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Show 16 THE BODIES OF SPACE ours. There is, indeed, one piece of evidence for tbt~ probability of the comparitive youth of our system, altogether apart from human traditions and the geognostic ~ppear~nces of the surface of our planet. This consists In a thin nebulous matter, which is diffused around the sun to nearly the orbit of lVIercury, of a very oblately spheroidal shape. This matter, ~hich sometirrws appe!irs to our naked ~yes, at sunset, In the form of a cone projecting upward~ In the line of the sun's path, and which bears the name of Zodiacal Light, has been thought a residuum or last remnant of tl1e concentrating matter of our system, and thus may be supposed to indicate the comparative recent! less of the pri~cipal events of our cosmogony. SupposIng the surmise and inference to be correct, and they may ~e hel~ as so far supported by more f;uniliar evidence, we m1ght With the rnore confidence speak of our system as not amongst the elder born of Heaven but one whose various phen_omena, _physical and moral, 'as yet lay undevelop_ ed, wluie myriads of others [were fully fashioned, and 1n comp!ete. arrangement. Thus, in the sublime chronology to \Vluch we are directing our inquiries, we firs~ find ourseiv:es calle~ upon to consider the globe Which we Inhabit as a child of the sun, elder than Venus and .her younger broth~r Mercury, but posterior in date of birth to Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, and Uranus; next to !egard our. who1~ system as probably of recent formation In comparison With many of the stars of our firm~ment. '\Ve must, however, be on our guard against supposing the earth as a rece!lt globe in our ordinary conceptions of t1rne. From evidence afterwards to be adduced it will be seen that it cannot be presumed to be leRs than' many hundreds of centuries old. How much older Uranus may be, no one can tell, far less how much more aged may bs many of the stars of our firman1ent, or the stars of other :firmaments than ours. Another and more important consideration arises from the hypothesis! namely, as to the means by which the grand process Is conducted. The nebulous matter collects around nuclei by virtue of the law of attraction. The agglomeration brings into operation another physical l~w, by force of which the separate masses of matter are eith~r made to :otate singly, or, in addition to that single motrou, are set Into a coupled revol 11tion in ellipses. Next • THEIR .ARRANGEMENTS AND FORMATION. 17 ¢entrifug~l force comes i.nto play, flinging off portions of the rotating masses, wh1ch become spheres by virtue of the same law of attraction, and are held in orbits of revolution round the central body by means of a composition betw.een the centrifugal and gravitating forces. All, we see, Is done by certain laws of matter, so that it becomes a question of extreme interest, what are such laws? All that can yet be said, in answer, is, that we see certain natural events proceeding in an invariable order under certain conditions, and thence infer t)le existence of son1e fundamental arrangement which, for the bringing about of these events, has a force and certainty of acbon similar to, but more precise and unerring than those arrangements which human society n1akes for its own benefit, and calls laws. It ~s remarkable of physical laws, that "":e see th~m operating on every kind of scale as to magm. tude, With the same regularity and perseverance. The tear that falls from childhood's cheek is globular, through _ t!le effica.cy of that same law of mutual attraction of particles whiCh made the sun and planets round. The rapidity of Mercury is quicker than that of Saturn, for the same reason that, V\rhen we wheel a ball round by a string and make t~e stri.ng wind up round our fingers, the ball always fi1e~ qt;tiCker and quicker as the string is shortened Two eddies In a stream, as has been stated, fall into a mutual revolution at the distance of a couple of inches through the same cause which makes a pair of suns linl~ in mutual revolution at the distance of millions of miles. There is, we might say, a -sublime simplicity in this indifference of the grand regulations to the vastness or minuteness of the field of their operation. Their being uni .. form, too, throughout space, as far as we can scan it and their being so unfailing in their tendency to operat~, so that o?lY the proper conditions are presented, afford to ~mr m1nds matter for the gravest consideration. Nor should It escape our careful notice that the regulations on which all the laws of m.atter operate, are established on a rio·idly accurate mathematical basis. Proportions of nu~bers and geometrical figures rest at the bottom of the whole. All these considerations, wh~n the . mind i~ thoroughly prepared for tbem, tend to raise our Ideas w1th respect to th~ character of physi?allaw~, even though we do not go a SI~gle step fur~her _In the Investigation. But it is impossible for an Intelligent mind to stoo t,here. We ad· |
