1872.] The Construction of the Heavens. 313 
unable to indicate “‘to what extent his system is a repro- 
duction or amplification of Wright’s.” There can be no 
question that unconscious memory had a much larger 
share in the production of Kant’s ideas as published in 
1755, than he himself (in the absence of Wright’s work 
to refer to) could probably have imagined.* The most 
important point to be noticed in Kant’s work is his 
extension of Wright’s speculations to other orders of 
systems than observation had yet revealed. Wright had 
considered that the nebulz indicate the existence of other 
systems, not necessarily like our own star system, but 
of the same order in the scheme of creation. Kant con- 
sidered that these star systems are members of a new 
system of a higher order. ‘‘ We trace here,” he added, 
‘‘the first terms of a series of worlds and systems, and 
these first terms of an infinite series enable us to infer the 
nature of the rest of the series.” t 
Strangely enough while Kant borrowed his views almost 
wholly, though unconsciously, from Wright, he seems to 
have been disposed to regard Lambert’s views—which in 
reality were unlike his own—as borrowed from him. In his 
correspondence with Lambert, Kant remarked in 1763, that 
“‘the accordance between their ideas extended even to the 
most minute details.” It will be seen, however, that in 
forming this opinion Kant misinterpreted the theses of 
Lambert. 
Lambert, like Huyghens, Wright; and Kant, regarded 
the stars as suns resembling our own sun in importance, 
and like it surrounded by planetary systems. Each sun 
with its family of planets formed in Lambert’s theory a 
system of the first order. He considered that our sun belongs 
to a vast globular group or cluster of stars, forming a 
* Professor Huxley, in his fine essay on ‘‘ Geological Reform,” remarks 
that Grant, in his ‘‘ History of Physical Astronomy,” makes but the briefest 
reference to Kant. The reason for this may probably be found in the circum- 
stance that, in describing Wright’s ideas, Grant had already presented all 
those of Kant’s views which could properly find a place in a history of 
physical astronomy. The student who is anxious to inquire into those more 
speculative ideas of Kant which are not to be found in Wright’s ‘‘ Theory of 
the Universe,’ should refer to Kant’s original work, ‘‘ Allgemeine Natur- 
gesichte und Theorie des Himmels; oder Versuch von der Verfassung und 
dem mechanischen ursprunge des ganzen Weltgebiindes nach Newton’schen 
Grundsatzen Abgehandelt.”—Kant’s Sammtliche Werke, Bd i., p. 207. 
+ I omit all reference to the ideas of Wright, Kant, Lambert, and others, as 
to the existence of central suns, simply because those ideas were purely 
speculative. I may add here, however, that analogy now no longer requires 
that we should consider every system as necessarily governed by a central 
orb. We now know from observation that many systems of orbs exist in 
space which have have no dominating centre. 
VOw, iE. ((N-S.) 258 
