42 SKETCHES OF CREATION. 



of heat which the cosmical vapor experienced produced a 

 rapid contraction in volume. Every particle upon the pe- 

 riphery and through the interior began to move toward 

 the centre of gravity of the mass. It is barely possible 

 that a process of cooling and contraction should proceed 

 in such a mass until the work should be completed and no 

 rotary motion be generated. Such a result has, however, 

 in the existing universe, an infinity of chances against it. 

 There were always other masses of matter within our fir- 

 mament, and others far beyond its limits, which exerted an 

 attraction upon the mass from which our solar system was 

 to be engendered. If Sirius, and Capella, and Vega, and 

 all the other fixed stars, or any of them, be suns like our 

 own, with retinues of encircling planets, their history must 

 be analogous to that of our own system, and we are to re- 

 gard them as hanging on the verge of the firmament when 

 our system was in its earliest infancy. Their attractive 

 influences were felt. The cosmical vapor which might 

 otherwise have been perfectly spherical became distorted 

 in its form. The position of the centre of gravity was 

 changed. The atoms, in their progress toward the centre 

 of gravity, were found upon lines passing to one side of the 

 centre of gravity. Each began to exert a tangential force. 

 The resultant was a tangential force. It was as if a power 

 had been applied at the surface to inaugurate a rotation of 

 the mass. A rotation once inaugurated in a shrinking 

 globe of matter, it is demonstrable that it would continue 

 to be accelerated as long as the mass should continue to 

 contract. In the present case the mass assumed the form 

 of a greatly flattened spheroid, and the velocity'of the pe- 

 ripheral portion became so great as to overcome the power 

 of gravity. As a consequence, the peripheral portion be- 

 came detached in the form of a ring — as water is thrown 

 from a rapidly revolving grindstone. The ring continued 



