The nebulae which we are able to observe are not altogether confirmatory of the hypothesis under consideration.  They have the most fantastic shapes, as if they had no relation to rotating suns in the formative stages.  There are vast gaps in the middle, where they ought to be densest.  Mr. Plumer, in the Natural Science Review, [Page 188] says, in regard to the results of the spectroscopic revelations:  “We are furnished with distinct proof that the gases so examined are not only of nearly equal density, but that they exist in a low state of tension.  This fact is fatal to the nebular theory.”

In the autumn of 1876 a star blazed out in Cygnus, which promised to throw a flood of light on the question of world-making.  Its spectrum was like some of the fixed stars.  It probably blazed ont by condensation from some previously invisible nebula.  But its brilliancy diminished swiftly, when it ought to have taken millions of years to cool.  If the theory was true, it ought to have behaved very differently.  It should have regularly condensed from gas to a solid sun by slow process.  But, worst of all, after being a star awhile, it showed unmistakable proofs of turning into a cloud-mist—­a star into a nebula, instead of vice versa.  A possible explanation will be considered under variable stars.

Such are a few of the many difficulties in the way of accepting the nebular hypothesis, as at present explained, as being the true mode of development of the solar system.  Doubtless it has come from a hot and diffused condition into its present state; but when such men as Proctor, Newcomb, and Kirkwood see difficulties that cannot be explained, contradictions that cannot be reconciled by the principles of this theory, surely lesser men are obliged to suspend judgment, and render the Scotch verdict of “not proven.”  Whatever truth there may be in the theory will survive, and be incorporated into the final solution of the problem; which solution will be a much grander generalization of the human mind than the nebular hypothesis.

[Page 189] Of some things we feel very sure:  that matter was once without form and void, and darkness rested on the face of the mighty deeps; that, instead of chaos, we have now cosmos and beauty; and that there is some process by which matter has been brought from one state to the other.  Whether, however, the nebular hypothesis lays down the road travelled to this transfiguration, we are not sure.  Some of it seems like solid rock, and some like shifting quicksand.  Doubtless there is a road from that chaos to this fair cosmos.  The nebular hypothesis has surveyed, worked, and perfected many long reaches of this road, but the rivers are not bridged, the chasms not filled, nor the mountains tunnelled.

When men attempt to roll the hypothesis of evolution along the road of the nebular hypothesis of worlds, and even beyond to the production of vegetable and animal life, mind and affection, the gaps in the road become evident, and disastrous.