The existence, attributes, and methods of God deducible from the phenomena of Nature—Origin of the solar system.

In all that has been said in the preceding chapters respecting the two hypotheses of special creation and evolution, the existence and attributes of the Supreme Being have been assumed. The question of the existence and attributes of God has been reserved for discussion as an independent inquiry; and this inquiry it is now proposed to make, without any reference to the teachings of revealed religion, or to the traditionary beliefs of mankind. The simple idea of God, which I suppose to be capable of being reached as a philosophical deduction from the phenomena of the universe, embraces the conception of a Supreme Being existing from and through all eternity, and possessed of the attributes of infinite power and goodness, boundless, that is to say in faculties, incapable of error, and of supreme beneficence. While this idea of God corresponds with that which has been held from an early period under more or less of the influence exerted by teachings which have been accepted as inspired, or as authorized by the Deity himself, the question here to be considered is whether the same idea of God is a rationally philosophical deduction from the phenomena of the universe without the aid of revelation.

In order to conduct this inquiry so as to exclude all influence of traditionary beliefs derived from sources believed to have been inspired, or from any authority whatever, let us suppose a man to have been born into this world in the full maturity of average human faculties, as they are found in well-disciplined intellects of the present age, but without any inculcated ideas on religious subjects. In the place of education commencing in infancy and carried on to the years of maturity, in the course of which more or less of dogmatic theology would have become incorporated almost with the texture of the mind, let us suppose that the mind of our inquirer is at first a total blank in respect to a belief in or conception of such a being as God, but that his intellectual powers are so well developed that he can reason soundly upon whatever comes within the reach of his observation or study. Let us further imagine him to be so situated that he can command at will the knowledge that science, as it now exists, could furnish to him, and that he is able to judge impartially any theories with which he meets. Such a person would be likely to deal rationally and independently with any question that might arise in the course of his investigations; and the fundamental question that would be likely to present itself to his mind would be, How came this universe and its countless phenomena to exist?

Stimulated by an eager curiosity, but careful to make his investigations with entire coolness of reasoning, let us suppose that our inquirer first turns his attention to the phenomena of the solar system, and to what astronomy can teach him in regard to its construction. He finds it to consist of—

1. The sun, a great central body giving forth light and heat.

2. A group of four interior planets: Mercury, Venus, the Earth, and Mars.

3. A group of small planets, called asteroids, revolving beyond the orbit of Mars, and numbering, according to the latest discoveries, about two hundred and twenty.

4. A group of four planets beyond the asteroids: Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune.

5. The satellites of the planets, of which there are twenty now known; all but three of them belonging to the outer planets.

6. An intermediate number of bodies called comets and meteors, which revolve in very eccentric orbits.

This system of bodies, constituting a mechanism by itself, apart from what are called the fixed stars, is the first object in nature to which our inquirer directs his studies. Inasmuch as the comets and meteors move in very eccentric orbits, and are supposed to come into our system from the illimitable spaces beyond it, although in the case of the comets, or some of them, mathematical calculations enable astronomers to predict their return when they have passed out of the solar system, and inasmuch as the sun and the superior planets may be contemplated as a grand piece of mechanism, and as the greatest mechanical object in nature of whose construction and movements we have some accurate knowledge, we will suppose that our inquirer confines his attention to this part of the solar system, without adverting to the action of the bodies which are not always, as these are, within the range of the telescope.

One of the first things that would strike him would be the enormous range in the sizes, distances, and relative weights of these different bodies. He would learn, for example, that Neptune is eighty times as far from the sun as Mercury, and that Jupiter is several thousand times as heavy; and he would observe that these differences in magnitude, distance from the sun, and weight of each mass, are carried through a range of proportions stupendously great. If he followed the best lights of modern astronomy, he would learn that what is known, or accepted as known, in regard to the operation of any law among these bodies, is that they are bound together by the law of universal gravitation as a force to which all matter would be subjected when it should come to exist, in whatever forms it might be distributed; secondly, that when the bodies now composing the solar system should come into existence, the system would not owe its proportions to the operation of the law of gravitation, but would be the result of a plan so shaped as to admit of its being governed by the law of gravitation after the system had been made, in such a manner as to produce regularity and certainty of movement and to prevent dislocation and disturbance. What the great modern telescopes have enabled astronomers to discover tends very strongly to show that the plan of the solar system, in respect to the relative distances, magnitudes, and revolutions of the different bodies around the sun, and their relations to that central body and to each other, are not the result of any antecedent law which gradually evolved this particular plan, but that the plan itself was primarily designed and executed as one on which the law of gravitation could operate uniformly, and so as to prevent any disturbance in the relations of the different bodies to each other.[105]

An illustration will help to make the meaning of this apparent. Let us suppose a human artificer to project the formation of a complex mechanism, in which different solid bodies would be made to revolve around a central body; and let us imagine him to be situated outside of the earth's attraction, so that its attraction would not disturb him. He would then have to consider the law of gravitation only in reference to its operation among the different bodies of his machine; and he would adjust their relative distances, weights, and orbits of revolution around the central body, so that the law of gravitation, instead of producing dislocation and disturbance, would bind the whole together in a fixed system of movement, by counteracting the centrifugal tendency of a revolving body to depart from its intended orbit, and at the same time relying on the effect of the two forces in preventing the revolving bodies from falling into the center or from rushing off into the endless realms of space.

