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Explanations: a sequel to Vestiges of the natural history of creation / By the author of that work.

  • Robert Chambers
Date:
MDCCCXLV
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Explanations: a sequel to Vestiges of the natural history of creation / By the author of that work. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    when it sees that precisely similar effects are every day produced by law on a small scale, as when a drop of water spherifies, when the revoly- ing hoop bulges out in the plane of its equator, and the sling, swung round in the hand, increases in speed as the string 1s shortened. The philo- sopher, on observing these phenomena, and find- ing incontestable proof that they are precisely of the same nature as those attending the formation and arrangement of worlds, learns his first great lesson —that the natural laws work on _ the minutest and the grandest scale indifferently ; that, in fact, there is no such thing as great and small in nature, but world spaces are as a hair- breadth, and a thousand years as one day. Having thus all but demonstration that the spheres were formed and arranged by natural law, the nebular hypothesis becomes important, as shadowing forth the process by which matter was so transformed from a previous condition, but it is nothing more; and, though it were utterly dis- proved, the evidence which we previously pos- sessed that physical creation, so to speak, was effected by means of, or in the manner of law, would remain exactly as it was. We should only be left in the dark with regard to the previous
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