rigin_.
The grand phenomenon being a motion of rotation in the whole system, of
which the rotation of the sun is the central part, he thought if he
could account for this, he could explain all the rest.

He set out by supposing, that the sun and planets originally existed as
a vast cloud of gaseous matter, intensely heated--a vast
fire-mist--placed in a region of space much cooler, and that this cloud,
by gradual cooling, and the pressure of its parts, settled down into
solid forms. It was supposed that some portions of this cloud would
begin to cool sooner than others, and so become solid sooner, and that
the hot gas, rushing to the solid part, would form a vortex, which would
set the cloud in motion around its center. As the speed of its rotation
would increase, and the outside condense and grow solid before the
inside, the cloud would whirl off the rings of solid matter, which would
keep revolving in the same orbits in which they were cast off, and would
revolve faster and faster as they grew cooler and more solid, till they
broke up, by the force of their velocity, into smaller pieces; which
fragments, in their turn, repeated the process, until the present number
of planets and their satellites was produced.[199]

This theory differs from Buffon's much as a low pressure engine,
deriving most of its power from the condenser, differs from one of high
pressure. La Place does not explode the boiler to make his planets, but
merely runs his train so fast as to break an axle every now and then,
when the wheel runs off with the velocity it has got, and keeps its
track as well as if it had an engineer to guide it, grows into a little
locomotive by dint of running, and after a while breaks an axle
too--breaking is a hereditary failing of these suns and planets that had
no God to make them--and the wheels thus thrown off supply it with moons
and rings, like Saturn's. The illustration is not nearly so absurd as
the theory, inasmuch as a locomotive is an incomparably less complicated
contrivance than a planet. However the nonsense was cradled in the halls
of philosophy by means of antiquity, and distance.

As no fiction was too marvelous for the credence of the Greek, if it
were only a hundred years old, or located beyond the Euxine, so to our
development philosopher any impossibility may be accepted, if it can
only be dissolved into gas, and located a good many millions of miles
away; and to make it an article of faith on whi