How then, it will be asked,
did the vast nexus of natural laws which is now observable ever begin or
continue to be? In this way. When the first womb of things was pregnant
with all the future, there would probably have been existent at any rate
not more than one of the formulae which we now call natural laws. This one
law, of course, would have been the law of gravitation. Here we may take
our stand. It does not signify whether there ever was a time when
gravitation was not,--_i.e._, if ever there was a time when matter, _as we
now know it_, was not in existence;--for if there ever was such a time,
there is no reason to doubt, but every reason to conclude, that the
evolution of matter, as we now know it, was accomplished in accordance with
law. Similarly, we are not concerned with the question as to how the law of
gravitation came to be associated with matter; for it is overwhelmingly
probable, from the extent of the analogy, that if our knowledge concerning
molecular physics were sufficiently great, the existence of the law in
question would be found to follow as a necessary deduction from the primary
qualities of matter and force, just as we can now see that, when present,
its peculiar quantitative action necessarily follows from the primary
qualities of space.
Starting, then, with these data,--matter, force, and the law of
gravitation,--what must happen? We have the strongest scientific reason to
believe that the matter of the solar system primordially existed in a
highly diffused or nebulous form.
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