This is what may well be supposed to have taken place in the formation of the solar system, for it is consistent with the law which must have preceded the existence of that system. We can not suppose that the law of gravitation was itself a mere result of the relative distances, magnitudes, and orbits of the different bodies. This supposition would make gravitation not a law, but a phenomenon. We do indeed arrive at the existence of the law of gravitation by observing the actions of the bodies which compose the solar system; in other words, we discover the law that holds them together, by observing their actions. But we should entirely reverse the proper process of reasoning, if we were to conclude that the law of gravitation is a phenomenon resulting from an arrangement of certain bodies according to a certain plan. The discoveries of astronomy, on the contrary, should lead us to regard gravitation as a universal law, which existed before the existence of the bodies which have been subjected to it. This is the only way in which our inquirer could reason in regard to the formation of the solar system, whether he supposed its plan to have been a special creation, or to have been evolved out of a nebulous vapor by the operation of the laws of motion or any other laws. Reasoning upon the hypothesis that the law of gravitation existed before there were any bodies for it to operate upon, or, in other words, that it had become in some way an ordained or established principle by which all bodies would be governed, he would have the means of understanding the adaptation of the solar system to be operated upon by the law which he had discovered.

He would next ask himself, How came this law of gravitation to exist? That it must have had an origin, must have proceeded from some lawgiver competent to make and enforce it, would be a conclusion to which he would be irresistibly led, for the very idea of a law implies that it is a command proceeding from an authority and power capable of ordaining and executing it. When it is said that a law is a rule of action ordained by a supreme power, which is perhaps the most familiar as it is the most exact definition, the idea of a command and of a power to enforce it is necessarily implied. This is just as true of a physical as it is of a moral law; of a law that is to govern matter as of a law that is to govern moral and accountable beings. Both proceed from a supreme authority and power, and both are commands. There is, however, one distinction between a moral law and a law of Nature, which relates to the mode in which we arrive at a knowledge of the law; a distinction which our inquirer would learn in the course of his investigations. We infer the existence of a law of Nature, or a law designed to operate upon matter, from the regularity and uniformity of certain physical phenomena. As the phenomena occur always in the same way we infer it to be an ordinance of Nature that they shall occur in that way. But the moral phenomena exhibited by the actions of men have not this regularity and uniformity. They are sometimes in accordance with and sometimes grossly variant from any supposed rule of moral action. We can not, therefore, deduce a moral law from our observation of the actions of the beings whom it was designed to govern, but we must discover it from the rules of right reason and from such information as has been given to us by whatever revelation may have come to us from another source than our own minds. But this distinction between the modes of reaching a knowledge of physical and moral laws does not apply to the authority from which they have proceeded. Both of them being commands, or fixed rules of action, both must have had an enacting authority. We learn the one by observing the phenomena of Nature. We learn the other from reason and revelation.

To return now to the examination of the solar system, which our inquirer is supposed to be prosecuting. The study, which astronomy and its implements will have enabled him to make, has taught him the existence of the law of gravitation, and has led him to the conclusion that it must have had an enacting authority. Following out the operation of this law, through the stupendous spaces of the solar system, he would begin to form conclusions respecting the attributes of its author. He would see that the power must have been superhuman; in other words, that it must have immeasurably transcended anything that can be imagined of power wielded by a being of less than infinite capacities; for, although the space occupied by the solar system, from the central sun out to the orbit of the planet Neptune, is a measurable distance, the conception of the law of gravitation, and its execution, through such an enormous space and among such a complex system of bodies, evince a faculty in the lawgiver that must have been boundless in power and skill. The force of gravitation is found to exactly balance the centrifugal tendency of the bodies revolving around the sun, so that, when once set in motion around that center, they remain in their respective orbits and never fall into the sun or into each other. Our learner would thus see the nature of the adjustment required to produce such a result; and, even if he endeavored to follow out this balancing of forces no farther than to the extreme boundary of the solar system, he would see that the being, who could conceive and execute such a design on such a scale, must have had supreme power and boundless intelligence. So that, by the study of the solar system, as its arrangements and movements are disclosed by astronomy, our inquirer would be naturally led to the conception of a lawgiver and artificer of infinite power and wisdom, ordaining the law of gravitation to operate against the centrifugal force, which would otherwise conduct out of its orbit a body revolving around a center, and then adjusting the relative distances, weights, and revolutions of the different bodies, so as to subject them to the operation of the great law that is to preserve them in fixed relations to each other.

If, next, our inquirer should go farther in his investigations of the solar system, and endeavor to satisfy himself concerning the mode in which the different bodies of this system came into existence in their respective positions, the history of astronomy would teach him that there has been a theory on this subject which fails to account for the existence of this system of bodies without the hypothesis of some special creation. This theory is what is called the nebular hypothesis. It supposes that the solar system was evolved out of a mass of fiery vapor, which filled the stellar spaces, and which became the bodies now observable by the telescope, and that they were finally swung into their respective places by the operation of the fixed laws of motion. But all that astronomers now undertake to say is that this hypothesis is a probably true account of the origin of the solar system, and not that it is an established scientific fact, or a fact supported by such proofs as those which show the existence of the laws of motion. The history of the nebular hypothesis, from the time of its first suggestion to the present day, shows that there are no satisfactory means of accounting for the method in which the supposed mass of fiery vapor became separated, consolidated, and formed into different bodies, and those bodies became ranged and located in their respective positions. The hypothesis that these results were all produced by fixed laws working upon a mass of fiery vapor, is one that has been reasoned out in very different ways; and this diversity of views is such that astronomers of the higher order do not undertake to say that opinions may not reasonably differ in regard to the principal question, namely, the question between the nebular hypothesis and the hypothesis of a special act or acts of creation.

Inasmuch, therefore, as scientific astronomy would present to our inquirer nothing but the nebular hypothesis to account for the production of the bodies of the solar system as they now exist, and as there are admitted difficulties in this hypothesis which may not be insurmountable but which have not been as yet by any means overcome, it can not be said that philosophers are warranted in assuming that all the phenomena of the solar system are to be explained by this theory. The hypothesis that the phenomena, or some part of them, have been produced by a cause operating in a different way, that is, by an act or acts of intentional and direct or special creation, is not excluded by the discoveries of the astronomer. Those discoveries lie in the domain of astronomy, and they do not exclude the hypothesis of a special creation of the solar system upon the plan on which we find it arranged. The latter hypothesis lies in the domain of philosophy. It is to be judged by the inquiry whether it is a rational explanation of phenomena, which astronomy does not show as an established scientific fact, or by proofs that ought to be deemed satisfactory, to have been produced by the method suggested by the nebular hypothesis.

