These calculations absolutely overwhelm the mind, which is unable to comprehend such vast distances. Our universe is indeed, as Flammarion expresses it, a point in the infinite. The calculations of J. E. Gore represent our highest scientific conception of the universe. He sums up his investigations with the following words: “Although we must consider the number of _visible_ stars as strictly finite, the numbers of stars and systems really existing, but invisible to us, may be practically infinite. Could we speed our flight through space on angel wings beyond the confines of our limited universe to a distance so great that the interval which separates us from the remotest fixed star might be considered as merely a step on our celestial journey, what further creations might not then be revealed to our wondering vision? Systems of a higher order might there be unfolded to our view, compared with which the whole of our visible heavens might appear like a grain of sand on the ocean shore,—systems perhaps stretching out to infinity before us, and reaching at last the glorious ‘mansions’ of the Almighty, the Throne of the Eternal.” CHAPTER XIII. CELESTIAL EVOLUTION. In the second chapter we outlined the nebular hypothesis as propounded by Herschel. Some time earlier the French mathematician, Laplace, had put forward his theory of the evolution of the Solar System. _Pierre Simon Laplace_ was born at Beaumont-en-Auge, near Honfleur, in 1749, and was educated in the Military School of his native town. In 1767 he became Assistant Professor of Mathematics at Beaumont, and some years later at the Military School in Paris, which position he retained for many years. Member of the Institute and Minister of the Interior under Napoleon, he was created a Marquis by Louis XVIII., and died at Arcuile on March 5, 1827. In the last chapter of his popular work, the ‘Système du Monde,’ Laplace put forward his nebular theory “with that distrust which everything ought to inspire that is not the result of observation or calculation.” Laplace noticed that in the Solar System all the planets revolved round the Sun in the same direction, from west to east, and that the satellites of the planets obeyed the same law. He also observed that the Sun, Moon, and planets rotated on their axes in the same direction as they revolved round the Sun; also that the planets moved round the Sun, and the satellites round their primaries, in almost the same plane as the Earth’s orbit, the plane of the ecliptic. It was evident that these remarkable congruities were not the result of chance, and accordingly Laplace expressed his belief that the Solar System originated from a great nebula, which in condensing detached various rings in the process of rotation. These rings condensed into the various planets and their satellites.