{The Cosmogony of Laplace}

Thus from his original bulk – or, to speak more accurately, from the condition in which we first considered him – from a partially spherified nebular mass, certainly much more than 5,600 millions of miles in diameter – the great central orb and origin of our solar-planetary-lunar system, has gradually descended, by condensation, in obedience to the law of Gravity, to a globe only 882,000 miles in diameter; but it by no means follows, either that its condensation is yet complete, or that it may not still possess the capacity of whirling from itself another planet.

I have here given – in outline of course, but still with all the detail necessary for distinctness – a view of the Nebular Theory as its author himself conceived it. From whatever point we regard it, we shall find it beautifully true. It is by far too beautiful, indeed, not to possess Truth as its essentiality – and here I am very profoundly serious in what I say. In the revolution of the satellites of Uranus, there does appear something seemingly inconsistent with the assumptions of Laplace; but that one inconsistency can invalidate a theory constructed from a million of intricate consistencies, is a fancy fit only for the fantastic. In prophecying, confidently, that the apparent anomaly to which I refer, will, sooner or later, be found one of the strongest possible corroborations of the general hypothesis, I pretend to no especial spirit of divination. It is a matter which the only difficulty seems not to foresee.⁵

The bodies whirled off in the processes described, would exchange, it has been seen, the superficial rotation of the orbs whence they originated, for a revolution of equal velocity about these orbs as distant centres; and the revolution thus engendered must proceed, so long as the centripetal force, or that with which the discarded body gravitates toward its parent, is neither greater nor less than that by which it was discarded; that is, than the centrifugal, or, far more properly, than the tangential, velocity. From the unity, however, of the origin of these two forces, we might have expected to find them as they are found – the one accurately counterbalancing the other. It has been shown, indeed, that the act of whirling-off is, in every case, merely an act for the preservation of the counterbalance.

After referring, however, the centripetal force to the omniprevalent law of Gravity, it has been the fashion with astronomical treatises, to seek beyond the limits of mere Nature – that is to say, of Secondary Cause – a solution of the phænomenon of tangential velocity. This latter they attribute directly to a First Cause – to God. The force which carries a stellar body around its primary they assert to have originated in an impulse given immediately by the finger – this is the childish phraseology employed – by the finger of Deity itself. In this view, the planets, fully formed, are conceived to have been hurled from the Divine hand, to a position in the vicinity of the suns, with an impetus mathematically adapted to the masses, or attractive capacities, of the suns themselves. An idea so grossly unphilosophical, although so supinely adopted, could have arisen only from the difficulty of otherwise accounting for the absolutely accurate adaptation, each to each, of two forces so seemingly independent, one of the other, as are the gravitating and tangential. But it should be remembered that, for a long time, the coincidence between the moon's rotation and her sidereal revolution – two matters seemingly far more independent than those now considered – was looked upon as positively miraculous; and there was a strong disposition, even among astronomers, to attribute the marvel to the direct and continual agency of God – who, in this case, it was said, had found it necessary to interpose, specially, among his general laws, a set of subsidiary regulations, for the purpose of forever concealing from mortal eyes the glories, or perhaps the horrors, of the other side of the Moon – of that mysterious hemisphere which has always avoided, and must perpetually avoid, the telescopic scrutiny of mankind. The advance of Science, however, soon demonstrated – what to the philosophical instinct needed no demonstration – that the one movement is but a portion – something more, even, than a consequence – of the other.

For my part, I have no patience with fantasies at once so timorous, so idle, and so awkward. They belong to the veriest cowardice of thought. That Nature and the God of Nature are distinct, no thinking being can long doubt. By the former we imply merely the laws of the latter. But with the very idea of God, omnipotent, omniscient, we entertain, also, the idea of the infallibility of his laws. With Him there being neither Past nor Future – with Him all being Now – do we not insult him in supposing his laws so contrived as not to provide for every possible contingency? – or, rather, what idea can we have of any possible contingency, except that it is at once a result and a manifestation of his laws? He who, divesting himself of prejudice, shall have the rare courage to think absolutely for himself, cannot fail to arrive, in the end, at the condensation of laws into Law – cannot fail of reaching the conclusion that each law of Nature is dependent at all points upon all other laws, and that all are but consequences of one primary exercise of the Divine Volition. Such is the principle of the Cosmogony which, with all necessary deference, I here venture to suggest and to maintain.

In this view, it will be seen that, dismissing as frivolous, and even impious, the fancy of the tangential force having been imparted to the planets immediately by ›the finger of God,‹ I consider this force as originating in the rotation of the stars: – this rotation as brought about by the in-rushing of the primary atoms, towards their respective centres of aggregation: – this in-rushing as the consequence of the law of Gravity: – this law as but the mode in which is necessarily manifested the tendency of the atoms to return into imparticularity: – this tendency to return as but the inevitable rëaction of the first and most sublime of Acts – that act by which a God, selfexisting and alone existing, became all things at once, through dint of his volition, while all things were thus constituted a portion of God.

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⁴ Laplace assumed his nebulosity heterogeneous, merely that he might be thus enabled to account for the breaking up of the rings; for had the nebulosity been homogeneous, they would not have broken. I reach the same result – heterogeneity of the secondary masses immediately resulting from the atoms – purely from an à priori consideration of their general design – Relation.

⁵ I am prepared to show that the anomalous revolution of the satellites of Uranus is a simply perspective anomaly arising from the inclination of the axis of the planet.