The philosophic reasoning, which would conduct our inquirer to his conclusions, would begin for him with the existence of an omnipotent being, by whom the laws of matter and motion were established. This conception and belief he has attained from having discovered those laws, which must have had an author. He would soon hear the scientist speak of "natural" and "supernatural" methods, and he would understand that by the former is meant the operation of certain fixed laws, and, by the latter, a mode of action in a different way. But he would also and easily understand that the power which could establish the laws of matter and motion, the operation of which the scientist calls the natural method, could equally act in another way, which the scientist calls the supernatural, but which, in the eye of philosophy, is just as competent to the Infinite Power as the method called natural. To state it in different words, but with the same meaning, that which the scientist calls the supernatural is to the philosopher just as conceivable and just as consistent with the idea of a supreme being as the order of what we call Nature; for Nature is the phenomena that are open to our observation, and from which we deduce the probable method by which they have been brought about. It will never do to say that they could not have been produced by a cause operating differently from a system of fixed laws so long as we reason from the hypothesis of the existence and attributes of a Supreme Being. If we reason without that hypothesis, we may persuade ourselves of anything or of nothing.

This idea of a Supreme Being, possessed of the attributes of infinite power and wisdom, is one that our inquirer would have reached as a rational deduction from the operation of a law (gravitation) which must have had an author; from the structure of a mechanism so designed as to be governed successfully by that law, and from the execution of the law through such enormous spaces that nothing short of infinite power and wisdom could have produced the result.

At this stage of his investigations, our inquirer encounters a modern scientist. I shall take the liberty of coining convenient names for these two interlocutors: calling the one Sophereus, as representing the spirit of unprejudiced research in the formation of beliefs without the influence of previous teaching; and the other Kosmicos, as a representative of the dogmatic school of evolution and agnosticism.

Sophereus has imparted to his scientific friend the conclusions which he has thus far reached, concerning the existence and attributes of a supreme lawgiver and artificer, as deduced from the phenomena of the solar system. The discussion between them then proceeds as follows:

Kosmicos. I do not wish to convince you at present of my own views on this subject, but I put before you a difficulty which you ought to solve, if you can, to your own satisfaction, before you proceed farther. You have learned of the law of gravitation; and you have imagined a being who has established this and other laws by which matter is to be governed. To this being you have imputed certain personal attributes, which you call infinite power and boundless wisdom. Observe now that the laws to which you assign this origin are of perpetual duration; they have operated without change from the remotest period of their existence just as they operate now, and we have no reason to doubt that they will continue to operate in the same way through the indefinite future. They constitute the order of Nature. Now, you suppose a Supreme Being, who has established these invariable laws, but has not left them anything to do; has not left to them the production of the solar system, but has specially interposed, and in a supernatural mode of action has constructed the machine which has the sun for its center and the surrounding bodies which revolve about it. How can you suppose that the same being has acted in different ways? How can you suppose that the being who you imagine established the general laws of Nature and gave to them a fixed operation throughout the universe, so that they never would be suspended or interrupted, has gone aside from them, and made occasional constructions by special interpositions of his power? Is it not a contradiction to suppose that an Almighty Being, who must have acted by uniform methods without reference to occasions, has acted on certain occasions by special methods that were not uniform with his fixed laws? Does not this hypothesis imply that his fixed laws were insufficient for the purposes for which he designed them, and that he had to resort to other means? How do you get over this difficulty?

