ch he will risk his soul,
it is only necessary to give it a remote antiquity. No Papist ever
insisted more on antiquity as the solvent of all absurdity. Antiquity,
distance, and expansion are his trinity, with which all absurdities
become scientific facts.

Herschel had discovered numbers of nebulae, or luminous clouds, in the
distant heavens shining with a distinct light, but which, with the
highest magnifying power he could apply, presented no trace of stars.
Some nebulae, it is true, his largest telescope resolved, like our own
Milky Way, into beds of distinct stars; but there were others--for
instance, one in the belt of Orion--visible to the naked eye as a cloud,
but which his forty feet telescope only displayed as a larger cloud,
without any shape of stars. Now, reasoning upon the matter, he found
that if these nebulae were composed of stars as large as those distinctly
visible, they must be immensely distant to be indistinguishable by his
telescope, and exceedingly numerous and close together to give a cloud
of light visible to the naked eye. In fact, the suns of those firmaments
must be so close to each other as to present a blaze of glory, and
complexities of revolution inconceivable to the dwellers on earth. But
as this daring idea seemed incredible, even to his giant mind, he
thought the appearance of these nebulae might be more rationally
accounted for by supposing that they were not stars at all, but simply
clouds of gaseous matter, like the matter of comets, from which he
supposed that stars were formed by a long process of condensation and
solidification. He thought this theory was favored by the fact, that
nebulae are generally seen in those portions of the heavens that are not
thickly strewn with stars; and also by the various forms of these
clouds. Some were merely loose clouds, without any definite form; others
seemed gathering toward the center. In some, of a roundish, or oval
form, the central mass seemed well defined. In a few, the process seemed
nearly complete, a bright star shining in the midst of a faint nebulous
halo. Here, then, it was said, we see the whole progress of the growth
of stars; their development from the gaseous nebulous fluid into solid,
brilliant suns. La Place accepted Herschel's discoveries as conclusive
proof of the truth of his theory, and it was generally accepted by the
scientific world. Oddly enough, Infidels seem not to have noticed that
those appearances of _condensati