alm of law and order
in itself; and, that it is so, is the essential condition of the
possibility of solar and planetary evolution from the apparent chaos.
[7]

"Waste" is too vague a term to be worth consideration. "Without form,"
intelligible enough as a metaphor, if taken literally is absurd; for a
material thing existing in space must have a superficies, and if it has
a superficies it has a form. The wildest streaks of marestail clouds
in the sky, or the most irregular heavenly nebulae, have surely just as
much form as a geometrical tetrahedron; and as for "void," how can that
be void which is full of matter? As poetry, these lines are vivid and
admirable; as a scientific statement, which they must be taken to be
if any one is justified in comparing them with another scientific
statement, they fail to convey any intelligible conception to my mind.

The account proceeds: "And darkness was upon the face of the deep." So
be it; but where, then, is the likeness to the celestial nebulae, of the
existence of which we should know nothing unless they shone with a light
of their own? "And the spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters."
I have met with no form of the nebular hypothesis which involves
anything analogous to this process.

I have said enough to explain some of the difficulties which arise in
my mind, when I try to ascertain whether there is any foundation for
the contention that the statements contained in the first two verses
of Genesis are supported by the nebular hypothesis. The result does not
appear to me to be exactly favourable to that contention. The nebular
hypothesis assumes the existence of matter, having definite properties,
as its foundation. Whether such matter was created a few thousand
years ago, or whether it has existed through an eternal series of
metamorphoses of which our present universe is only the last stage, are
alternatives, neither of which is scientifically untenable, and neither
scientifically demonstrable. But science knows nothing of any stage
in which the universe could be said, in other than a metaphorical and
popular sense, to be formless or empty; or in any respect less the seat
of law and order than it is now. One might as well talk of a fresh-laid
hen's egg being "without form and void," because the chick therein is
potential and not actual, as apply such terms to the nebulous mass which
contains a potential solar system.

Until some further enlightenment comes to m