Sophereus. What you propound as a difficulty does not disturb me. I understand the distinction which you make between the natural and the supernatural. I can see in the solar system how the law of gravitation and all the other laws of motion operate; but I do not see, nor can you explain, how these laws, or the laws of chemical combination or any other laws, can have evolved the plan of the solar system out of a mass of fiery vapor. I can understand the enactment and establishment of laws of motion, of chemical combination, and of the mechanical action of different states of matter upon each other, to operate in fixed and invariable ways, in certain conditions. But I do not see that there is any interruption or displacement of these laws, after they are established, when an end that is to be accomplished calls for a complex system of new objects among which they are to operate. It is manifest that the question is whether the different bodies of the solar system have been formed and placed in their respective positions, according to a special design of their relative distances, magnitudes, and orbits, or whether these are the results of the operation of fixed laws, without any special interposition of a creating power. Astronomers have not explained how the latter hypothesis is anything more than a probable conjecture. It remains for me to consider whether the hypothesis of a special interposition, whereby the plan of the solar system has been made, is attended with the difficulty which you suggest. We are reasoning about a period of the remote past when this system of bodies did not exist, but when the general laws that were to govern all matter may be supposed to have been previously ordained. If we think of the solar system, conceived and projected by the Supreme Being, as a complex mechanism that was to exist in Nature, the occasion would be one calling for the exercise of infinite wisdom and power. The production of such a mechanism, to answer any ends for which it was intended that it should exist, implies attributes that transcend all our human experience of the qualities of power and wisdom. That it was an occasional exercise of power, in no way implies any irregularity or inconsistency of method, if the power was so exercised as to leave all the general laws of Nature in full operation, so that there would be no clashing between what you call the natural and the supernatural. I have first to ascertain what was the probably intended scope of the general laws which are supposed to have been ordained before the solar system came into existence. If it appears to have been the purpose of the constructor to have these laws work out this system of bodies without any special interposition and formative skill directly exercised, I need go no further. But I see no evidence of that purpose. No one has suggested anything but a theory on this subject, which is not supported by any satisfactory proofs. I am left, therefore, to the consideration of the question whether an act of special interposition, in the formation of a plan obviously calling for the exercise of infinite wisdom and power, is in any way inconsistent with the establishment of a system of laws which were to operate on these bodies and among them after they had come to exist. My conclusion, from what I have learned of the solar system, is, that in the exercise by the same being of the method which you call the natural, and the exercise of the method which you call the supernatural, there is no inconsistency; that each of the fixed laws of matter and motion was designed to have its own scope; and that each of them may well consist, within its limitations, with occasional exercises of power, for the production of objects that were to be operated upon by the laws, but of which they were not designed to be the producing cause. Thus it seems to me to be a rational conclusion that the law of gravitation, the general laws of motion, and all the other laws of matter, which preceded the existence of the solar system, were not designed to be the agents by which the plan of that system would be worked out, but that the plan was so formed and executed that the bodies composing it would be subject to the operation of laws enacted by the Infinite Will for the government of all the forms of matter. The question is, whether the plan of the solar system is due to the operation of the fixed laws, or to a special interposition; or, to state it in another way, whether the whole of the phenomena, the plan and arrangement of the solar system included, are to be referred to the operation of certain fixed laws as the producing agents, or whether some part of the phenomena, namely, the mechanism of the system, should be referred to the special interposition. I am taught, by the physics on which astronomers are now agreed, that gravitation is a force by which the particles of matter act on each other; that every particle of matter in the universe attracts every other particle with a force varying directly as their masses, and inversely as the square of the distance which separates them. This I understand to be the formula in which the law of universal gravitation is expressed. But, for the purpose of illustrating what I understand to be the operation of this force, I have constructed a diagram, in which two bodies are represented as A and B. From each of these bodies there radiates in all directions an attracting force, which acts directly upon every other body in the universe, and which is represented in the diagram by dotted lines. In the diagram, the bodies A and B are first supposed to be one thousand miles apart. A certain portion of the attracting rays proceeding from A would strike directly upon B. All the other rays proceeding in the same direction from A would pass on either side of B without striking it. If B is removed to the distance of two thousand miles from A, the sum total of the attractive force which A would exert upon B would be diminished by the square of the distance, because B would intercept just one fourth of the number of rays proceeding from A compared with the number which it intercepts when the two bodies are only one thousand miles apart; and the rays which B does not intercept would pass along through the realms of space, until they encountered some other body, on which they would exert a force that would follow the same law of diminution. In the diagram, the two bodies A and B may be single particles of matter or collections of particles; they are represented as cubes; but the law of direct action of the attracting force and the law of its diminution would be the same if the bodies were spheres or oblongs. The power of attraction which bodies exert upon each other resides in every individual particle of matter composing the body, and the attraction which that body exerts upon another body is the sum total of the attractions which proceed from all the particles composing the mass and which impinge upon that other body.

In the diagram the two bodies A and B are supposed to be of the same mass. If, as in the case of the sun and the earth, one of the bodies is of far greater mass than the other, then the attraction of the sun for the earth is the same as the attraction of the earth for the sun, because the action is mutual; but the sun, being the greater mass, tends, by reason of its correspondingly greater inertia, to remain comparatively stationary, or, in other words, it has a greater resistance to being pulled out of its normal position, while the earth, having less inertia, is more easily deflected from its straight course in which its momentum tends to carry it, and so travels in an orbit around the sun, the resisting or centrifugal pull of the earth, due to its inertia, exactly balancing the inward pull due to the mutual attraction. I understand that, besides the law of universal gravitation, there are two fundamental laws of motion. By one of these laws, if a body be set in motion and be acted on by no other than the projectile force, it will move forward in a straight line and with a uniform velocity forever. But by another law, if the moving body is acted on by another force than that which originally projected it in a straight line, it will deviate from that line in the direction of that other force and in proportion to it. If A, the earth, liable to be drawn toward B, the sun, by their mutual attraction, was originally projected into space, at a certain distance from the sun, by a force which would carry it on in a straight line, it would be acted on by two forces: the projectile force would cause it to move in a straight line; the force of the mutual attraction would cause it to deviate from that line in the direction of the sun. The result would be that the earth would be carried around the sun in a circular or an elliptical orbit. Every other planet in the solar system would be under the operation of the same compound forces governed by the same laws; and while the sun would exert upon each of them its force of attraction, and they would each exert upon the others an attractive force that would be diminished by the squares of their distances from one another, each of them would be deflected from the straight line that would have otherwise been the path of its motion, and the result would be a perpetual revolution around the body that could exert upon each just the amount of attraction requisite to overcome the projectile force by which it was first put in motion.

Kosmicos. You have made an ingenious explanation of the law of gravitation, which may or may not be correct. But now let me understand what you infer from this hypothesis, supposing it to be true. What should have prevented the law of gravitation and the laws of motion from working out this very system of bodies, by operating upon a mass of crude matter lying in the universe, supposing it to have been fiery vapor or anything else?

Sophereus. I have thus far arrived, by the aid of what astronomy teaches, at a complex system of physical laws, the law of universal gravitation, and the laws of motion. I must suppose that these laws had an intelligent author. I must suppose that they were enacted, in the same sense in which we speak of any rule of action ordained by a power competent to conceive of it and to put it into execution. To me, as I view the facts of the solar system, the idea that the law of gravitation and the laws of motion are to be regarded as mere phenomena of matter, or as qualities of matter according to which, from some inherent condition, it must act, does not explain the solar system. I can not explain to myself what I see, without asking myself how these qualities of matter came to exist. How came it to be a condition of all matter that its particles should attract each other by a certain force according to a certain rule? How came it to be a law of motion that bodies projected into space should continue to move on forever in a straight line, unless deviated from that line by some other force? To say that things happen, but that no power ever commanded them to happen; that things occur because they do occur, and not because some power has ordained that they shall occur, is to me an inconceivable kind of reasoning, if it be reasoning at all. Because men act or profess to act upon certain principles of moral conduct, I can not suppose that justice, and truth, and mercy are mere phenomena of human conduct, that they never had any origin as moral laws in the will of a lawgiver. For the same reason I can not suppose that the physical laws of matter, stupendous in their scope, and of unerring certainty in their operation, did not proceed from an enacting authority. In short, it seems to me that the conception of power, as something independent of the qualities of substance, is a logical necessity.

