Chapter X: Infidelity Among the Stars (2)

Professor Tyndall thus exposes the absurdity of the supposition that the nebula contained the elements of mind: "For what are the core and essence of this hypothesis? Strip it naked and you stand face to face with the notion that not alone the more ignoble forms of animalcular or animal life, not alone the noble forms of the horse and lion, not alone the exquisite and wonderful mechanisms of the human body, but the human mind itself--emotion, intellect, will, and all these phenomena, were once latent in a fiery cloud. Surely the mere statement of such a notion is more than a refutation."[201]

_It was only one of several contradictory notions._ Thus a writer in the _Atlantic Monthly_, so far from accepting the notion that the sun and earth are solidifying and cooling down, as explanatory of the facts revealed by astronomy and geology, infers the very contrary from the acknowledged facts, namely, that we are coming up to the nebular condition, rather than developing from it. He writes as follows:

"The earth is progressing by excessively slow changes toward
the solar and nebulous condition. Its history is a repetition
of the solar, and a time must arrive when the surface,
becoming incandescent, will be obscured only by casual dark
pits in a brilliant atmosphere, a _souvenir_ of the present
darkness of the crust; yet during a certain period, within
fixed limits of gravitating force and heat of mass, the human
race may continue to exist; progressing, we may suppose, in
force and fineness of organization. The race will perish,
perhaps, in the order of nature, by failure or insufficient
number of offspring, a principal cause of the extinction of
superior races. The earth must become lone and voiceless long
before the incandescence of the crust. Science may follow it
into the condition of an attendant star, and then of an
expanding nebula.

"In the cosmos all movements are cyclical, and recurrent,
without change, save interchange among forms of motion. A
universe which is, in its total, the same to-day as yesterday,
and always, would appear idle and dull if it were not the
footstool of divine force, upon which the creative will
maintains a certain equipoise, necessary to the continued
production of spiritual forms."

_It is an impracticable notion, contrary to the first principle of mechanics, that action and reaction are equal._

The grand requirement of the system--power to work the engine--can never be raised by La Place's, nor by any other mechanical plan. The cooling cloud of fire-mist is simply a very big machine, and no machine can generate power to work itself. If La Place could have somehow or other got power for the motion of rotation outside of his cloud, he might have made it revolve, and scatter off great lumps of the lightest outside stuffs, as your grindstone scatters off drops of water when you turn it rapidly; but, having no such power, his theory is a plan to make the grindstone turn itself. It is, therefore, precisely of the same value as any one of the hundred of ingenious schemes for creating power by machinery, of the perpetual motion men, in defiance of the first law of mechanics, that action and reaction are equal.

Moreover, he proposes to raise the power by making the gas cool at one part of the surface faster than at another, and so to make a vortex around that spot, which would set the whole mass to revolving. But no conceivable reason can be alleged why the homogeneous mass should begin to cool at one place faster than another, or indeed why an eternally hot mass should ever begin to cool at all. But, letting that pass, to make the required vortex for the rotation of the whole mass, it should not begin to cool at any part of the surface, but at the center, where, as every engine driver who ever saw a condenser, and every woman who ever cooled a dish of mush knows, it could not possibly begin to cool till the outside mass had become cold; and so no motion could be produced. This is so well known in the machine shops that it is rare to find a machinist own the theory.

But even a more fatal objection has been raised by one of the most eloquent expounders of the theory. Mr. Spencer shows us that the mass, condensing under the influence of gravitation, so far from cooling _must necessarily evolve heat_. He is perfectly clear and decided on this matter, _that the condensing mass could never, by any possibility, begin to cool, but must begin to heat, and go on heating till it burst out in a blaze_. He says: "Heat must inevitably be generated by the aggregation of diffused matter into a concrete form; and throughout our reasonings we have assumed that such generation of heat has been an accompaniment of nebular condensation."[202] "While the condensation and the rate of rotation are progressively increasing, the approach of the atoms necessarily generates _a progressively increasing temperature_. As this temperature rises light begins to be evolved, and ultimately there results a revolving sphere of fluid matter radiating intense light and heat--a sun."[203]

This, it will be perceived, is exactly the reverse of the original nebular theory of a cooling globe, or spheroid of homogeneous nebular matter, diffused by intense heat, and cooling down into suns, and moons, and planets. So far as the Spencer system is accepted, it displaces La Place's theory, and the inventor accordingly works out a new theory of his own, and equally inconsistent with known facts and principles. But as Mr. Spencer candidly owns that his scheme can neither generate matter nor force, as we have already seen, it needs no further discussion in this connection.

