An Expository Outline of the Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation | Page 5

spheres the gaseous matter around them:--
"Of nebulous matter," says he, "in its original state we know too little to enable us to suggest how nuclei should be established in it. But supposing that from a peculiarity in the constitution nuclei are formed, we know very well how, by the power of gravitation, the process of an aggregation of the neighbouring matter to these nuclei should proceed until masses more or less solid should be detached from the rest. It is a well-known law in physics, that when fluid matter collects towards, or meets in a centre, it establishes a rotatory motion. See minor results of this law in the whirlpool and the whirlwind--nay, on so humble a scale as the water sinking through the aperture of a funnel. It thus becomes certain, that when we arrive at the stage of a nebulous star we have a rotation on its axis commenced."
Up to this, however, the author has proved nothing. The existence of the fire-mist and nuclei are assumptions only, and the way by which he tries to account for rotatory motion is clearly erroneous. The aggregation of matter round the nuclei by gravitation would have no such tendency; no more than a perfect balance would of itself have a tendency to move about its fulcrum, or a falling stone to deviate from its vertical course. Gravitation would indeed compress the particles of matter, but its tendency and entire action is towards the nucleus; it compresses them no more on one side of the line of their direction to the centre of force than on any other side; and hence no lateral or rotatory motion would ensue. Rotation, therefore, is yet unaccounted for; though the author says it is a well-known law in physics that when fluid matter collects towards, or meets in a centre, it establishes a rotatory motion; and then for illustration refers to a whirlwind or whirlpool. No such effect would follow the conditions stated, and an entire ignorance is betrayed of the laws of mechanical philosophy. In the whirlpool and the whirlwind the gyration is caused by the fluid passing, not to the centre, but through it and away from it; in the whirlpool downwards through the place of exit, in the whirlwind upwards to where the vacuum has caused the rapid aggregation.
LAPLACE was too able a mathematician to commit these elementary blunders; he did not assume to account for rotation by inapplicable laws, but took for granted that the sun revolved upon its axis, and thence communicated a corresponding motion to the bodies thrown from its surface. But our author has sought to advance beyond his teacher, and in this way has shown his ignorance of physics by an egregious mistake. At this point we might stop, without following the ulterior steps by which the solar system is made to evolve out of heated vapour. Having got rotation, though by an impossible process, the author falls into the illustration already given of the theory of LAPLACE. The rotation of each nucleus or sun round its axis produces centrifugal force; that force, by refrigeration, increases beyond the centripetal force of gravity; in consequence rings are formed and detached from the surface, whose unequal coherence of parts mostly causes them to break into separate masses or planets, partaking of the motion of the bodies from which they have been separated, and these primaries in their turn becoming centres of gravitation and centrifugal force, throw off their secondaries, or moons.
In this way the solar system and other systems upon a similar plan of arrangement, it is conjectured, may have been formed. According to the author the generative process is still in progress, and new worlds are in course of being thrown off from new suns in the confines of creation. These nebulous stars on the outer bounds of space, of varying forms and brightness, are supposed to be the centres of new systems in different stages of development, like children of various ages and growth in a numerous family. This is the author's own illustration (p. 20), and after giving it he proceeds:--
"Precisely thus, seeing in our astral system many thousands of worlds in all stages of formation, from the most rudimental to that immediately preceding the present condition of those we deem perfect, it is unavoidable to conclude that all the perfect have gone through the various stages which we see in the rudimental. This leads us at once to the conclusion that the whole of our firmament was at one time a diffused mass of nebulous matter, extending through the space which it still occupies. So also, of course, must have been the other astral systems. Indeed, we must presume the whole to have been originally in one connected mass, the astral systems being only the first