By the nebular hypothesis the whole course of development, of necessity, is rigidly forward to its culmination; but by employing the analogies presented to us in other operations of nature, we can readily account for variations, haltings, ineffectual efforts, uncompleted processes, and even reversals and redistributions into other secondary sources of energy. They equally comprise the agencies for the production of a single solar system or of a myriad, just as we see the vortical water-spouts or sand-storms either single, double, or multiple; they are flexible, as are all the processes of nature, and require no violent assumption of a prior physical basis known to us "ne'er before on sea or shore." They also account for the deviation from the normal of the orbits of Neptune and Mercury, for the formation of the asteroids and Saturn's rings, for the different eccentricities and inclinations of the orbits, for the forward axial rotation of the planets and their satellites, and even for their perturbations and abnormalities; they furnish a basis for Bode's empirical law, for the distribution of the planets in size, for the origin of comets and meteor streams, for Kepler's laws, for the equal and permanent relation of eccentricities and inclinations, and for the fixed axial position of the moon with reference to the earth; they account for the free oxygen in the planetary and free hydrogen in the solar atmosphere, they employ the variation of volume of the sun as a regulator instead of an independent generator of light and heat, and they are in entire conformity with the established principles which govern the electrical generation of active forces, their transmission to the sun, their transformation into light and heat, and their return to the regions of space, where they continue to act with potential energy to all eternity, as they must do if space itself is eternal; and we surely know that, if anything whatever is eternal, space must be so. This great ocean--the home, the domain, the workshop of creative energy--is the last retreat of the human intellect; here it may find rest, and here alone. While solar systems may afford in their circling planets a possible dominion for finite life, and in their suns their daily bread; in the infinite and all-embracing realms of space, filled with the potentialities of all created forms, thrilled with the impulses of all creative force, is to be found the unfailing source of all, the dominion of the eternal architect, before whom nature bends the obedient knee, waits to hear his mighty voice, or swiftly runs to do his royal bidding. CHAPTER XIV. THE MOSAIC COSMOGONY. "One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh: but the earth abideth for ever."--Bible.