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Small bodies are unable to retain the gases at their surface, on account of their feebler gravitation. While, therefore, one half of the globe is buried in eternal darkness, the other half is eternally exposed to the direct and blistering rays of the sun, which is only 86,000,000 miles away.
The progress of metrology has led, as a consequence, to corresponding progress in nearly all physical measurements, and particularly in the measure of natural constants. Among these, the constant of gravitation occupies a position quite apart from the importance and simplicity of the physical law which defines it, as well as by its generality.
Bearing this obvious course of zoological reasoning in mind, let us endeavour for a moment to disconnect our thinking selves from the mask of humanity; let us imagine ourselves scientific Saturnians, if you will, fairly acquainted with such animals as now inhabit the Earth, and employed in discussing the relations they bear to a new and singular 'erect and featherless biped, which some enterprising traveller, overcoming the difficulties of space and gravitation, has brought from that distant planet for our inspection, well preserved, may be, in a cask of rum.
It is well, indeed, that this is so, for if gravitation and the laws of inertia were not consistent and reliable principles holding true at all times and not intermittently, it would be difficult to order our lives with confidence. In the next place, the general principles of biology hold true for the structure and physiology of the human species as they do for all other living things.
A curious fact is that the more recent estimates show that the direction is not very much out of a straight line drawn from the sun to the star Vega, one of the most magnificent suns in the heavens. But it should not be inferred from this that Vega is drawing us on; it is too distant for its gravitation to have such an effect.
Alford, it would seem, suddenly thought of something; for, gathering herself up, she walked off as fast as the laws of gravitation allowed, exclaiming, "There! I never did see! Sech hens! Allus a-flyin' into the kitchen. I wonder now who left that are door open."
When that fact is stated generally, we get the law of gravitation. Thus the word comes to mean little more than a regular process. In our text the word is used in a sense much nearer the latter than the former of these two. 'The law of sin and of death' cannot mean a series of commandments; it certainly does not mean the Mosaic law.
The "law of gravitation" acts; Nature's laws do none of them forget to act. The miserable millions burst forth into Sansculottism, or some other sort of madness: bricks and bricklayer lie as a fatal chaos ! Much sorry stuff, written some hundred years ago or more, about the "Divine right of Kings," moulders unread now in the Public Libraries of this country.
We do not know that gravitation acts beyond the visible universe, but it is reasonable to suppose that it does. At any rate, if we let go its sustaining hand we are lost, and can only wander hopelessly in our speculations, like children astray.
It consisted of a nucleus around which extended, through a great space, a mass of attenuated planetary matter. The nucleus once formed the matter adjacent would precipitate itself by gravitation upon the surface of the incipient world. The precipitation would proceed as heat was given off into space. It was virtually a process of condensation; but the result appeared like growth.
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