136 T. C. CHAM BERLIN 



of pre-existent organizations. In most cases, if not in all, how- 

 ever, the dissolution of such previous organizations is not ulterior 

 dissolution; it is usually only the disintegration of one order of 

 organization into elements of a somewhat lower order. Neither 

 dissolution into chaos, in any strict sense, or into ultimate factors, 

 nor generation from chaos or from ultimate factors or from any- 

 thing that is absolutely new, seems to have any naturalistic warrant 

 so far as present cosmic processes are concerned. Nor is there much 

 more warrant for bringing into play any really unknown force or 

 agency, though the discovery of new ways of action of known 

 forces and agencies is to be expected. Scientific inquiry in genetic 

 lines appears therefore to have for its appropriate field of study 

 little else than partial disorganization followed by corresponding 

 reorganization, though not necessarily of the same tj^De, order, or 

 extent. The scientific student therefore hesitates to call into 

 service any material or energy which he cannot trace back to some 

 known source. 



X. In the formation of new cosmic bodies, even of the "in- 

 organic" class, an organizing germ or nucleus, inherited from some 

 parent organization, seems to have much the same function, and 

 to be about as necessary as the seed or the ovum of an organism of 

 the "organic " type.. In either case the germ must apparently have 

 both a material and a dynamic factor. This necessity appears to 

 be chiefly due to the essential part which a collecting field of force 

 and a retaining sphere of control play in organizing a cosmic body. 

 In the concrete discussion to which we shall now turn, the strength 

 and the reach of the organizing field of force will be held to be the 

 chief criterion that determines whether dissevered or disorganized 

 masses of matter shall reorganize as single bodies and pursue 

 independent careers, or shall continue to be merely scattered food 

 to be picked up by bodies already organized and endowed with 

 effective collecting fields of force. 



THE SELECTIVE SEGREGATION OP PLANETARY MATERIAL 



In this discussion there will be no occasion to consider any 

 hypothesis of the origin of the four bodies under study that has 

 not been worked out into such definite terms as to bear specifically 



