Cosmogony

“ When we contemplate these various evidences in their totality—when we observe that, by the Nebular Hypothesis, the leading phenomena of the Solar System, and the heavens in general, are explicable; and when, on the other hand, we consider that the current cosmogony is not only without a single fact to stand on, but is at variance with all our positive knowledge of Nature; we see that the proof becomes overwhelming. ”

“ But every cosmogony is just an attempt to simplify matters, by ignoring the existence of these unknown substances, and mysterious forces; a process which science condemns, as utterly unphilosophical and absurd.
Astronomy has shown us our ignorance of the substances, or materials, of our own little globe. It has demonstrated that the whole body of the earth must have an average density equal to iron. As the rocks near the surface are much lighter, those toward the center must be heavier than iron, to make up this density. ”

“ If such be the cosmogony of the solar system, such the genesis of the planetary worlds, we are constrained to extend our views of the dominion of law, and to recognize its agency in the creation as well as in the conservation of the innumerable orbs that throng the universe. ”

“ The nebular cosmogony, the persistence of force and the biologic genesis, united together, showed the power evolving, sustaining and carrying on the entire universe known to us, to be one, and constantly acting in unified process; and that every detail—from the most minute known to the chemist, physicist and biologist, up to the greatest known to the geologist and astronomer, and including all known to the psychologist, economist, and historian—was caused by a previous detail. ”

“ The origin of the land, of mountains, defiles, lakes, rivers, trees, rocks, sun, moon, and stars, wind and rain, human beings and lower animals, and sometimes of social organizations and ceremonies, is explained in some way natural to the thought of the time and place. Not all these details occur in the cosmogony of every tribe or clan, but the purpose of every cosmogony is to account for everything in the origin of which the people are interested.
256. The creator in the cosmogonies known to us is not always an animal—he is sometimes a man, sometimes a god ”

“ Theologian and writer on cosmogony, was b. at Croft near Darlington, and ed. at Camb., and became Master of Charterhouse and Clerk of the Closet to William III. His literary fame rests on his Telluris Theoria Sacra, or Sacred Theory of the Earth, pub. about 1692, first in Latin and afterwards in English, a work which, in absence of all scientific knowledge of the earth's structure, was necessarily a mere speculative cosmogony. It is written, however, with much eloquence. ”

“ The study of character as revealed by the planetary dispositions at the moment of birth will bring him into touch with the profound and as yet only partially developed science of Psychology.
Cosmogony will inevitably hold his attention while studying the effects of planetary action in the world at large, and seismology and meteorology are branches of mundane astrology that cannot be overlooked by any thorough student. For the argument comes easily to hand that if the planets do not affect the world at large they cannot affect us as denizens of the world. ”

“ The Cosmogony, or origin of nature, then commences, and blends into the Theogony, or generation of gods, which is continued through the whole poem, and concludes with the race of demi-gods, or those born from the loves of goddesses and mortals. ”

“ See thinks it remarkable that "previous investigators have almost invariably approached the problem of cosmogony from the point of view of the planets and satellites, and that no considerable attempt has been made to inquire into the development of the great number of systems observed among the fixed stars." ”

“ Speculating relative to the order in which chaos had been organized, the ancient Astrologers constructed a Cosmogony, which divided the labors of God the Son, or second person in the Trinity, into six periods of a thousand years each; and which, answering to the six divisions of the 12,000 year cycle corresponding to the reproductive months of Spring and Summer, taught that in the first period he made the earth; in the second, the firmament; in the third, vegetation; in the fourth, the Sun and Moon and "the stars also;" in the fifth, the animals, fishes, birds, etc., and in the sixth, Man. ”

“ To many the interest of such stories will depend on their parallelism to the Biblical account in Genesis i.; the anthropologist, however, will be attracted by them in proportion as they illustrate the more primitive phases of human culture. In spite of the frequent overgrowth of a luxuriant imagination, the leading ideas of really primitive cosmogonies are extremely simple. ”

“ Our thoughts, now half stunned, fly back across unthinkable starless intervals, back like a magnet to the phosphorescent gleam which is ours in the boundless ocean in which a universe is but a gleam. Nearer—nearer—nearer—the gleam has softened to a touch of mist, the mist has expanded to a definite shape studded with stars which are brightening, and widening apart. Now the shape has become an ethereal form, and before us rises a marvelous creation. As seen from this outer point, our Galaxy is neither a ring nor a wreath but is formed of huge spirals which reach far outward into the heavens. ”

“ Everything that is created is subject to destruction. And further, since the Cosmos exists by the goodness of God it follows that God must always be good and the world exist. Just as light coexists with the Sun and with fire, and shadow coexists with a body.
Of the bodies in the Cosmos, some imitate Mind and move in orbits; some imitate Soul and move in a straight line, fire and air upward, earth and water downward. Of those that move in orbits the fixed sphere goes from the east, the Seven from the west. ”

“ And these changes he sees to be brought about in part by the place of the globe in space, and its relation to other celestial bodies, and in part by the very shape, form, and character of the surface and configurations themselves. Thus to the geographer the phantasmagoria of visible things presents itself as a drama, a great cosmic drama in which the part allotted to the human species is both insignificant and predetermined in all essential respects. The operations of man on the planet are, from this point of view, limited and conditioned by inexorable cosmic forces. ”

“ Thus may the cosmic race, whose aggregate census makes up the stellar universe, be perpetuated—individual solar systems, such as ours, being born, and growing old, and dying to live again in their descendants, while the universe as a whole maintains its unified integrity throughout all these internal mutations—passing on, it may be, by infinitesimal stages, to a culmination hopelessly beyond human comprehension. ”