The fact is simply this, a chemical perpetual motion is as impossible as a mechanical one. The discovery of the convertibility of forces shows this. The development theory of the generation of motion by processes of the self-heating or the self-cooling of the machine, or by chemical actions and reactions, is, in its last analysis, only a big perpetual motion humbug.

Even were the rotation, and the cooling process, to take place, as is supposed, _no such results would proceed from these combined operations as the case requires_; for, according to the theory, as the cooling and contracting rings revolve in the verge of a vortex of fluid less dense than themselves, one of these two results must take place: either, as is most probable, from their exceeding tenuity, the rings will break at once into fragments, when, instead of flying outward, they will sink toward the center, and, as long as they are heavier than the surrounding fluid, _they will stay there_; and, as the cooling goes on on the outside, so will the concentration of the heavier matter, till we have _one_ great spheroid, with a solid center, liquid covering, and gaseous atmosphere. A vortex will never make, nor allow to exist beyond its center, planets heavier than the fluid of which it is composed. The other alternative, and the one which La Place selected, was the supposition that the cooling and contracting rings did not at first break up into pieces, but retained their continuity; but, contrary to all experience and reason, he supposed that these cooling rings kept contracting and widening out from the heated mass, at the same time. The only fluid planetary rings which we can examine--those of Saturn--have been closing in on the planet since the days of Huygens, and eventually will be united with the body of the planet. Every boy who has seen a blacksmith hoop a cart-wheel has learned the principle, that a heated ring contracts as it cools, and in doing so presses in upon the mass around which it clings. But, according to this nebular notion, the fire-mist keeps cooling and shrinking up, while the rings, of the very same heat and material, keep cooling faster, and widening out from it; a piece of schismatical behavior without a parallel among solids or fluids, either in heaven or earth, or under the earth.

Plateau's illustration of the mode in which centrifugal force acts in overcoming molecular attraction, has been cited as a demonstration of the truth of the nebular hypothesis. The conditions, however, are entirely different. By means of clock-work he caused a globule of oil to rotate in a mixture of alcohol and water _of the same density_, thus entirely getting rid of the power of gravitation; and by increasing the velocity he caused it to flatten out into a disc, and finally to project a multitude of minute drops, which continued their revolutions so long as the fluid in which they floated kept revolving by the motion of the rotating spindle, _the divergent drops, the central mass, and the surrounding fluid, being all the while of the same density_. But the essential conditions of the nebular theory are, that _the central mass_ exert an attraction of gravitation upon all its parts, and _therefore be denser than the surrounding ether or empty space_, and that _the cooling and contracting rings be of a different density from the rest of the mass_. Their divergence from the more fluid portion is supposed to arise from their growing denser. And Reclus shows[204] that the divergent drops owe their existence to the _expansion_, not to the _contraction_, of the globule of oil. This experiment, then, contradicts the theory, so far as it is applicable.

Plateau himself never adduced this experiment in support of the nebular theory; but having, by way of illustration, spoken of the revolving drops as satellites, and finding that expression misunderstood, he corrected the error in a subsequent paper. He says: "It is clear that this mode of formation is entirely foreign to La Place's cosmogonic hypothesis; therefore we have no idea of deducing from this little experiment, which only refers _to the effects of molecular attraction_, and _not to those of gravitation_, any argument in favor of the hypothesis in question; an hypothesis which _in other respects we do not adopt_."[205]

_It was always contrary to the facts of astronomical science._ It has accordingly been repudiated by the most eminent astronomers.

