magnitudes increase." And this
_law_ played an important part in introducing the theory of evolution,
which, it was alleged, exactly corresponded with such an arrangement.
But more accurate calculations and recent discoveries have dissipated
the supposed order of progression. Humboldt says of it, it is "a law
which scarcely deserves this name, and which is called by Lalande and
Delambre a play of numbers; by others a help for the memory. * * * In
reality the distances between Jupiter, Saturn, and Uranus approximate
very closely to the duplication. Nevertheless, since the discovery of
Neptune, which is much too near Uranus, the defectiveness in the
progression has become strikingly evident." And Olbers rejects it, as
"contrary to the nature of all truths which merit the name of laws; it
agrees only approximately with observed facts in the case of most
planets, and what does not appear to have been once observed, not at all
in the case of Mercury. It is evident that the series, 4, 4+3, 4+6,
4+12, 4+48, 4+96, 4+192, with which the distances should correspond, is
not a continuous series at all. The number which precedes 4+3 should not
be 4; _i. e._, 4+0, but 4+3/2. Therefore between 4 and 4+3 there
should be an infinite number, or as Wurm expresses it, for _n_=1, there
is obtained from 4+2^{n-2}.3; not 4, but 5-1/2."[347] Thus this
so-called law is erroneous in both ends, and defective in the middle.
Finally it has been utterly abolished by the discovery of the planet
Vulcan, which does not correspond to any such law.[348] If the theory of
evolution then corresponds to Bode's law, as its advocates alleged, it
corresponds to a myth.

About the nebulae which have played so large a part in the atheistic
world building, our astronomers are utterly at variance. Sir John
Herschel says they are far away beyond the stars in space. But the
Melbourne astronomer, M. Le Seur, suggests that the star Eta and the
nebulous matter are neighbors; that the nebulous matter formerly around
it, which has recently disappeared, while the star has blazed up into
flames, is being absorbed and digested by the star. This has happened
before, thirty years ago, to that star. Why may not our sun also absorb
and burn up nebulae. But if so, what becomes of the rings of the nebular
theory?

The light of the stars is almost the only medium through which we can
observe them, and it would naturally be supposed that astronomers would
be at pains to have clear