Kosmicos. I am not now trying to persuade you that the law of gravitation and the laws of motion did not have an intelligent author. For the purposes of the argument, I will concede that they were enacted, as you term it. You have explained your understanding of the operation of these; laws as they are expressed in the formula given by astronomers, and for the present I will assume that they operate in some such way. I will also concede that the idea of power in the abstract, as something independent of the qualities of substance, is necessary to the explanation of all physical phenomena. But I now recall your attention to the point which I originally suggested. Explain to me how it has happened that the being who you suppose established certain laws for the government of all matter has not allowed those laws to evolve out of diffused matter certain bodies which we find grouped together in the universe, but has specially interposed by another act, and constructed this system of bodies without the agency of his own laws. All that we know about the law of gravitation and the laws of motion we derive from observing the actions of these bodies which compose the solar system. We infer the existence of these laws from the actions of these bodies. Now tell me how you suppose that the same being who ordained these laws as fixed conditions to which matter was to be subjected, and made them to operate upon all matter, whether in a crude and unformed state or after it had become organized into bodies of definite shapes and dimensions, did not rely upon these inherent conditions of matter to produce those shapes and dimensions, but went to work by special interposition, and produced the mechanism of the solar system as a human artificer would make a machine of a corresponding character.

Sophereus. We must take things in a certain order. I understand you to concede, for the present, that the laws of gravitation and motion must, or may, have existed before the sun and the planets were formed. We are agreed, then, that power has an existence anterior to and separate from the qualities of substance. What, then, is the difficulty attending the hypothesis that the Infinite Power, which devised and established the laws of gravitation and motion before the bodies of the solar system were formed, so fashioned and distributed those bodies that while each of them shall exert upon every other a certain amount of direct attraction, that attraction shall diminish in a certain fixed ratio, as the distance between them increases? We can not suppose that the relative magnitudes, weights, and distances of these bodies were accidental, or that they resulted from the property of attraction that was given to the particles of matter of which they are composed. That property of mutual attraction became at some time a fixed condition of all matter, but it will not account for the formation of a system of bodies so adjusted that the attracting force will act among them by a specific law, by the operation of which they will be prevented from exerting on each other an excessive amount of such force, or any amount but that which is exactly needful to preserve their relative distances from each other. Let it be supposed that the property of attraction was impressed upon all the particles of matter in the universe, and then that the Infinite Power, abstaining from all farther action, and without forming and arranging the bodies of the solar system upon any intentional plan, left all that plan to be worked out by that property of matter; what reason have we to conclude that the law of gravitation would, as the sole efficient cause, have produced just exactly this complex piece of mechanism, so wonderfully adjusted? What reason have we to conclude that the property of attraction, although ordained as an inherent quality of all matter, would not, if left without any special interposition, have resulted in some very different arrangement and disposition of the matter lying in the space now occupied by the solar system?

Kosmicos. Give me your idea of the condition which is called "chaos," and I will then explain to you why it is that you do not do justice to the scientific distinction between the natural and the supernatural method by which things have been produced as we see them.

Sophereus. I presume you do not mean to ask how I suppose chaotic matter came to exist. Its origin is one thing—its condition is another. In regard to its condition, it seems very plain that there was a period when diffused matter had not received the impress of the qualities or been subjected to the laws which we now recognize. Take the Mosaic hypothesis, where it speaks of the earth, for example, as "without form and void." In this terse expression, there is embraced the idea of a condition of matter without qualities, properties, or laws; lying in an utterly crude state, waiting to receive the impress of the divine will. The laws of motion have not begun to operate upon it; the laws of chemical combination have not been applied to it. It is a rational conclusion that this was the condition of things in that remote period of eternity before the solar system was formed. Chaos, then, was the condition of primeval matter before it had received the fixed properties that were afterward to belong to it, and before the laws that were ever afterward to govern it had been ordained. Lying in this utterly crude state, without tendencies, without combinations, without definite motion, floating in the universe without fixed form or qualities, it awaits the action of the Infinite Power. It pleases that power, out of its illimitable resources, to bestow upon this chaotic matter certain properties, and to subject it to certain laws. One of these properties is that its particles shall attract one another by a certain force; one of these laws is that this force shall operate by an invariable and fixed rule of direct action, and by an invariable and fixed rule of diminution, according to the distance of the particles from each other; and another law is that a body projected into space, by any force, shall continue to move in a straight line until and unless it is deflected from that line by some other force. There are, too, chemical properties belonging to matter as we know it, by which it takes on certain combinations and undergoes modifications and arrangements of its particles. All these properties, qualities, and laws—these unavoidable methods of action—must have been imposed upon the chaotic matter at some time by a power competent to establish them, and to put them in operation. But the laws and the methods of their operation do not account for the PLAN on which the solar system has been formed, consisting of different bodies of such shapes, dimensions, and relative distances, that the laws, when applied to them, will produce the wonderfully exact and perpetual movements which the telescope reveals. That PLAN is a creation, for which we must look to something more than the laws and properties of matter; and we can only find it in the will and purposes of the infinite artificer who devised the laws by which this mechanism was to be governed after it had been made, and who has so made it that it would be governed by them.

Kosmicos. I do not see that you have yet reached a stronger ground on which to rest the hypothesis of special interposition than that on which is based the hypothesis which imputes the formation of the solar system to certain fixed laws operating upon crude matter not yet formed into definite shapes or placed in certain relative positions. You will have to adduce some proof that has a stronger tendency to exclude the supposition that the mechanism of the solar system was produced by the laws of matter and motion working upon some material that lay in the condition which you have described as "chaos."