Sir John Herschel declares that the appearance of those groups, or clusters, of stars, supposed to be formed by the condensation of nebulæ is quite different from that depicted by this theory, and that no traces of the ring-making process is visible among them. He thus describes the appearances of these groups; exactly the contrary of that demanded by the theory, which he emphatically disclaims, from the presidential chair of the British Association for the Advancement of Science.

"If it is to be regarded as demonstrated truth, or as receiving the smallest support from any observed numerical relations which actually hold good among the elements of the primary orbits, I beg leave to demur. Assuredly it receives no support from the observation of the effects of sidereal aggregation as exemplified in the formation of globular and elliptic clusters, supposing them to have resulted from such aggregation. For we see this cause working out in thousands of instances, to have resulted, _not_ in the formation of a single large central body, surrounded by a few smaller attendants disposed in one plane around it, but in systems of infinitely greater complexity, consisting of multitudes of nearly equal luminaries, grouped together in a solid elliptic or globular form. So far then as any conclusions from our observations of nebulæ can go, the result of agglomerative tendencies _may_ indeed be the formation of families of stars of a general and very striking character, but we see nothing to lead us to presume its further result to be the surrounding of those stars with planetary adherents."[206]

_This theory is contradicted by the peculiarities of our solar system._ The orbits of the comets being inclined at all angles to the sun's equator, are often out of the plane of his rotation, and so in the way of the theory. The moons of Uranus revolve in a direction contrary to all the other bodies, and fly right into the face of the theory. According to the nebular theory, the outer planets, first cast off from the sun, ought to be lighter than those nearer him, as these had longer pressing near the middle of the mass; and the sun himself, having been pressed by the weight of all the rest of the system, should be the densest body of the whole. And the author of _The Vestiges of Creation_, in expounding the theory, manufactures a set of facts to suit it, and tells his readers that the planets exhibit a progressive diminution in density from the one nearest the sun to that which is most distant. Our solar system could not have lasted thirty years had that been the case. The Earth, Venus, and Mars, are nearly of the same density. Uranus is more dense than Saturn, which is nearer the sun. Neptune is more dense than either. The sun, which ought to be the heaviest of all, according to the theory, is only one-fourth the density of the earth. La Place himself has demonstrated that these densities and arrangements are indispensable to the stability of the system. But they are plainly contradictory to his theory of its formation.[207]

The palpable difference of luminosity between the sun and the planets, which, as they are all made of the very same materials, and by the same process, according to this theory, ought to be equally self-luminous, is in itself a self-evident refutation of the nebular hypothesis, or of any other process of creation by mere mechanical law. "The same power, whether natural or supernatural, which placed the sun in the center of the six primary planets, placed Saturn in the center of the orb of his five secondary planets; and Jupiter in the center of his four secondary planets; and the earth in the center of the moon's orbit; and, therefore, had this cause been a blind one, _without contrivance or design_, the sun would have been a body of the same kind with Saturn, Jupiter, and the Earth; that is, _without light or heat_. Why there is one body in our system qualified to give light and heat to all the rest, I know no reason, but because the Author of the system thought it convenient." So says the immortal Newton.[208]

The great expounder of modern science--Humboldt--is equally explicit in enumerating the decisive marks of choice and will in the construction of the solar system, and in contemptuously dismissing the notion of development and creation by natural law from the halls of science.

"Up to the present time, _we are ignorant, as I have already remarked, of any internal necessity--any mechanical law of nature_--which (like the beautiful law which connects the square of the periods of revolution with the cube of the major axis) represents the above-named elements--the absolute magnitude of the planets, their density, flattening at the poles, velocity of rotation, and presence or absence of moons--of the order of succession of the individual planetary bodies of each group, in their dependence upon the distances. Although the planet which is nearest the sun is densest--even six or eight times denser than some of the exterior planets: Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune--the order of succession in the case of Venus, the Earth, and Mars, is very irregular. The absolute magnitudes do, generally, as Kepler has already observed, increase with the distances; but this does not hold good when the planets are considered individually. Mars is smaller than the Earth; Uranus smaller than Saturn; Saturn smaller than Jupiter, and succeeds immediately to a host of planets, which, on account of their smallness, are almost immeasurable. It is true, the period of rotation generally increases with the distance from the sun; but it is in the case of Mars slower than in that of the Earth, and slower in Saturn than in Jupiter."[209] "_Our knowledge of the primeval ages of the world's physical history does not extend sufficiently far to allow of our depicting the present condition of things as one of development._"[210]

