Solar system, which he confessed his inability to explain by the law of gravitation. "Such were the uniformity in the directions of planetary movements, the nearly circular forms of the orbits, and their remarkable conformity to one plane" (Prof. Winchcll}. And if there is one single exception, then the law of gravitation has no right to be referred to as an universal law. "These adjustments," we are told, "Newton, in his general Scholium, pronounces to be the work of an intelligent and all-powerful Being.'" Intelligent that "Being" may be; as to "" all-powerful" there would be every reason to doubt the claim. A poor "God" he, who would work upon minor details and leave the most important to secondary forces! The poverty of the argument and logic in this case, is surpassed only by that of Laplace, who, seeking very correctly to substitute motion for Newton's "all-powerful Being," and ignorant of the true nature of that eternal motion, saw in it a blind physical law. "Might not those arrangements be an effect of the laws of motion?" he asks, forgetting, as all our modern Scientists do, that this law and this motion are a vicious circle, so long as the nature of loth remains unexplained. His famous answer to Napoleon "Dieu est devenu une hypothese inutile," would be correctly stated only by one who adhered to the philosophy of the Vedantins. It becomes a pure fallacy, if we exclude the interference of operating, intelligent, powerful (never "all-powerful ") Beings, who are called "gods."

But we would ask the critics of the medieval astronomers why should Kepler be denounced as most unscientific, for offering just the same. solution as Newton did—only showing himself more sincere, more consistent and even more logical. Where may be the difference between Newton's "all-powerful Being" and Kepler's Rectores, his sidereal and Cosmic Forces, or Angels? Kepler is again criticised for his "curious hypothesis which made use of a vortical movement within the solar system;" for his theories in general, for his favouring Empedocles' idea of attraction and repulsion, and "Solar magnetism" in particular. Yet several modern men of Science, as will be shown—Hunt (if Metcalfe is to be excluded), Dr. Richardson, etc.—favour the idea very seriously. He is half excused, however, on the plea that "to the time of Kepler no interaction between masses of matter had been distinctly recognized which was genericatty different from magnetism" (World-Life}. Is it distinctly recognised now? Does Prof. Winchell claim for Science any serious knowledge whatever of the natures of either electricity or magnetism—except that bath seem to be the effects of some result arising from an undetermined cause.

The ideas of Kepler, weeded from their theological tendencies, are purely occult. He saw that:

CHRONIC NEGATION.

(I.) The Sun is a great Magnet.*

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This is what some eminent

modern scientists and also the Occultists believe in.

(II.) The Solar substance is immaterial. (See "Isis Unveiled," Vol. I. pp. 270 to 271.)

(III.) He provided, for the constant motion and restoration of the Sun's energy and planetary motion, the perpetual care of a spirit, or spirits. The whole of Antiquity believed in this idea. The Occultists do not use the word Spirit, but say Creative Forces, which they endow with intelligence. But we may call them spirits also.

This theory is tabooed a great deal more on account of the" Spirit " that is given room in it, than of anything else. Herschell, the elder, believed in it likewise, and so do several modern scientists also. Nevertheless Professor Winchell declares that "a hypothesis more. fanciful, and less in accord with the requirements of physical principles, has not been offered in ancient or modern times." (World-Life, p. 554.) The same was said, once upon a time, of the universal Ether, and now it is not only accepted perforce but advocated as the only possible theory to explain away certain mysteries.

Grove's ideas, when he first enunciated them in London about 1840, were called as unscientific as the above; nevertheless, his views on the correlation of forces are now universally accepted. It would, very likely, require one more conversant with science than is the writer, to combat with any success some of the now prevailing ideas about gravitation and other similar "solutions" of Cosmic Mysteries. But, let us recall a few objections that came from recognized men of Science; from astronomers and physicists of eminence, who rejected the theory of rotation, as well as that of gravitation. Thus one reads. in the French Encyclopedia that "Science agrees, in the face of all its representatives, that it is impossible to explain the physical origin of the rotatory motion of the solar system."

