THE EARTH. 15 



again dissever ; and which they in part develop into organic 

 tissues (living organisms), which have the power of repro- 

 ducing like structures. The appreciation of nature is ex- 

 cited in the susceptible mind of man through the profound 

 impression awakened by the manifestation of these forces. 

 Our attention is at first attracted by the relations of size in 

 space exhibited by our planet, which seems only like a hand- 

 ful of conglomerated matter in the immeasurable universe. 

 A system of co-operating forces, which either tend to com- 

 bine or separate (through polar influences), shows the de- 

 pendence of every part of nature upon other parts, both in 

 the elementary processes (as in the formation of inorganic 

 substances) and in the production and maintenance of life. 

 The size and form of the earth, its mass, that is to say, the 

 quantity of its material parts, which, when compared with 

 the volume, determines its density, and by means of the lat- 

 ter, under certain conditions, both the constitution of the in- 

 terior of the earth and the amount of its attraction, are rela- 

 tions which stand in a more manifest, and a more mathe- 

 matically-demonstrable dependence upon one another than 

 we observe in the case of the above-named vital processes, 

 in the distribution of heat, in the telluric conditions of elec- 

 tro-magnetism, or in the chemical metamorphoses of matter. 

 Conditions, which we are not yet able to determine quanti- 

 tatively on account of a complication of phenomena, may 

 nevertheless be present, and may bo demonstrated through 

 inductive reasoning. 



Although the two kinds of attraction, namely, that which 

 acts at perceptible distances, as the force of gravity (the 

 gravitation of the celestial bodies toward one another), and 

 that which is manifested at immeasurably small distances, 

 as molecular or contact-attraction, can not, in the present 

 condition of science, be reduced to one and the same law, 

 yet it is not on that account the less credible that capillary 

 attraction and endosmosis, which is so important in refer- 

 ence to the ascent of fluids, and in respect to animal and 

 vegetable physiology, may be quite as much affected by the 

 force of gravitation, and its local distribution, as electro- 

 magnetic processes and the chemical metamorphosis of mat- 

 ter. To refer to extreme conditions, we may assume that if 

 our planet had only the mass of the moon, and therefore al- 

 most six times less intensity of gravity, the meteorological 

 processes, the climate, the hypsometrical relations of up- 

 heaved mountain chains, and the physiognomy of the vege- 



