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This is [[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- * " Five Years of Theosophy ," pp. 249-50 . Art. " Do the Adepts deny the Nebular Theory? " [[Vol. 1, Page]] 595 WHAT ARE THE NEBULAE? whither the nebular theory has led Science. In sober fact and truth this theory is twin sister to that of Ether, and both are the offsprings of necessity; one as indispensable to account for the transmission of light, as the other to explain the problem of the origin of the solar systems. The question with them is, how the same homogeneous matter* could, obeying the laws of Newton, give birth to bodies -- sun, planets, and their satellites -- subject to conditions of identity of motion and formed of such heterogeneous elements. Has the nebular theory helped to solve the problem, even if applied solely to bodies considered as inanimate and material? We say most decidedly not. What progress has it made since 1811, when Sir W. Herschell's paper, first presenting facts based on observation and showing the existence of nebular matter, made the "Sons" of the Royal Society "shout for joy"? Since then a still greater discovery has permitted, through spectrum analysis, the verification and corroboration of Sir W. Herschell's conjecture. Laplace demanded some kind of primitive "world stuff " to prove the idea of progressive world-evolution and growth. Here it is, as offered two millenniums ago. The "world stuff," now nebulae , was known from the highest antiquity. Anaxagoras taught that, having differentiated, the subsequent commixture of heterogeneous substances remained motionless and unorganized, until finally "the Mind" -- the collective body of Dhyan Chohans, we say -- began to work upon and communicated to it motion and order ( Aristotle ' s " Physica ," viii , 1 . ) The theory is now taken up in its first portion, that of any "Mind" interfering with it being rejected. Spectrum analysis reveals the existence of nebulae formed entirely of gases and luminous vapours. Is this the primitive nebular matter? The spectra reveal, it is said, the physical conditions of the matter which emits cosmic light. The spectra of the resolvable and the irresolvable nebulae are shown to be entirely different, the spectra of the latter showing their physical state to be that of glowing gas or vapour. The bright lines of one nebula reveal the existence of hydrogen in it, and of other material substances known and unknown. The same in the atmospheres of the Sun and stars. This leads to the direct inference that a star is formed by the condensation of a nebula; hence that even the metals themselves on earth are [[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- * Had astronomers held simply, in their present state of knowledge, to the hypothesis of Laplace, which was simply the formation of the planetary system, it might in time have resulted in something like an approximate truth. But the two parts of the general problem, that of the formation of the universe, or the formation of the suns and stars from the primitive matter, and then the development of the planets around their sun, rest on quite different facts in nature and are even so viewed by Science itself. They are at the opposite poles of being. [[Vol. 1, Page]] 596 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. formed owing to the condensation of hydrogen or some other primitive matter, some ancestral cousin to "helium," perhaps, or some yet unknown stuff? This does not clash with the occult teachings. And this is the problem that chemistry is trying to solve; and it must succeed sooner or later in the task, accepting nolens volens , when it does, the esoteric teaching. But when this does happen, it will kill the nebular theory as it now stands. Meanwhile Astronomy cannot accept in any way, if it is to be regarded as an exact science, the present theory of the filiation of stars -- even if occultism does so in its own way, as it explains this filiation differently -- because astronomy has not one single physical datum to show for it. Astronomy could anticipate Chemistry in proving the existence of the fact, if it could show a planetary nebula exhibiting a spectrum of three or four bright lines, gradually condensing and transforming into a star, with a spectrum all covered with a number of dark lines. But "the question of the variability of the nebula, even as to their form, is yet one of the mysteries of Astronomy. The data of observation possessed so far are of too recent an origin, too uncertain to permit us to affirm anything . " ( Cosmogonical Hypotheses of Wolf. ) Since the discovery of the spectroscope, its magic power has revealed to its adepts only one single transformation of a star of this kind; and even that one showed directly the reverse of what is needed as proof in favour of the nebular theory; namely -- a star transforming itself into a planetary nebula. As told in The Observatory ( Vol. I. , p. 185), the temporary star which appeared in the constellation Cygnus, in November, 1876, discovered by J. F. J. Schmidt, exhibited a spectrum broken by very brilliant lines. Gradually, the continuous spectrum and most of the lines disappeared, leaving finally one single brilliant line, which appeared to coincide with the green line of the nebula. Though this metamorphosis is not irreconcileable with the hypothesis of the nebular origin of the stars, nevertheless this single solitary case rests on no observation whatever, least of all on direct observation. The occurrence may have been due to several other causes. Since astronomers are inclined to think our planets are tending toward precipitation on the Sun, why should not that star have blazed out owing to a collision of such precipitated planets, or, as many suggest, the appulse of a comet? Anyhow, the only known instance of a star transformation since 1811 is not favourable to the nebular theory. Moreover, on the question of this theory, as in all others, astronomers disagree. In our own age, it was Buffon, before Laplace ever thought of it, who, very much struck by the identity of motion in the planets, was the first to propose the hypothesis of the planets and their satellites originating in [[Vol. 1, Page]] 597 THE META-ELEMENTS OF PHYSICAL SCIENCE. the bosom of the Sun. Forthwith, and for the purpose, he invented a special comet, supposed to have torn out, by a powerful oblique blow, the quantity of matter necessary to their formation. Laplace gave its dues to the "comet" in his " Exposition du Systeme du Monde. " (Note VII.) But the idea was seized and even improved upon by a conception of the alternate evolution from the Sun's central mass of planets apparently without weight or influence on the motion of the visible planets -- and as evidently without any more existence than the likeness of Moses in the moon. But the modern theory is also a variation on the systems elaborated by Kant and Laplace.