inst them. Kepler and Newton had stirred men's
minds by their account of the prodigious scale upon which the mechanism
of the Universe was constructed, and Laplace had already enunciated the
theory according to which the cosmic bodies were originally formed in
obedience to the law of gravitation by the condensation of rotating
nebulous spheres. And there were those who used these discoveries of
astronomy to cast doubts upon the likelihood that the Divine attention
would be concentrated upon the concerns of so tiny a speck as this
planet of ours. There were others who maintained that the unbroken
persistency of the order of Nature was evidence enough to shew that it
had no beginning and could have no end.

Against both these objectors the irony and the oratory of a Chalmers
was directed with what was held to be overwhelming effect. If the
telescope had shewn us wonderful things, there was another instrument,
he said, which had been given to us {20} about the same time. If by
the telescope we had been led to see "a system in every star," it was
no less true that the microscope had disclosed "a world in every atom,"
thus proving to us that "no minuteness, however shrunk from the notice
of the human eye, is beneath the notice of His regard."

So again, in an oration upon "The constancy of Nature," the thesis is
most eloquently defended that "the strict order of the goodly universe
which we inhabit" is nothing else than "a noble attestation to the
wisdom and beneficence of its great Architect."[3]

Little did men dream at that time of the wealth of other discoveries
that was soon to increase enormously the complexity of their problems;
or of the inferences that would be drawn from them with an ingenuity
and an assurance that would task to the utmost the ability and the
patience of the defenders of the old beliefs.

It is of the new facts disclosed and of the further thoughts suggested
by them that we must next proceed to tell.

[1] _Summa_, I., ii. 3.

[2] Essay on "Atheism and Superstition."

[3] _Astronomical Discourses_ (1817), pp. 80, 211.

{21}

CHAPTER II

THE PROGRESS OF DISCOVERY

We find it hard to realise that not so very long ago the steam-engine
and the electric telegraph were unknown; and we are right when we say
that life must have worn a very different aspect in those days. It is
scarcely less difficult for us to realise the change that has been
wrought in men's thoughts since the