212 



EXPLANATIONS. 



of Venus towards her orbit 75 degrees, may have turned 

 that of Uranus a little further along, and so reversed the 

 position of his poles. The admitted inclination of the 

 axis of Uranus towards the plane of his orbit is 79 de- 

 grees, the greatest found in any of the planets. This implies 

 only the necessity for an increase of inclination to the 

 extent of 22 degrees, or about one-fourth of the quadr^nc, 

 in order to account for the surmised reverse arrangement. 

 Nor are causes for such a phenomenon far to seek In the 

 revolution of the presumed nebular mass, there would 

 be great undulations, as I venture to say there would be 

 found in any similar body which we might set into a 

 similar rotatory motion. Such I esteem as the causes of 

 the departure of the planetary axis from the vertical. A 

 curve in the outermost portion, amounting to 3 fold — 

 like the curl of a high wave — would cause the boideverse- 

 ment of Uranus, and the consequent (apparent) retro 

 gression of his satellites. 



It appears, then, that, overlooking a few minor unex- 

 plained difficulties, the objections to the nebular hypoth- 

 esis are not formidable to it. It approaches the region of 

 ascertained truths, and may reasonably be held as a strong 

 corroboration of what first appears from the material laws 

 of the universe, that the whole Uranographical arrange- 

 ments were effected in the manner of natural law. It is, 

 however, altogether a mistake to regard this conclusion, 

 as far as it is one, as equivalent to a superseding of Deity 

 in the history of creation. It proposes nothing beyond a 

 view of the mode in which the Divine will has been 

 pleased to act, in this first and most important of its works. 

 The formation of worlds and their arrangement now ap- 

 pear but as steps in a Historical Progress, for matter is ne- 

 cessarily presumed to have existed before in a different 

 form. By what means and under what circumstances crea- 

 tion, in the true sense of the word, took place — that is, how 

 existence was given to the matter which we suppose to 

 have been capable of such evolutions — no one can as yet 

 tell ; we only are sure, if any trust can be placed in the 

 laws of our minds, that it had a Cause, or an Author. 

 Leaving such an inquiry as one in which we have not at 

 present ground for a single step, it is surely a great 

 gratification that we can at least trace the operations of 

 the Great First Cause, from a condition of matter anteri- 

 or to its present forms, and learn with certainty that these 



