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In its modern form, the "Nebular Hypothesis" made its appearance in 1796. It was presented by Laplace with diffidence, as a speculation unfortified by numerical buttresses of any kind, yet with visible exultation at having, as he thought, penetrated the birth-secret of our system. He demanded, indeed, more in the way of postulates than Kant had done.
H. Corder, on whose notification Mr. Espin, on August 21, examined its nearly monochromatic spectrum. The metamorphosis of Nova Cygni seemed repeated. The light of the new object, like that of its predecessor, was mainly concentrated in a vivid green band, identified with the chief nebular line by Copeland, Von Gothard, and Campbell. The second nebular line was also represented.
In that dim Niflheim, for instance, with its well-springs of the waters of the upper world confusedly bubbling, and its metallic ore-veins, and dusk, vaporous atmosphere, whence issued the old Nibelungen heroes of the great Teutonic epos, there is much that is suggestive. May not one discover in this old cosmogonic myth a dim hint of the nebular hypothesis of creation, as it is called?
Our calendar would still be in all essential respects as it is now; our year with the solstices and equinoxes as its cardinal points. The texture of our poetry might conceivably be the poorer without its star spangles; our philosophy, for the want of a nebular hypothesis. These would be the main differences.
The hypothesis of M. Faye, described in your numbers for January 28 and February 4, respectively, is to a considerable extent coincident with one which I ventured to suggest in an article on "Recent Astronomy and the Nebular Hypothesis," published in the Westminster Review for July, 1858.
The Nebular Hypothesis throws no light on the origin of diffused matter; and diffused matter as much needs accounting for as concrete matter. The genesis of an atom is not easier to conceive than the genesis of a planet. Nay, indeed, so far from making the Universe less a mystery than before, it makes it a greater mystery. Creation by manufacture is a much lower thing than creation by evolution.
All this, clearly, is but an amplification of that nebular hypothesis which, long before the spectroscope gave us warrant to accurately judge our sidereal neighbors, had boldly imagined the development of stars out of nebulae and of planets out of stars. But Lockyer's hypothesis does not stop with this.
Now, I won't deny that this primitive Kantian and Laplacian evolutionism, this nebular theory of such exquisite concinnity, here reduced to its simplest terms and most elementary dimensions, has received many hard knocks from later astronomers, and has been a good deal bowled over, both on mathematical and astronomical grounds, by recent investigators of nebulæ and meteors.
Such may have been the condition of life in our nebula before the condensation of matter was complete, if it be true that life springs forward at the very moment when, as the effect of an inverse movement, the nebular matter appears. It is therefore conceivable that life might have assumed a totally different outward appearance and designed forms very different from those we know.
To the senses a planet would seem to be forming itself by accretion; and so, indeed, in one sense it was; for the mass constantly increased. As the nucleus sped on in the prescribed pathway, it drew to itself the surrounding matter, leaving behind it an open channel. The orbit was thus cleared of the matter, which was at first merely nebular, and afterward both nebular and fragmentary.
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