of our
planet; but that the nebulae, which astronomers see far away in the sky,
are young suns and planets, just beginning to condense, and that the gas
they consist of is the genuine, simple, homogeneous matter out of which
this world, and all worlds, originally made themselves. They thought the
nebulae were so very far away that nobody would ever go there to see and
come back to contradict them; and so they were quite safe in pointing to
them as examples of homogeneous matter.

Now one does not see, if the nebula had been exactly what the
development men assert--_simple, homogeneous matter_--_how they could
ever have made such a composite world as this out of it_, or indeed how
they could make anything but itself out of it. No chemical actions or
reactions can begin in a simple substance; there must always be at least
two simple substances to make a compound. Heating or cooling a simple
substance will never make it a compound. You may heat water in a boiler
and cool it again as often as you please, but your heating and cooling
will never make coffee out of it, unless you put coffee into it. So you
may heat and cool your simple nebula to all eternity, but you will never
get coffee out of it, much less coffee and coffee-pot, china and
company, with the biscuits and butter; all which, and a great deal
more, our philosophers contrive to churn out of the primeval homogeneous
nebula.

But the progress of science has enabled us to show that the nebulae, far
from being simple, homogeneous matter, are compounded of as many
ingredients as the flame of your lamp or gas light, which is combined of
half a score of different substances. By the discovery of Spectrum
Analysis we are able to analyze the chemical composition of the most
distant flames, to tell whether they proceed from solids or gases in a
state of combustion, and what are the gases and minerals consumed in
them. As space forbids the details of this discovery here, I can only
state the results, namely that some of the nebulae consist of clouds of
small solid stars, of which the nebula in Orion is an instance; but
others consist of flames of gases, in all cases compound, and showing,
besides the oxygenated flame, the lines which declare the presence of
hydrogen, and of several metals. Thus it is proved, that no such
eternal, homogeneous nebulae are to be found in heaven, and consequently
nobody could ever make worlds out of a substance which had no existence.

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