Page:A philosophical essay on probabilities Tr. Truscott, Emory 1902.djvu/111

Rh or of a general law of nature. These groups are a necessary result of the condensation of the nebulæ at several nuclei; it is apparent that the nebulous matter being attracted continuously by the divers nuclei, they ought to form in time a group of stars equal to that of the Pleiades. The condensation of the nebulae at two nuclei forms similarly very adjacent stars, revolving the one about the other, equal to those whose respective movements Herschel has already considered. Such are, further, the 61st of the Swan and its following one in which Bessel has just recognized particular movements so considerable and so little different that the proximity of these stars to one another and their movement about the common centre of gravity ought to leave no doubt. Thus one descends by degrees from the condensation of nebulous matter to the consideration of the sun surrounded formerly by a vast atmosphere, a consideration to which one repasses, as has been seen, by the examination of the phenomena of the solar system. A case so remarkable gives to the existence of this anterior state of the sun a probability strongly approaching certainty.

But how has the solar atmosphere determined the movements of rotation and revolution of the planets and the satellites? If these bodies had penetrated deeply the atmosphere its resistance would have caused them to fall upon the sun; one is then led to believe with much probability that the planets have been formed at the successive limits of the solar atmosphere which, contracting by the cold, ought to have abandoned in the plane of its equator zones of vapors which the mutual attraction of their molecules has changed into