Sophereus. Let us, then, look a little farther into some of the details of this vast machine. Take one that is most obvious, and that lies the nearest to us; I mean the moon, which accompanies our earth as its satellite. The most remarkable thing about the motion of the moon is the fact that she makes one revolution on her axis in the same time that she takes to revolve around the earth, and consequently she always presents to us the same face, and her other side is never seen by human eyes. How came this to be the case? How came this to be the adjustment of the two motions, the axial revolution of the moon and her revolution around the earth, causing her always to present to us the same side? It is said by astronomers that the two motions are so exactly adjusted to each other that the longer axis of the moon always points to the earth, without the slightest variation. It is conceded, as I understand, to be infinitely improbable that this adjustment was the result of chance. A cause for it is therefore to be found. Where are we to look for that cause, unless we look for it in the will and design of the Creator, who established it for some special purpose?

Kosmicos. You are aware that there is a physical explanation of this phenomenon which accounts for it without the special design. This explanation is that the moon was once in a partially fluid state, and that she rotated on her axis in a period different from the present one. In such a condition, the attraction of the earth would produce great tides in the fluid substance of the moon; this attraction, combined with the centrifugal force of the moon's rotation on her own axis, would cause a friction, and this friction would retard the rate of her axial rotation, until it became coincident with the rate of her revolution around the earth. It is highly improbable that the moon was originally set in rotation on her axis with just the same velocity with which she was made to revolve around the earth. This improbability is based on the ellipticity of the moon's orbit, which is caused by the attraction of the sun. The mean distance of the moon from the earth is 240,300 miles; her smallest possible distance is 221,000 miles; and the greatest possible distance is 259,600. The usual oscillation between these extremes is about 13,000 miles on each side of the mean distance of 240,300. The diameter of the moon is 2,160 miles, or less than two sevenths of the earth's diameter. In volume she is about one fiftieth as large as the earth, but her density, or the specific gravity of her material, is supposed to be a little more than half of that of our globe; and her weight is about three and a half times the weight of the same bulk of water. When she is nearest to the sun, the superior attraction of that body tends to draw her out of her circular orbit around the earth; when she is farthest from the sun, this attraction is diminished, and thus her terrestrial orbit becomes slightly elliptical. But there is another attraction to be taken into account. This other attraction, in her former fluid condition, has given her the shape, not of a perfect sphere, but of an ellipsoid, or an elongated body with three unequal axes. The shortest of her axes is that around which she rotates; the next longest is that which points in the direction in which she is moving; and the longest of all points toward the earth. This shape of the moon, resulting from the earth's attraction, has been produced by drawing the matter of the moon which is nearest to the earth toward the earth, and by the centrifugal force which tends to throw outward the matter farthest from the earth. The substance of the moon being a liquid, so as to yield freely, she would be elongated in the direction of the earth. But if she was originally set in motion on her own axis at precisely the same rate with which she was made to revolve around the earth, the correspondence between the two motions could not have been kept up; her axial rotation would have varied, by reason of the fact that her relative distance from the sun and the earth varies with the ellipticity of her orbit around the earth, and thus the two motions would not correspond. But if we allow for the attraction of the earth upon a liquid or semi-liquid body, producing for the moon an elongated shape, her axial rotation would, if the two motions were in the beginning very near together, vary with her revolutions around the earth, and the correspondence between the two motions would be kept up. Here, then, you have a physical explanation of the phenomenon which strikes you as so remarkable—a result brought about by natural causes, without the supposition of what you call intentional design, or formative skill directly exercised by a supernatural interposition.

Sophereus. This is a very plausible theory, but it all depends upon two assumptions: First, it assumes it to be extremely improbable that the two motions were aboriginally made to correspond, by an intentional adjustment of the moon's weight, dimensions, and shape, upon such a plan that the laws of gravitation and movement would keep the two motions in exact correspondence. Why should not the rates of movement have been originally designed and put in execution as we find them? You anticipate the answer to this question by another assumption, namely, that the substance of the moon was at first in a fluid or semi-fluid state, so that she owed her present shape to the effect of the earth's attraction, and the centrifugal tendency of its most distant part to be thrown out of the line of its motion. I should be glad to have you explain why it is extremely improbable that the Creator planned this part of the solar system, the earth and its satellite, and so adjusted the dimensions, shapes, and weights of each of them, and fixed the rates of revolution of the satellite, that the laws of attraction and motion would find a mechanism which they would keep perpetually in operation, and thus preserve a constant relation between the moon's axial rotation and her revolution around the earth. I have thus far learned to regard the probable methods of the Creator somewhat differently from those which you scientists ascribe to him. Most of you, I observe, have a strong tendency to regard the Deity as having no specific plan in the production of anything, which plan he directly executed; and, so far as you regard a First Cause as the producing cause of phenomena, you limit its activity to the establishment of certain fixed laws, and explain all phenomena upon the hypothesis that the Supreme Being—if you admit one—made no special interpositions of his will and power in any direction, after he had established his system of general laws. But to me it seems that the weight of probability is entirely against your hypothesis. In this particular case of which we have been speaking, that of the moon's revolution, the supposed improbability of an original and intentional adjustment of the two motions turns altogether on the argument that if they had been so adjusted at the beginning they would not have kept on, and this argument is supported by the assumption that the moon was at first a mass of fluid. I do not understand this mode of making facts to support theories; and I wish you would explain to me why, in this particular instance, the inference of a divine and intentional plan in the structure of this part of the solar system is so extremely improbable. To me it seems so obvious a piece of invented mechanism, that I can not avoid the conclusion that it was the intentional work of a constructor, any more than I could if I were to find a piece of mechanism under circumstances which indicated that it was produced by human hands.