“ From the cosmic atoms I created an entirely new body, exactly like that cosmic-dream physical body which you laid beneath the dream-sands at Puri in your dream-world. I am in truth resurrected-not on earth but on an astral planet. Its inhabitants are better able than earthly humanity to meet my lofty standards. ”

“ The very word cosmogonic implies the pre-existence of the idea of a cosmos, an orderly universe, and this was exactly the last idea that could enter the mind of the myth-makers. There is no such thing as orderliness in their conceptions, and no such thing as an universe. ”

“ The Cosmos, in a word, for him was psychical, and Nature's moods were transcendental cosmic activities that induced in him these singular states of exaltation and expansion. She pushed wide the gateways of his deeper life. She entered, took possession, dipped his smaller self into her own enormous and enveloping personality.
He possessed a full experience, and at times a keen judgment, of modern life; while underneath, all the time, lay the moving sea of curiously wild primitive instincts. ”

“ We have thought it worth while to dedicate this chapter to some remarks on cosmogonies in general, and examination into a very few conceived by eminent men; these forming in our opinion the most attractive matter for those readers who do not pretend to make a study of astronomy, but are very desirous to have some knowledge of the most plausible ideas which have been conceived by astronomers, of how the universe, and more particularly the solar system, were brought into existence ”

“ If we stop to think what words mean, we shall know that external non-realities are nothing, and that adjustments to external non-realities are adjustments to nothing.
The cosmic process regards two things, external realities and internal realities. There is the external reality of the natural world, to which material creation must conform. The eye is adjusted to the ether, the ear to the sound, the lungs to the atmosphere, the fin to the water, the wing to the air. We have no difficulty in acknowledging the reality of the natural world, because it is cognized by the senses set in the body. ”

“ By this means the Heavens are open’d, and a vast number of new Stars, and new Motions, and new Productions appear in them, to which all the antient Astronomers were utterly Strangers. By this the Earth it self, which lyes so neer us, under our feet, shews quite a new thing to us, and in every little particle of its matter; we now behold almost as great a variety of Creatures, as we were able before to reckon up in the whole Universe it self. ”

“ Thus, in the sublime chronology to which we are directing our inquiries, we first find ourselves called upon to consider the globe which we inhabit as a child of the sun, elder than Venus and her younger brother Mercury, but posterior in date of birth to Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, and Uranus; next, to regard our whole system as probably of recent formation in comparison with many of the stars of our firmament. We must, however, be on our guard against supposing the earth as a recent globe in our ordinary conceptions of time. ”

“ The planets of the universe, watching, would learn in centuries to come that a monstrous Science had transformed our World into another Moon, void of life and air, around which swim still-born satellites that were once the blasted continents of the Old World or the Americas. ”

“ The new astronomy makes much of the three cosmic laws. Our earth, by a form of self-love called molecular attraction, ceases to be scattered dust, and takes on the shape of a rich and beautiful planet. ”

“ One class of objectors to the idea that other23 worlds are inhabited endeavors to show that our position in the universe is unique, that the solar system itself is quite unlike anything existing elsewhere, and, to cap the climax, that our own little world has just the right amount of water, air, and gravitational force to enable it to be the abode of intelligent life, and nowhere else in the broad expanse of heaven can such physical habitudes be found as will enable life to originate or to exist! ”

“ Precisely thus, seeing in our astral system many thousands of worlds in all stages of formation, from the most rudimental to that immediately preceding the present condition of those we deem perfect, it is unavoidable to conclude that all the perfect have gone through the various stages which we see in the rudimental. This leads us at once to the conclusion that the whole of our firmament was at one time a diffused mass of nebulous matter, extending through the space which it still occupies. ”

“ Instead then of one sun, and one world only, in the universe, as the unskilful in astronomy imagine, that science discovers to us such an inconceivable number of suns, systems, and worlds, dispersed through boundless space, that if our sun, with all the 265 planets, moons, and comets belonging to it, were annihilated, they would with difficulty be missed, by an eye that could take in the whole creation ”

“ Physical cosmography is founded on the contemplation of all created things — all that exists in space, whether as substances or forces — that is, all the material beings that constitute the universe. The science which I would attempt to define presents itself, therefore, to man, as the inhabitant of the earth, under a two-fold form — as the earth itself and the regions of space. ”

“ And assuredly, as in the firmament that simple law of gravitation reigns supreme—making it indeed a kosmos—majestic, orderly, comely in its going—ruling, and binding not the less the fiery and nomadic comets, than the gentle, punctual moons—so certainly, and to us moral creatures to a degree transcendantly more important, does the whole intelligent universe move around and move towards and in the Father of Lights. ”

“ Indeed, it seems to me the climax of my wonderful travels and strange adventures was reached when the Scotch sailing-vessel took me from an iceberg on the Antarctic Ocean.
PART SIX. CONCLUSION
IN concluding this history of my adventures, I wish to state that I firmly believe science is yet in its infancy concerning the cosmology of the earth. There is so much that is unaccounted for by the world's accepted knowledge of to-day, and will ever remain so until the land of "The Smoky God" is known and recognized by our geographers. ”

“ The movement being different, the nature of the bodies must also be different; hence the celestial [209] body does not burn or freeze what it touches, or do anything else that pertains to the four elements. [209:1]
And since the Cosmos is a sphere—the zodiac proves that—and in every sphere 'down' means 'towards the centre', for the centre is farthest distant from every point, and heavy things fall 'down' and fall to the earth .
All these things are made by the Gods, ordered by Mind, moved by Soul. About the Gods we have spoken already. ”