Note 71 — Chapter V · Inorganic Geological Dynamics.

For this hypothesis would make it necessary to suppose that the earth has, at some former period, derived from some other star or stars more heat than she now derives from the sun. But this would imply, as highly probable, that at some period some other star or stars must have produced also a mechanical effect upon the solar system, greater than the effect of the sun. Now such a past operation of forces, fitted to obliterate all order and symmetry, is quite inconsistent with the simple, regular, and symmetrical relation which the whole solar system, as far as Uranus, bears to the present central body.