discussed more fully in the next chapter. In brief, the spectroscope,
which examines the light of distant stars and discovers what chemical
elements emitted it, finds matter, in the hottest stars, in an unusual
condition, and seems to show the elements successively emerging from
their fierce alchemy. Sir J. Norman Lockyer has for many years conducted
a special investigation of the subject at the Solar Physics Observatory,
and he declares that we can trace the evolution of the elements out of
the fiery chaos of the young star. The lightest gases emerge first, the
metals later, and in a special form. But here we pass once more from
Lilliputia to Brobdingnagia, and must first explain the making of the
star itself.

CHAPTER III. THE BIRTH AND DEATH OF WORLDS

The greater part of this volume will be occupied with the things that
have happened on one small globe in the universe during a certain number
of millions of years. It cannot be denied that this has a somewhat
narrow and parochial aspect. The earth is, you remember, a million times
smaller than the sun, and the sun itself is a very modest citizen of
the stellar universe. Our procedure is justified, however, both on the
ground of personal interest, and because our knowledge of the earth's
story is so much more ample and confident. Yet we must preface the story
of the earth with at least a general outline of the larger story of the
universe. No sensible man is humbled or dismayed by the vastness of
the universe. When the human mind reflects on its wonderful scientific
mastery of this illimitable ocean of being, it has no sentiment of being
dwarfed or degraded. It looks out with cold curiosity over the mighty
scattering of worlds, and asks how they, including our own world, came
into being.

We now approach this subject with a clearer perception of the work we
have to do. The universe is a vast expanse of ether, and somehow or
other this ether gives rise to atoms of matter. We may imagine it as a
spacious chamber filled with cosmic dust; recollecting that the chamber
has no walls, and that the dust arises in the ether itself. The problem
we now approach is, in a word: How are these enormous stretches of
cosmic dust, which we call matter, swept together and compressed
into suns and planets? The most famous answer to this question is the
"nebular hypothesis." Let us see, briefly, how it came into modern
science.

We saw that some of the ancient Greek speculators im