Sir David Brewster adds his testimony as follows: "Geology does not pretend to give us any information respecting the process by which the nucleus of the earth was formed. Some speculative astronomers indeed have presumptuously embarked in such an inquiry; but there is not a trace of evidence that the solid nucleus of the globe was formed by secondary causes, such as the aggregation of attenuated matter diffused through space; and the _nebular theory_, as it has been called, though maintained by a few distinguished names, has, we think, been overturned by arguments which have never been answered. Sir Isaac Newton, in his four celebrated letters to Dr. Bentley, has demonstrated that the planets of the solar system could not have been thus formed and put in motion round a central sun."[211]

4. _Astronomy not only exposes the folly of past cosmogonies, but demonstrates the impossibility of framing any true theory of creation, and thus refutes all future cosmogonies._

The grand error of all cosmogonies lies in the arrogant assumption, on which every one of them must be founded, _that the theorist is acquainted with all substances, and all forces in the universe_, and with all the modes of their operation; not only at the present period, and on this earth, but in all past ages, and in worlds in widely different, and utterly unknown situations; for, if he be ignorant of any substance, or of any active force in the universe, his generalization is avowedly imperfect, and necessarily erroneous. That unknown force must have had its influence in framing the world. Its omission, then, is fatal to the theory which neglects it. A theory of creation, for instance, which would neglect the attraction of gravitation would be manifestly false. But there are other forces as far reaching, whose omission must be equally fatal; for instance, the power of repulsion.

A conviction of this truth has given rise to a constant effort to simplify matters down to the level of our ignorance, by reducing all substances to one, or at most two simple elements, and all forces to the form of one universal law; but the progress of science utterly blasts the attempt. Instead of simplifying matters, the very chemical processes undertaken with that view revealed new substances, and every year increases our knowledge of nature's variety. No scientific man now dreams of one primeval element. In the same way, astronomy, which, it was boasted, would enable us to account for all the operations of the universe, by reducing all motion to one mechanical law, has revealed to us the existence of other forces as far reaching as the attraction of gravitation, and more powerful; and substances whose nature and combinations are utterly unknown. But every cosmogony is just an attempt to simplify matters, by ignoring the existence of these unknown substances, and mysterious forces; a process which science condemns, as utterly unphilosophical and absurd.

Astronomy has shown us _our ignorance of the substances_, or _materials_, _of our own little globe_. It has demonstrated that the whole body of the earth must have an average density equal to iron. As the rocks near the surface are much lighter, those toward the center must be heavier than iron, to make up this density. Of what, then, do they consist? The geologist says he does not know. No geologist ever saw them. No mortal ever will see them, and report their chemical constitution, their dip, and the arrangement of their strata, to the American Association for the Advancement of Science. The very utmost "we can say is that they are unlike anything with which we are acquainted." Very well; then be pleased to have the decency to abstain from telling us how the world was made, when you don't know what it is made of.

The sun's heat, at its surface, is 300,000 times greater than at the surface of the earth, but a tenth of this amount, collected in the focus of a lens, dissipates gold and platinum in vapor. When the most vivid flames which we can produce are held up in the blaze of his rays, they disappear. If a cataract of icebergs, a mile high, and wider than the Atlantic Ocean, were launched into the sun with the velocity of a cannon-ball, the small portion of the sun's heat expended on our earth would convert that vast mass into steam as fast as it entered his atmosphere without cooling its surface in the least degree. "The great mystery, however, is to conceive how so enormous a conflagration (if such it be) can be kept up. Every discovery in chemical science here leaves us completely at a loss, or rather seems to remove farther the prospect of probable explanation."[212] Yet, the sun is the nearest of the fixed stars, and by far the best known, and most nearly related to us. In fact, we are dependent on his influences for life and health. But if the theorist _can not tell his substance, or the nature and cause of the light and heat he sends us_, how can he presume so far on the world's credulity as to present a theory of his formation?

