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these vast chains; rocks of schist, porphyry, freestone, and talc, min- 

 gle in layers ; then coarse marble, and other calcareous substances 

 without shells, resting on the schistus, form the exterior crests, the 

 lower divisions, the supporters of these chains, and are the last work 

 by which this unknown liquid, this sea without inhabitants, seemed 



If we for a moment grant the hypothesis, it hy no means proves that the solar 

 system was formed without the intervention of intelligence and design. It only 

 transfers our own view of the skill exercised and the means employed to another 

 part of the work. For how came the sun and its atmosphere to have such materials, 

 such motions, such a constitution, that these consequences followed from their pri- 

 mordial condition ? How came the parent vapour thus to be capable of coherence, 

 separation, contraction, solidification ? How came the laws of its motion, attrac- 

 tion, repulsion, condensation to be so fixed as to lead to a beautiful and harmonious 

 system in the end ? How came it neither to be too fluid nor too tenacious, to con- 

 tract neither too generally nor too slowly for the successive formation of the several 

 planetary bodies ? How came that substance, which at one time was a luminous 

 vapour, to be at a subsequent period solids and fluids of many various kinds ? What 

 but design and intelligence prepared and tempered this previously existing element, 

 so that it should by its natural changes produce such an orderly system. 



If we suppose that a planet will be produced in this way, what sort of a body 

 would it be ? Something, it may be presumed, resembling a large meteoric stone. 

 How comes this mass to be covered with motion and organization, with life and hap- 

 piness ? What primitive cause stocked it with plants and animals, and produced all 

 the wonderful and subtle contrivances which we find in their structure ; all the wide 

 and profound mutual dependencies which we trace in their economy? Was man, 

 with his thought and feeling, his powers and hopes, his will and conscience, also 

 produced as an ultimate result of the condensation of the solar atmosphere ? Except 

 we allow a prior purpose and intelligence presiding over this material "primitive 

 cause," how irreconcileable is it with the evidence which crowds in upon us at every 

 side. 



In the next place, we may observe concerning this hypothesis, that it carries us 

 back to the beginning of the present system of things, but that it is impossible for 

 our reason to stop at the points thus presented to it. The sun, the earth, the planets, 

 the moon, were brought into their present order out of a previous state, and, as it is 

 supposed in the theory, by the natural operation of laws. But, then, how came that 

 previous state to exist ? We are compelled to suppose that it in like manner was 

 educed from a still prior state of things ; and this again must have been the result 

 of a condition prior still. Nor is it possible for us to find in the tenets of the nebular 

 hypothesis any existing place or satisfaction for the mind. The same reasoning fa- 

 culty which seeks for the origin of the present system of things, and is capable of 

 assenting to or dissenting from the hypothesis propounded by Laplace, as an answer 

 to this enquiry, is necessarily led to seek in the same manner for the origin of any 

 previous system of things out of which the present may appear to have grown, and 

 must pursue this train of enquiries unremittingly, so long as the answer which it re- 

 ceives describes a mere assemblage of matter an 1 motion, since it would be to con- 

 tradict the laws of matter and the nature of motion to suppose such an assemblage 

 to be the first condition. 



The reflection just stated may be illustrated by the further consideration of the 

 nebular hypothesis. This opinion refers us for the origin of the solar system to a 

 sun surrounded by an atmosphere of enormously elevated temperature revolving and 

 cooling. But while we descend to a still earlier time, what state of things are we 

 to suppose ? A still higher temperature, a still more diffused atmosphere. Laplace 

 imagines, that, in its original state, the sun consisted in a scattered luminosity, so 

 as to resemble those nebula among the fixed stars which are viewed by the aid of the 

 telescope, and which produce a nucleus more or less luminous encompassed, by a 

 cloudy brightness. " This anterior state was itself preceded by other states, in 

 which the nebulous matter was more and more extended, the nucleus being less and 



