VI.] Chauncey Wright. 97 



dissipation of worlds to the capricious changes of 

 the wind. So strong a hold had this notion acquired 

 in his mind, that for once it warped his estimate of 

 scientific evidence, and led him to throw aside the 

 well-grounded nebular hypothesis in favour of the 

 ill-conceived and unsupported meteoric theory of 

 Mayer. In Mr. Wright's mind it was an insuperable 

 objection to the nebular hypothesis that it seems 

 to take the world from a definable beginning to a 

 definable end, and such dramatic consistency, he 

 argued, is not to be found amid the actual turmoil 

 of Nature's workings. It would be improbable, he 

 thought, that things should happen so prettily as 

 the hypothesis asserts : in point of fact Nature does 

 so many things to disconcert our ingenious formulas ! 

 To the general doctrine of evolution, of which the 

 nebular hypothesis is a part, Mr. Wright urged the 

 same comprehensive objection. The dramatic interest 

 of the doctrine, which gives it its chief attraction 

 to many minds, was to Mr. Wright prima facie 

 evidence of its unscientific character. The events 

 of the universe have no orderly progression like the 

 scenes of a well-constructed plot, but in the manner 

 of their coming and going they constitute simply 

 a " cosmical weather." 



Without pausing over the question whether drama- 



H 