"Astronomical problems accumulate unsolved upon our hands, because we can not, as mechanicians, chemists, or physiologists, experiment on the stars. Are they built of the same material as our planet? Are Saturn's rings solid, or liquid? Has the moon an atmosphere? Are the atmospheres of the planets like ours? Are the light and heat of the sun begotten of combustion? And what is the fuel which feeds these unquenchable fires? These are questions, which we ask, and variously answer, _but leave unanswered after all_."[213] But, till he can answer these, and a thousand questions like these, let no man presume to describe the formation of these unknown orbs.

Comets constitute by far the greatest number of the bodies of our solar system. Arago says seven millions frequent it, within the orbit of Uranus.[214] They are the largest bodies known to us, stretching across hundreds of millions of miles. They approach nearer to this earth than any other bodies, sometimes even involving it in their tails, and generally exciting great alarm among its inhabitants. But the nature of the transparent luminous matter of which they are composed is utterly unknown. As they approach the sun, they come under an influence directly the opposite of attraction. The tail streams away from the sun, over a distance of millions of miles, _and yet the rate of the comet's motion toward the sun is quickened_, as though it were an immense rocket, driven forward by its own explosion.

Further, while the body of the comet travels toward the sun, sometimes with a velocity nearly one-third of that of light, the tail sends forth coruscations in the opposite direction, with a much greater velocity. The greatest velocity with which we are acquainted on earth is the velocity of light, which travels a million of times faster than a cannon-ball, or at the rate of 195,000 miles per second; but here is a substance capable of traveling twenty-three times faster, and here is a force propelling it, twenty-three times greater than any which exists on earth. Its existence was first discovered by the coruscations of the comet of 1807. "In less than one second, streamers shot forth, to two and a half degrees in length; they as rapidly disappeared, and issued out again, sometimes in proportions, and interrupted, like our northern lights. Afterward the tail varied, both in length and breadth; and in some of the observations, the streamers shot forth from the whole expanded end of the tail, sometimes here, sometimes there, in an instant, two and a half degrees long; _so that within a single second they must have shot out a distance of 4,600,000 miles_."[215] Similar exhibitions of this unknown force were made by the comet of 1811, by Halley's comet, and several others.

In these amazing disclosures of the unknown forces of the heavens, do we not hear a voice rebuking the presumption of ignorant theorists, with the questions, Knowest _thou_ the ordinances of heaven? Canst _thou_ set the dominion thereof in the earth? Hear one of the most distinguished of modern astronomers expound the moral bearings of such a discovery: "The intimation of a new cosmical power--I mean of one so unsuspected before, but which yet can follow a planet through all its wanderings--throws us back once more into the indefinite obscure, and checks all dogmatism. How many influences, hitherto undiscovered by our ruder senses, may be ever streaming toward us, and modifying every terrestrial action. And yet, because we had traced one of these, we have deemed our astronomy complete! Deeper far, and nearer to the root of things, is that world with which man's destiny is entwined."[216]

We can have no reason, save our own self-sufficient arrogance, to believe that the discovery of these two forces exhausts the treasures of infinite wisdom. Humboldt thus well refutes the folly of such an imagination: "The imperfectibility of all empirical science, and the boundlessness of the sphere of observation, render the task of explaining the forces of matter by that which is variable in matter, an impracticable one. What has been already perceived, by no means exhausts that which is perceptible. If, simply referring to the progress of science in our own times, we compare the imperfect physical knowledge of Robert Boyle, Gilbert, and Hales, with that of the present day, and remember that every few years are characterized by an increasing rapidity of advance, we shall be better able to imagine _the periodical and endless changes which all physical sciences are destined to undergo. New substances and new forces will be discovered._"[217]

Thus, all true science, conscious of its ignorance, ever leads the mind to the region of faith. Its first lesson, and its last lesson, is humility. It tells us that every cosmogony, which the children of theory so laboriously scratch in the sand, must be swept away by the rising tide of science. When we seek information on the great questions of our origin and destiny, and cry, "Where shall wisdom be found, and what is the place of understanding?" The high priests of science answer, in her name, "It is not in me; the measure thereof is longer than the earth, and broader than the sea."