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If the question is asked, "what causes rotation ?" we are answered: "It is the centrifugal Force." And this force, what is it that produces it?" "The force of rotation," is the grave answer. (Godefroy, Cosmogonie de la Revelation.) It will be well, perhaps, to examine both these theories as being directly or indirectly connected.

In the sense, of course, of matter existing in states unknown to Science. We shall be taken to task for contradiction. It will be said that while we deny God, we admit Souls and operative Spirits, and quote from Roman Catholic bigoted writers in support of our argument. To this we reply: "We deny the anthropomorphic god of the Monotheists, but never the Divine Principle in nature. We combat Protestants and Roman Catholics on a number of dogmatic theological beliefs of human and sectarian origin. We agree with them in their belief in Spirits and intelligent operative powers, though we do not worship "Angels" as the Roman Latinists do.

V.

THE THEORIES OF ROTATION IN SCIENCE.

Considering that "final cause is pronounced a chimera, and the first Great Cause is remanded to the Sphere of the Unknown," as a reverend gentleman justly complains, the number of hypotheses put forward, a nebula in itself, is most remarkable. The profane student is perplexed, and does not know in which of the theories of exact science he has to believe. Here we have hypotheses enough for every taste and power of brain. They are all extracted from a number of scientific volumes. Current Hypotheses Explaining The Origin Of Rotation. Rotation has originated either—

(a) By the collision of nebular masses wandering aimlessly in space; or by attraction, "in cases where no actual impact takes place."

(b)" By the tangential action of currents of nebulous matter (in the case of an amorphous nebula) descending from higher to lower levels,* or simply by the action of the central gravity of the mass." †

"It is a fundamental principle in physics that no rotation could be generated in such a mass by the action of its own parts. As well attempt to change the course of a steamer by pulling at the deck railing," remarks to this Prof. Winchell in "World-Life."

Hypotheses Of The Origin Of The Seven Planets And Comets.

(a.) We owe the birth of the Planets (i) to an explosion of the Sun— a parturition of its central mass; or (2) to some kind of disruption of the nebular rings.

"All

(b) "The Comets are strangers to our planetary system" (La Place). "The Comets are undeniably generated in our Solar system" (Faye). (c) The "fixed stars are motionless" says one authority. the stars are actually in motion" answers another authority. doubtedly every star is in motion" (Wolf).

"Un

(d) "For over 350,000,000 years, the slow and majestic movement of the Sun around its axis has never for a moment ceased" (Panorama dcs Mondes, Le Couturier.)

The terms " high" and "low" being only relative to the position of the observer in Space, any use of those terms tending to convey the impression that they stand for abstract realities, is necessarily fallacious.

t Jacob Ennis, “The Origin of the Stars," p. 221 et seq.

If such is the case, how does Science explain the comparatively small size of the planets nearest the Sun ? The theory of meteoric aggregation is only a step farther from truth than the nebular conception, and has not even the quality of the latter—its metaphysical element.

CONTRADICTORY HYPOTHESES.

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(e) And "the sun having Alcyone in the Pleiades for the centre of its orbit, consumes 180,000,000 of years in completing its revolution" (Maedler). And also,

(f) That, “the Sun has existed no more than 15,000,000 of years, and will emit heat for no longer than 10,000,000 years more (Sir W. Thomson's lecture on "the latent dynamical theory regarding the probable origin, total amount of heat, and duration of the Sun," 1887).

