necessary for us to ponder. In the
illustration of Dives and Lazarus, the contributions of Lazarus of
course ceased when his pockets were exhausted, but those of Dives will
continue, and in the lapse of time may attain any amount within the
utmost limits of Dives' resources. The essential point to notice is,
that so long as Lazarus retains anything in _his_ pocket, we know for
certain that Dives has not given much; if Lazarus, however, has his
pocket absolutely empty, and if we do not know how long they may have
been in that condition, we have no means of knowing how large a
portion of wealth Dives may not have actually expended. The
turning-point of the theory thus involves the fact that Jupiter still
retains available moment of momentum in his rotation; and this was our
sole method of proving that the sun, which in this case was Dives, had
never given much. But our argument must have taken an entirely
different line had it so happened that Jupiter constantly turned the
same face to the sun, and that therefore his pockets were entirely
empty in so far as available moment of momentum is concerned. It would
be apparently impossible for us to say to what extent the resources of
the sun may not have been drawn upon; we can, however, calculate
whether in any case the sun could possibly have supplied enough moment
of momentum to account for the recession of Jupiter. Speaking in round
numbers, the revolutional moment of momentum of Jupiter is about
thirty times as great as the rotational moment of momentum at present
possessed by the sun. I do not know that there is anything impossible
in the supposition that the sun might, by an augmented volume and an
augmented velocity of rotation, contain many times the moment of
momentum that it has at this moment. It therefore follows that if it
had happened that Jupiter constantly bent the same face to the sun,
there would apparently be nothing impossible in the fact that Jupiter
had been born of the sun, just as the moon was born of the earth.
These same considerations should also lead us to observe with still
more special attention the development of the earth-moon system. Let
us restate the matter of the earth and moon in the light which the
argument with respect to Jupiter has given us. At present the
rotational moment of momentum of the earth is about a fifth part of
the revolutional moment of momentum of the moon. Owing to the fact
that the moon keeps the same face to us, she has