 to the no less vital task of stimulating molecular excita- 

 tion and thereby generating heat ? 



Behold there an enormous mountain of a billion-tons 

 weight. Put in its place an enclosed cone of papier 

 mache of like dimensions ; what effect, if any, should such 

 substitution exert upon the supporting shelf f Accord- 

 ing to the interpretation of the Conservationists, there 

 would be no effect whatsoever experienced by the shelf, 

 except, possibly that its natural elasticity might slightly 

 raise its level with the removal of the weight. The real 

 mountain, say they, produces no thermal results so long 

 as it maintains its level and sinks no lower, for it is not 

 the power that counts but the space through which that 

 power acts! It is upon this particular dictum that the 

 Helmholtzian theory of the source of solar heat is 

 founded, and that the future degradation of the luminous 

 stars into cold, dark clinkers is predicated. In thus fail- 

 ing to distinguish between the dynamical potentialities 

 of diversified weights and treating them all as precisely 

 equal, scientists have, in my opinion, been guilty of a 

 grave and incalculably costly blunder. 



The spectroscope informs us that a rare few of the 

 nebulae are self-luminous they must therefore be hot. 

 How came they so ? What more natural than to attrib- 

 ute the phenomenon to the grinding and crushing of the 

 inner substances by their parent stars, not into powder, 

 simply, but into molecules, atoms, electrons as fine as 

 you will, even to the point of torpedoing themselves into 

 these great glowing mists'? 



In a previous chapter I pointed out the property of 

 substances in general to explode by percussion or by 

 sheer pressure ; leaving in some minds, perhaps, a lurking 

 doubt as to whether the principle of the critical point of 

 gases can come into play unless a very high temperature 

 be first provided. My contention here is, that, even were 

 the cosmic body composed solely of solid, refractory ma- 