We receive this honest acknowledgment as an inestimable boon. We are saved thereby the wearying labor of a vain and useless search after knowledge which lies not in her domain. We come down to the Bible with the profound conviction that science can give us no definite information of our origin, no certainty of our destiny, and but an imperfect acquaintance with the laws which govern this present world. If the Bible can not inform us on these all-important questions, we must remain ignorant. Science declares she can not teach us. The Word of God remains, not merely the best, but absolutely the only, the last resource of the anxious soul.

The Bible gives us no theory of creation. It simply asserts the fact, that "In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth," but does not tell us _how_ he did so. The knowledge could be of no use to us, for he never means to employ us as his assistants in the work of creation. Nor could we understand the matter. The force by which he called the worlds into being, and upholds them in it, exists in no creature. "He stretcheth forth the heavens alone. He spreadeth abroad the earth by himself." "He upholdeth all things by the word of his power."

But it presents anxious, careworn, humbled souls with something infinitely more precious than cosmogonies; even an explicit declaration of the love toward them of him who made these worlds.

"Thus saith the Lord, THY REDEEMER,
And he who formed thee from the womb:
I am the Lord, who maketh all things;
Who stretcheth forth the heavens alone,
And spreadeth abroad the earth, by myself."

"He healeth the broken in heart,
And bindeth up their wounds.
He telleth the number of the stars,
And calleth them all by their names.
Great is our Lord, and of great power;
His wisdom is infinite!"

Yes, the Creator of heaven and earth, who upholds all things by the word of his power, became a man like you, and dwelt on earth, and suffered the sorrow, the shame, the pain, the death, that sinful man deserved; and when he had by himself purged our sins, sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high. From that heavenly throne his voice now sounds, reader, in your ear, "Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy-laden, and _I will give you rest_."

FOOTNOTES:

[186] Cosmos III. 138.

[187] Herschel's Outlines, chap. xvii. sec. 887.

[188] Cosmos III. 197.

[189] Nichol's Architecture of the Heavens, 9th ed. p. 180.

[190] Cosmos IV. 292.

[191] Nichol's Contemplations on the Solar System, xxx.

[192] Cosmos III. 253.

[193] Herschel's Outlines of Astronomy, chap. xvi.

[194] _New York Evangelist_, May 5, 1870.

[195] Nichol's Architecture of the Heavens, 9th edition, 272.

[196] Pontecoulant in _System of the World_, p. 70.

[197] Progress of Astronomy, 70.

[198] Memoirs of the French Academy, by M. Le Verrier; from _The Annual of Scientific Discovery_, for 1855, p. 376.

[199] Herschel's Outlines of Astronomy, p. 558, ed. of 1853.

[200] Illustrations of Universal Progress, page 298.

[201] Fragments of Science and Scientific Thought, p. 163.

[202] Illustrations of Progress, page 292.

[203] Illustrations of Progress, page 34.

[204] The Earth, page 256.

[205] Taylor's Scientific Memoirs, Vol. V., cited in McCosh's Typical Forms and Special Ends in Creation, p. 403.

[206] Opening Address to the British Association, 1845.

[207] Taking water as the unit of density, Mercury is 6.71; Venus, 5.11; Earth, 5.44; Mars, 5.21; Saturn, 0.76; Uranus, 0.97; Neptune, 1.25; the Sun, 1.37.--Cosmos IV. p. 447.

[208] Newton's Optics, IV. p. 438.

[209] Cosmos, IV. p. 425.

[210] Cosmos, III. p. 28.

[211] More Worlds Than One, p. 45.

[212] Herschel's Outlines, VI. Sect. 400.

[213] Dr. George Wilson, F. R. S. E., in Edinburgh Phil. Journal, V. p. 53.

[214] Somerville's Connection of the Physical Sciences, p. 360.

[215] Dick's Sidereal Heavens, chap. xx.

[216] Nichol's Solar System, p. 76.

[217] Cosmos, III. p. 27.