A few years ago this eminent Scientist was telling the world that the time required for the earth to cool from incipient incrustation to its present state, could not exceed 80,000,000 years"; (Thomson and Tait, Natural Philosophy.) If the encrusted age of the world is only 40 millions, or the half of the duration once allowed, and the Sun's age only 15 millions, have we to understand that the earth was at independent of the Sun?

one time

Since the ages of the Sun, planets, and the Earth, as stated in the many scientific hypotheses of the astronomers and physicists, are given elsewhere (infra), we have said enough to show the disagreement between the ministers of modern Science. Whether we accept the fifteen million years of Sir W. Thomson or the thousand millions of Mr. Huxley, for the rotational evolution of our solar system, it will always come to this; by accepting self-generated rotation for the heavenly bodies composed of inert matter and yet moved by their own internal motion, for millions of years, this teaching of Science amounts to—

(a) An evident denial of that fundamental physical law, which states that "a body in motion tends constantly to inertia, (i.e., to continue in the same state of motion or rest), unless it is stimulated into further action by a superior active force."

(b.) To an original impulse, which culminates in an unalterable motion, within a resisting ether that Newton had declared incompatible with that motion.

(c.) Universal gravity, which, we are taught, always tends to a centre in rectilinear descent—alone the cause of the revolution of the whole solar system, which is performing an eternal double gyration, each body around its axis and orbit. Another occasional version is :—

(d.) A magnet in the Sun; or, the said revolution due to a magnetic force, which acts, just as gravitation does, in a straight line—varying inversely as the square of the distance. (Coulomb's Law.)

(e.) The whole acting under invariable and changeless laws, which are, nevertheless, often shown variable, as during some well-known freaks

And even on these figures Bischof disagrees with Thomson, and calculates that 350 million years would be required for the earth to cool from a temperature of 20,000 to 2000 centigrade. This is, also, the opinion of Helmholtz.

of planets and other bodies, as also when the Comets approach to or recede from the Sun.

(f.) A MOTOR FORCE always proportionate to the mass it is acting upon; but independent of the specific nature of that mass, to which it is proportionate; which amounts to saying, as Le Couturier does, that, "without that Force independent from and of quite another nature than the said mass, the latter, were it as huge as Saturn, or as tiny as Ceres, would always fall with the same rapidity" (Musee dcs Sciences, 15 August, 1857). A mass, furthermore, which derives its weight from the body on which it weighs.

Thus neither Laplace's perceptions of a solar atmospheric fluid, which would extend beyond the orbits of the planets, nor Le Couturier's electricity, nor Foucault's heat (Panorama des Mondcs, p. 55), nor this, nor the other, can ever help any of the numerous hypotheses about the origin and permanency of rotation to escape from this squirrel's wheel, any more than the theory of gravity itself. This mystery is the Procrustean bed of physical Science. If matter is, as now taught, passive, the simplest movement cannot be said to be an essential property of matter —if the latter is simply an inert mass. How, then, can such a complicated movement, compound and multiple, harmonious and equilibrated, lasting in the eternities for millions and millions of years, be attributed simply to its own inherent Force, unless the latter is an intelligence? A physical will is something new—a conception that the ancients would have never entertained, indeed! *

"We talk of the weight of the heavenly bodies," says an astronomer; "but since it is recognised that weight decreases in proportion to the distance from the centre, it becomes evident that, at a certain distance, that weight must be forcibly reduced to Zero? Were there any attraction there would be equilibrium . . . And since the modern school recognizes neither a beneath nor an above in universal space, it is not clear what should cause the Earth to fall, were there even no gravitation, nor attraction." (Cosmographie.)

Methinks the Count de Maistre was right in solving the question in is own theological way. He cuts the Gordian knot by saying :—"The

* For over a century all distinction between body and force is made away with. "Force is but the property of a body in motion," say the physicists; and "life—the property of our animal organs—is but the result of their molecular arrangement," answer the physiologists. In the bosom of that aggregate which is named planet," teaches LittrS, "are developed all the forces immanent to matter i..., that matter possesses in itself and through itself the forces that are proper to it and which ate primary, not secondary. Such forces are the property of weight, the property of electricity, of terrestrial magnetism, the property of life. . . Every planet can develop life as earth, for instance, which had not always mankind on it, and

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