An Expository Outline of the Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation | Page 7

the original equator of the

solar rotation, and in the direction of that rotation. But there are
exceptions; the comets, which intersect the equatorial plane in every
angle of direction form one, and the most distant of the planets forms
another. The satellites of Uranus are retrograde. They move from east
to west in orbits highly inclined to that of their primary, and on both
accounts are exceptions to the order of the other secondary bodies. Our
author is so perplexed by this inconsistency that he first doubts the fact,
and next tries to explain it by alleging that "it may be owing to a
bouleversement of the primary." What is meant by the bouleversement
of a planet none of his critics seem to apprehend, nor do we. But that
the moons of Uranus are contrariwise to those of the other planets, Sir
JOHN HERSCHEL has indubitably established; so that the author at
any rate upon this point has sustained a bouleversement.
Our own moon forms a third exception to his theory. According to his
system, this satellite is a slip or graft from our planet, and in
constitution, it might be inferred, would partake of the elements of the
parent. But the fact is otherwise. The moon has no atmosphere, no seas,
or rivers, nor any water, and of course totally unfit for human
inhabitants, or organic life of any kind. It must, then, have had a
different origin, or be in some earlier stage of development than that
through which our earth has passed.
Leaving these exceptions, we may next inquire into the relevant
purposes of the nebular hypothesis, supposing its assumptions
acquiesced in. Like the fanciful theories of the ancient philosophers, it
seems only to involve a profitless topic of controversy, without solving
natural phenomena. It does not unravel the mystery of the beginning,
brings us no nearer to the first creative force. Like a good chemist,
previous to analysis, the author first throws all matter into a state of
solution; but granting him his fire-mist and nuclei in the midst, how or
whence came this condition and arrangement of nature? What was its
pre-existing state? or, if that be answered, how or whence was that
preceding state educed, for it, too, must have had one prior to it? So
that the mind makes no advances by such inquiries, is lost in a maze
that can have no end, because it has no beginning; and, like Noah's
messenger, for want of a resting place, is compelled to return to the first

starting point. Easier, and quite as satisfactory, it seems to believe, as
we have been taught to believe, that the celestial spheres were at once
perfect and entire, projected into space from the hands of the maker,
than that they were elaborated out of luminous vapour by gravity and
condensation. Hopeless inquiry is thus foreclosed, an inquisition that
cannot be answered, silenced, and removed out of the pale of
discussion.
It is not from any attribute of the Deity being impugned that the
hypothesis is objectionable. Design and intelligence in the creation are
left paramount as before, and our impression of the skill exercised, and
the means employed, only transferred to another part of the work. He
who produced the primordial condition the author supposes, who filled
space with such a mist, composed of such materials, subjected to such
laws, such constitution, that sun, moon, and stars necessarily resulted
from them, appears omnipotent as ever. But it does not advance inquiry,
nor assist us in explaining the wonders we contemplate in our own
globe. Suppose a planet formed by the author's process, what kind of a
body would it be? Something, as Professor WHEWELL suggests,
resembling a large meteoric stone. How after wards came this
unformed mass to be like our earth, to be covered with motion and
organization, with life and general felicity? What primitive cause
stocked it with plants and animals, and produced all the surprising and
subtle contrivances which we find in their structure, all the wide and
profound mutual dependence which we trace in their economy? Is it
possible to conceive, as the Vestiges inculcate, that man, with his
sentiment and intellect, his powers and passions, his will and
conscience, were also produced as the ultimate result of vapourous
condensation?
One more conjecture of the author, in this division of his subject, we
shall only notice. It is that "the formation of bodies in space is still in
progress." What may be doing in the nebulæ, in the region scarcely
within reach of telescopic vision, in what may be considered the yet
uninclosed and commonable waste of the universe, is a subject, we
suspect, of much obscurity, and respecting which no precise
intelligence has been received; but limiting attention to the solar system,

which is