Kosmicos. You do not even yet do justice to the scientific method of reasoning. The deductions of science—the conclusions which the scientist draws from the phenomena of Nature—rest upon the postulate of fixed laws of Nature, which never change, and which have not been varied by any supernatural interference. We mean by a supernatural cause one which is not uniformly in operation, or which operates in some way different from the fixed laws which we have deduced from the observed order of the phenomena that we have studied and found to be invariable. We adopt this distinction between the natural and the supernatural because the observable phenomena of Nature do not furnish any means of discovering as a fact the operation of anything but the fixed laws, or any cause which has acted in a different way. Let us now apply this to the phenomena which we have been considering—the composition and arrangement of the solar system. What do we find? We find a system of bodies in the movements of which we detect certain fixed laws operating invariably in the same way. When the question is asked, How were these bodies produced? we have no means of reaching a conclusion except by reasoning upon the operation of the forces which these laws disclose, working on the primordial matter out of which the bodies became formed. It is for this reason that, in accounting for their existence, we speak of the method of their formation as the natural, in contradistinction to some other method which we call the supernatural; by which latter term we mean some mode in which there has been a power exerted differently from the established and fixed agency of the laws of matter, which constitute all that we have ever discovered. The nebular hypothesis affords a good illustration of the distinction which I am endeavoring to show you, whether it is well established or not, or is ever likely to be. It supposes that there was a mass of fiery vapor, floating in the space now occupied by the solar system. Under the operation of the laws of gravitation and motion, of mechanical forces and chemical combination, this crude matter becomes consolidated and formed into the different bodies known to us as the sun and the planets, and the laws which thus formed them continue to operate to keep them in the fixed relations to each other which resulted from the process of their formation. Whether as a matter of fact the solar system was formed in this way, this, or some other mode of operation through the action of certain established laws operating upon primeval matter, is what we call the natural method, in opposition to the supernatural; and we can not discover the supernatural method, because the closest and most extensive investigations never enable us to find in nature any method of operation but that which acts in a fixed and invariable way.

Sophereus. What you have now said brings me to a question that I have all along desired to ask you: How do you know that the Infinite Power never acts, or never has acted, in any way different from the established order of Nature? Is science able to determine this? If it is not, it must be for philosophy to consider whether there can have been, or probably has been, in operation at any time any cause other than those fixed laws of Nature which the scientist is able to deduce from observable phenomena. Because science can only discover certain fixed laws as the forces governing the bodies which compose the solar system, or governing the materials of which they are supposed to be made, it does not seem to me that a philosopher is precluded from deducing, by a proper method of reasoning upon a study of the solar system, the probable truth that its mechanism was specially planned and executed by a special act of the creating power. The degree to which this probability rises—whether it rises higher in the scale than any other hypothesis—must depend upon the inquiry whether any other hypothesis will better account for the existence of this great object, with its enormous mechanism, its adjustments, and its unerring movements. I must say, from what I have learned of this planetary system, with the sun as its center, viewed as a mechanism, that I can conceive of no hypothesis concerning its origin and formation which compares in probability with the hypothesis that it was directly and specially created, as we know it, by the Infinite Artificer.

Kosmicos. Pray, tell me what you mean by an act of creation? Did you or any other man ever see one? Can you tell what creation is?

Sophereus. I think that your question can be answered. Creation is the act of giving existence to something that did not previously exist. We see such acts performed by men, very frequently, so that we do not hesitate to speak of the product as a created thing. We do not see acts of creation performed by the Infinite Power, but it is surely not unphilosophical to suppose that what can be and is done by finite human faculties, can be and has been done by the infinite faculties of the Deity, and done upon a scale and in a perfection that transcend everything that human power has produced. The sense in which I have been led to conceive of the solar system as a creation is the same as that by which I represent to myself the production, by human power and skill, of some physical object which never existed before, such as a machine, a statue, a picture, a pyramid, or an obelisk; any concrete object which, whether or not new of its kind, did not as an individual object previously exist. In weighing the probabilities as to the mode in which the solar system came to exist, the reasons why the idea of its special creation stands by far the highest in the scale are these: 1. There must have been a period when this great object in nature did not exist, and therefore it must have been caused to exist. 2. The necessary hypothesis of a causing power leads inevitably to the conclusion that the power was adequate to the production of a system of bodies so proportioned and arranged that they would act on each other by certain fixed rules. 3. The causing or creating power must have conceived the proportions and arrangements of the different bodies as a plan, and must have executed that plan according to the conception. 4. While as a theory we can represent to ourselves that the causing power established certain laws of matter and motion, which would by their fixed operation on crude substances lying in the universe produce this system of bodies without any preconceived and predetermined plan, without any occasional or special interposition, yet that the system, as we find it, is a product of such a nature as to have called for and required the special interposition of a formative will. For, if we proceed upon the hypothesis that this enormous and exact mechanism was nothing but the product of certain pre-established laws operating on crude matter, without direct and special interposition exerted in the execution of a formed design, we have to obtain some definite conception, and to find some proof of a method by which these laws can have operated to produce this system of bodies exactly as we know them to be proportioned and arranged. Astronomical science, and all other science, has not discovered, or even suggested, any method by which this result could have been brought about, without a special act of creation in the execution of an original design. On the other hand, the hypothesis of a special interposition in the execution of a preconceived plan of construction is the most rational, the most in accordance with probability, because it best meets the requirements of the case. These requirements were that the proportions, arrangements, and relations of the different bodies composing one grand mechanism, should be such that the laws of gravitation and motion would operate upon and among them so as to keep them in uniform and unvarying movement.

Kosmicos. Very well. You have now come to the end of your reasoning. Tell me, then, why it is not just as rational a supposition that the Deity conceived of the plan of the solar system as a product that would result, and that he intended should result, from the operation of his fixed laws of matter and motion, and then left it to the unerring certainty of their operation to produce the mechanism by the process of gradual evolution?

