20 The Origin of the 



a second." Nor is it analogous to the course of 

 nature that, from the nebulous state, the materials 

 should contract into one vast fluid globe of the 

 earth's dimensions, at an intense heat, and then 

 begin slowly to cool and solidify. The vapours of 

 the sky do not form themselves into an immense 

 globe at the temperature of boiling water, but into 

 innumerable minute dewy particles ; which again 

 draw together into drops, and fall in cool and 

 fertilizing showers. What has sound science to say 

 against a similar process in the condensation of the 

 earth's materials from the nebulous state ? Do not 

 the falls of meteoric stones furnish a plain illustration 

 of the contraction first into smaller portions, thence 

 gathering into larger bodies ; and these by attraction 

 grouping into larger, and so conglomerating together 

 into spherical masses ? The ancients had a clearer 

 perception of the process of some such concentration 

 of materials from illimitable space ; and a frag- 

 mentary statement of the theory of Leucippus the 

 Eleatic, the reputed founder of the atomic philosophy 

 (who flourished about 428 years before the Christian 

 era, and belonged to a branch of the Italic school of 

 Pythagoras), presents a juster tradition of the 

 consequences deducible from a philosophic doctrine 

 akin to the nebular theory. Hesychius of Miletus, 

 in a fragment which has come down to us, thus 

 states the matter : " Leucippus maintained that the 

 earth moves in revolution upon its axis, and that its 

 form is tympanoid (meaning probably protuberant). 

 He also was the first who maintained that atoms 

 were the ultimate principles. He says that the 

 universe is boundless, and its space partly filled and 

 partly void ; that there are boundless elements, and 

 that innumerable worlds are formed of these, and 



