Lecture III

In the numerous popular accounts of the origin of our planetary system one is first led back to a kind of original mist, to a vast fog-like structure, a nebula, out of which our sun and its planets have somehow agglomerated, although for the driving force in this process only physical forces, as a rule, are taken into account. This is called the “Kant-Laplace theory,” though it is somewhat modified today, and those who have arrived at an intellectual grasp of the gradual agglomeration of the different planets out of the original nebula up to the condition in which they and our earth now exist, are very proud of their intelligence. They continually emphasize that it is but little in keeping with the present important advance in science to speak of spiritual forces and spiritual beings in this separation of the heavenly bodies out of the nebula. Various popular books, too, describe such statements as completely backward and superstitious.