Sophereus. The being who is supposed to hold and exercise supreme power over the universe, holds a power to execute, by direct and special creation, any design which he conceives and proposes to accomplish. I am prepared to concede that the process of gradual evolution can produce and apparently has produced some results. But when we are looking for the probable methods of the Deity in the production of such a mechanism as the solar system, we must recognize the superior probability of the direct method, because the indirect method which you describe as gradual evolution does not seem adequate to the production of such a system of bodies. If we could obtain facts which could have any tendency to show that, without any special interposition, the mechanism of the solar system, or any part of it, is a mere result of the working of the laws of gravitation and motion upon a mass of crude matter, we might yield assent to the probability of that occurrence. But of course we have no such facts; we have nothing but theories; and therefore there appears nothing to exclude the probable truth of a special creation.

Kosmicos. We shall not convince each other. You have stated your conclusions concerning the solar system fairly enough, and I have endeavored to answer them. But now let me understand how you propose to apply them to other departments of Nature, in which we have means of closer investigation. You will find it very difficult, I imagine, to maintain that every organism, every plant, animal, fish, insect, or bird, is a special creation, or even that man himself is.

Sophereus. Let me state for myself just what my conclusions are in regard to the solar system. You will then know what the convictions are with which I shall come to the study of other departments. I have arrived at the conception of an Infinite Being having the power to create anything that seems to him good; and I have experienced no difficulty in conceiving what an act of creation is. I have also reached the conviction that there is one great object in Nature, the existence of which I can not account for without the hypothesis of some special act of creation. Whether I shall find this to be the case in regard to every other object in Nature, I can not now tell. Perhaps, as many of these objects are nearer to us, and more within our powers of investigation, the result may be different. I shall endeavor to keep my mind open to the necessary discriminations which facts may disclose. Possibly I may find reason to reverse the conclusions at which I have arrived in regard to the solar system, if I find that the hypothesis of evolution is fairly sustained by other phenomena.

Note.—Newton, whose reasoning powers have certainly not been surpassed by those of any other philosopher, ancient or modern, not only deduced the existence of a personal God from the phenomena of Nature, but he felt no difficulty in ascribing to the Deity those personal attributes which the phenomena of Nature show that he must possess, because without them "all that diversity of natural things which we find suited to different times and places" could not have been produced. They could, he reasons, "arise from nothing but the ideas and will of a Being necessarily existing." Newton does indeed say that all our notions of God are taken from the ways of mankind; but this is by way of allegory and similitude. There is a likeness, but not a perfect likeness. There is therefore no necessity for ascribing to God anthropomorphic attributes, because the enlargement of the faculties and powers to superhuman and boundless attributes takes them out of the category of anthropomorphic qualities and capacities. In his "Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy," Newton had occasion to treat of the theory of vortices, as a hypothesis by which the formation of the solar system is to be explained. The "General Scholium," by which he concludes the third book of his "Principia," lays down the masterly reasoning by which he maintains that the bodies of the solar system, while they persevere in their orbits by the mere laws of gravity, could by no means have at first derived the regular position of the orbits themselves from those laws. I had written the whole of the preceding chapter on the origin of the solar system just as I have printed it, before I looked into the "Principia" to see what confirmation might be derived from Newton's speculations. I found that while I had not included the comets in my examination of the solar system, but had confined myself to the bodies that are at all times within the reach of the telescope, the same deductions are re-enforced by the comets, eccentric as are the orbits through which they range into and out of our system. I quote the entire Scholium, as given in Motte's English translation of the "Principia" from the Latin in which Newton wrote, published with a Life by Chittenden, at New York, in the year 1848.

"GENERAL SCHOLIUM.

"The hypothesis of vortices is pressed with many difficulties. That every planet by a radius drawn to the sun may describe areas proportional to the times of description, the periodic times of the several parts of the vortices should observe the duplicate proportion of their distances from the sun; but that the periodic times of the planets may obtain the sesquiplicate proportion of their distances from the sun, the periodic times of the parts of the vortex ought to be in the sesquiplicate proportion of their distances. That the smaller vortices may maintain their lesser revolutions about Saturn, Jupiter, and other planets, and swim quietly and undisturbed in the greater vortex of the sun, the periodic times of the parts of the sun's vortex should be equal; but the rotation of the sun and planets about their axes, which ought to correspond with the motions of their vortices, recede far from all these proportions. The motions of the comets are exceedingly regular, are governed by the same laws with the motions of the planets, and can by no means be accounted for by the hypothesis of vortices; for comets are carried with very eccentric motions through all parts of the heavens indifferently, with a freedom that is incompatible with the notion of a vortex. Bodies projected in our air suffer no resistance but from the air. Withdraw the air, as is done in Mr. Boyle's vacuum, and the resistance ceases; for in this void a bit of fine down and a piece of solid gold descend with equal velocity. And the parity of reason must take place in the celestial spaces above the earth's atmosphere; in which spaces, where there is no air to resist their motions, all bodies will move with the greatest freedom; and the planets and comets will constantly pursue their revolutions in orbits given in kind and position, according to the laws above explained; but though these bodies may, indeed, persevere in their orbits by the mere laws of gravity, yet they could by no means have at first derived the regular position of the orbits themselves from those laws.

"The six primary planets are revolved about the sun in circles concentric with the sun, and with motions directed toward the same parts, and almost in the same plane. Ten moons are revolved about the earth, Jupiter, and Saturn, in circles concentric with them, with the same direction of motion, and nearly in the planes of the orbits of those planets; but it is not to be conceived that mere mechanical causes could give birth to so many regular motions, since the comets range over all parts of the heavens in very eccentric orbits; for by that kind of motion they pass easily through the orbits of the planets, and with great rapidity; and in their aphelions, where they move the slowest, and are detained the longest, they recede to the greatest distances from each other, and thence suffer the least disturbance from their mutual attractions. This most beautiful system of the sun, planets, and comets, could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent and powerful Being. And if the fixed stars are the centers of other like systems, these being formed by the like wise counsel, must be all subject to the dominion of One; especially since the light of the fixed stars is of the same nature with the light of the sun, and from every system light passes into all the other systems; and lest the systems of the fixed stars should, by their gravity, fall on each other mutually, he hath placed those systems at immense distances one from another."