adumbrated two centuries before by Kepler and in
more recent times by Wright and Swedenborg. This
so-called "nebular hypothesis" assumes that in the
beginning all space was uniformly filled with cosmic
matter in a state of nebular or "fire-mist" diffusion,
"formless and void." It pictures the condensation--
coagulation, if you will--of portions of this mass to
form segregated masses, and the ultimate development
out of these masses of the sidereal bodies that we see.

Perhaps the first elaborate exposition of this idea
was that given by the great German philosopher Immanuel
Kant (born at Konigsberg in 1724, died in
1804), known to every one as the author of the Critique
of Pure Reason. Let us learn from his own words how
the imaginative philosopher conceived the world to
have come into existence.

"I assume," says Kant, "that all the material of
which the globes belonging to our solar system--all
the planets and comets--consist, at the beginning of
all things was decomposed into its primary elements,
and filled the whole space of the universe in which the
bodies formed out of it now revolve. This state of
nature, when viewed in and by itself without any reference
to a system, seems to be the very simplest that
can follow upon nothing. At that time nothing has
yet been formed. The construction of heavenly bodies
at a distance from one another, their distances regulated
by their attraction, their form arising out of the