282 G. Hinrichs on Planetology. 
Since Genesis merely states that the universe (i.e. heaven and 
earth) was jurmless, void of any organized being and dark, it is 
science alone that can give us any idea of the constitution of the 
universe as it came froin the hands of the Creator. But as 
science is progressive, our ideas of the primeval condition of the 
Cosmos must progress correspondingly, or rather with advancing 
science our eye pierces farther and farther back into the dark 
ments of nature for records of her past, we behold infinity also 
here, the infinity of time, elernity, teeming with wonders no less 
astounding. ‘he beautiful poem of Schiller, “die Grosse der 
Welt,” is true both as to the extension and the duration of the 
orld. 
The ancients most frequently thought that the world left the 
hands of the Creator in the shape it now is, Even Newton nim : 
self was unable to see farther back. ‘To him the Creator was but : 
a tinker, forming his wheeling globes and wheeling them around 
their axis, putting them one by one and one by one to theit 
very place in his clockwork—to him an unorganized machine to 
run on and on forever in the same shape. But uyghens, 
Newton himself, by discovering the generic cause of the figure 
of the earth aimed the first blow at this base idea, which we 
theless has found its advocates even to the present hour, especl y 
among theologians. The corner-stone being broken ou 
system it has been crumbling down. Geology has restored is 
lost history of the earth, and the nebular theory has traces” 
earth to the sun as her mother. Thus creation was NOW © 
cal with the productions of the rotating mass of matter, }% 
the chemical elements. : he ele 
We have attempted to show that both rotation and t “ ioff) 
ments come from the forces wherewith the ONE matter (Urstony, 
was endowed (see § 6). It is highly interesting to S¢ 
first v 
will at the same time more clearly set forth what we pa 
above when saying that science is approaching to the true Ong” 
inal condition of Cosmos by making steps representing °™ 
and longer periods of time. : 
