use of these processes, it is not for me to defend him. All we
can say with regard to him in this connection is, that, having a sort of
scientific presentiment that if the knowledge of his day were sufficiently
advanced it would prove destructive of supernaturalism in the higher and
more abstruse provinces of physical speculation, as it had previously
proved in the lower and less abstruse of these provinces, Comte allowed his
inferences to outrun their legitimate basis. Being necessarily ignorant of
the one generating cause of orderly processes in nature, he improperly
allowed himself to found conclusions on the basis of these processes alone,
which could only be properly founded on the basis of their cause. But
freely granting this much to Professor Flint, and the rest of his remarks
in this connection will be found, in view of the altered standing of this
subject, to be open to amendment. For, in the first place, no one need now
resort to the illogical supposition that "the law of gravitation or any
other physical law has of itself determined the course of cosmical
evolution." What we may argue, and what must be conceded to us, is, that
the common substratum of all physical laws was at one time sufficient to
produce the simplest physical laws, and that throughout the whole course of
evolution this common substratum has always been sufficient to produce the
more complex laws in the ascending series of their ever-increasing number
and variety. And hence it becomes obvious that the "origin of the nebula"
presents a difficulty neither greater nor less than "the origin of the
planets," since, "if we may go back as far as we please," we can entertain
no _scientific_ doubt that we should come to a time, prior even to the
nebula, when the substance of the solar system existed merely as
such--_i.e._, in an almost or in a wholly undifferentiated form, the
product, no doubt, of endless cycles of previous evolutions and
dissolutions of formal differentiations. Therefore, although it is
undoubtedly true that "the solar system could only have been evolved out of
its nebulous state into that which it now presents if the nebula possessed"
those particular attributes which were necessity to the evolution of such a
product, this consideration is clearly deprived of all its force from our
present point of view. For unless it can be shown that there is some
independent reason for believing these particular attributes--which must
have been o