35° 



SCIENCE. 



Spirit. 6 This is the uncompromising creed of true Brahmin- 

 ism. If, then, this creed can be retained amidst the ex- 

 travagant Polytheism of later Hindu corruptions, much 

 more easily could it be retained in the early Pantheism of 

 the Vedic hymns. 



There is, however, one kind of evidence remaining, 

 which may be said to be still within the domain of his- 

 tory, and that is the evidence derived from language, 

 Irom the structure and etymology of words. This evi- 

 dence carries us a long way further back, even to 

 the time when language was in the course of its for- 

 mation, and long before it had been reduced to writ- 

 ing. From this evidence as we find it in the facts report- 

 ed respecting the earliest forms of Aryan speech, it seems 

 certain that the most ancient conceptions of the 

 energies of Nature were conceptions of personality. 

 In that dim and far-off time, when our prehistoric 

 ancestors were speaking in a language long anterior 

 to the formation of the oldest Sanskrit, we are told ihat 

 they called the sun the Illuminator, or the Warmer, or 

 the Nourisher ; the moon, the Measurer ; the dawn, the 

 Awakener ; the thunder, the Roarer; the rain, ihe 

 Rainer ; the fire, the Quick-Runner.' We are told further 

 that in these personifications the earliest Aryans did not 

 imagine them as possessing the material or corporeal 

 forms of Humanity, but only that the activities they ex- 

 hibited were most easily conceived as comparable with 

 our own. Surely this is a fact which is worth volumes of 

 speculation. What was most easy and most natural then 

 must have been most easy and most natural from the be- 

 ginning. With such a piopensity in the earliest men of 

 whom we have any authentic record to see personal 

 agency in everything, and with the general impression of 

 unity and subordination under one system which is sug- 

 gested by all the phenomena of Nature, it does not seem 

 very difficult to suppose that the fundamental conception 

 of all Religion may have been in the strictest sense 

 primeval. 



But the earliest records of Aryan worship and of Aryan 

 speech are not the only evidences we have cf the com- 

 parative sublimity of the earliest known conceptions of 

 the Divine Nature. The Egyptian records are older still ; 

 and some of the oldest are also the most sublime. A 

 hymn to the rising and setting sun, which is contained in 

 the 125th chapter of the " Book of the Dead," is said by- 

 Egyptian scholars to be " the most ancient piece of 

 poetry in the literature of the world." 8 In this Hymn 

 the Divine Deity is described as the Maker of Heaven and 

 of Earth, as the Self-existent One ; and the elementary- 

 forces of Nature, under the curious and profound expres- 

 sion of the " Children of inertness," are described as His 

 instruments in the rule and government of Nature. 9 Nor 

 is it less remarkable that these old Egyptians seem to have 

 grasped the idea of Law and Order as a characteristic 

 method of the Divine Government. He who alone is 

 truly the Living One is adored as living in the Truth, and 

 in Justice considered as the unchanging and unchangea- 

 ble Rule of Right, in the moral world, and of order in the 

 physical causation.'" The same grand conception has 

 been traced in the Theology of the Vedas. The result of 

 all this historical evidence may be given in the words M. 

 Renouf : "It is incontestably true that the sublimer por- 

 tions of the Egyptian Religion are not the comparatively 

 late result of a process of development or elimination 

 from the grosser. The sublimer portions are demon- 

 strably ancient ; and the last stage of the Egyptian Re- 

 ligion, that known to the Greek end Latin writers, was by 

 far the grossest and most corrupt." 



• Professor Monier Williams, " Hinduism," p. 1 1. 

 ' Max Mullcr, Hibbert Lectures, 1878, p. 193. 



• Renouf Hibbert, Lectures, 1879, P» »97- 



• Hibbert Lectures, by Renouf, pp. 198, 199. 

 10 /dem, 1879, pp, 119, 120. 



ANCIENT PLANETARY RINGS, VOLUME, 

 MASS AND DENSITY. 



By Edgar L. Larkin. 



IV. 



In Astronomical literature there is engrafted a venera- 

 ble doctrine giving details of the processes of evolution 

 of the solar system, trom a mass of incandescent gas. 

 The theory is a hundred years old. It says, all matter 

 now in the sun and planets was once in a state of rare 

 gas, extending beyond the orbit of Neptune. The gas 

 was hot ; it cooled, contracted, and rotated. When by 

 condensation it had dwindled to the insignificant limits of 

 the Neptunian orbit, its velocity of rotation was so great 

 that a ring of gas was detached from the equator of the 

 shrinking sphere. This ring in time formed Neptune. 

 In like manner all the planets were formed, the residue 

 of the primordial mass being the sun. This error has 

 been taught to children, and so tenacious are the tradi- 

 tions of youth, that geometers have been known to cling 

 to the illusion in mature years. It has but one rival — 

 perpetual motion — and is known as the Nebular Hypothe- 

 sis. If it is true it can be handled by arithmetic ; if false, 

 computation will detect the fallacy. 



How shall it be attacked ; and what can be learned of 

 the primeval state of matter? Can we peer into the 

 depths of primordial time when worlds were in develop- 

 ment? The geologist penetrates strata, and writes the 

 records of the earth. Can the history of Neptune be 

 written ? And can we trace the processes of its evolu- 

 tion ? If so, the mass, volume and thence the density, of 

 the ring whence it formed must be determined. We 

 know its mass in terms of terrestrial matter, it was 102 

 sextillion tons, or 204 septillion pounds ; because that is 

 the amount of matter now in Neptune. By what possi- 

 ble means can its volume be learned ? The problem 

 seems incapable of solution, mathematics apparently 

 being unable to furnish a method of grappling with the 

 question. We have used diligence to find records show- 

 ing that the volume and density of the ring have ever 

 been calculated, and failed. But there is one way of 

 learning the magnitude of the mass of gas whence Nep- 

 tune condensed. It is based on the doctrine of the 

 CENTRE OF gravity, and it is a fact in nature which 

 subverts the Nebular Hypothesis. We know that if the 

 revolving sphere discarded equatorial matter to make 

 Neptune, the planet formed in the line of its centre of 

 gravity. There are formulae for the determination of the 

 distances of centres of gravity of segments from the cen- 

 tre of the circles whence they were cut. There are only 

 three possible forms of rings that can be cut from the 

 periphery of a sphere — segmental cylindric and another, 

 whose sections are in shape like sections cut by a per- 

 pendicular plane passir g through a bi-convex lens. This 

 geometrical figure is formed by the revolution of a seg- 

 ment of a circle about its chord held quiescent ; and the 

 solid generated is a circular spindle. This form we over- 

 looked in the previous paper. The volumes of these 

 rings are sought, the data being the distances of their 

 centres of gravity from the centre of the sphere, which is 

 the distance of Neptune from the sun — 2,780,000.000 

 miles. It has been shown in these notes that the radius 

 of the only sphere large enough to afford a segment of 

 sufficient size to have its centre of gravity coincide with 

 Neptune's orbit, was three (3) billion miles. The dimen- 

 sions of this segmental ring cut off by passing the chord 

 of the segment around the sphere, were : chord, 2,600,- 

 000,000; altitude, 300,000,000; and length, 17,500,000,- 

 000 miles, the length of the path of Neptune. Therefore 

 its volume was nine (9) octillion cubic miles, and as this 

 number of miles had to contain 204 septillion pounds, one 

 cubic mile held .0224 pounds, or 157 grains, 45 cubic 

 miles being required to contain one pound of gas. 



"At 1 5. 5 C, (60" F.), and 30 inches barometric pres- 

 sure, 100 cubic inches of Hydrogen weigh 2.14 grains." 



