ASTRONOMY. 231 



subsists between the diameters of the planetary orbits. 

 The distance of Saturn from the sun (to say nothing of 

 the Georgium Sidus) is nearly twenty-five times that of 

 Mercury ; a disparity which it seems impossible to recon- 

 cile with Buffon's scheme. Bodies starting from the same 

 place, with whatever difference of direction or velocity 

 they set off, could not have been found at these different 

 distances from the centre, still retaining their nearly circu- 

 lar orbits. They must have been carried to their proper 

 distances before they were projected.* 



To conclude : In astronomy, the great thing is to raise 

 the imagination to the subject, and that oftentimes in opposi- 

 tion to the impression made upon the senses. An allusion, 

 for example, must be got over, arising from the distance at 

 which we view the heavenly bodies, viz. the apparent slmD- 

 ness of their motions. The moon shall take some hours 

 in getting half a yard from a star which it touched. A mo- 

 tion so deliberate, we may think easily guided. But what 

 is the fact? The moon, in fact, is, all this while, driving 

 through the heavens, at the rate of considerably more than 

 two thousand miles in an hour ; which is more than double 

 of that, with which a ball is shot off from the mouth of a 

 cannon. Yet is this prodigious rapidity as much under 

 government, as if the planet proceeded ever so slowly, or 

 were conducted in its course inch by inch. It is also diffi- 

 cult to bring the imagination to conceive (what yet, to 

 judge tolerably of the matter, it is necessary to conceive) 

 how loose, if we may so express it, the heavenly bodies are. 

 Enormous globes, held by nothing, confined by nothing, 

 are turned into free and boundless space, each to seek its 

 course by the virtue of an invisible principle ; but a princi- 

 ple, one, common, and the same, in all ; and ascertainable. 

 To preserve such bodies from being lost, from running 

 together in heaps, from hindering and distracting one 



* " If we suppose the matter of the system to be accumulated in the 

 centre by its gravity, 7io mechanical principles, with the assistance of 

 this power of gravity could separate the vast mass into such parts as 

 the sun and planets ; and after carrying them to their, different distances, 

 project them in their several directions, preserving still the equal- 

 ity of action and reaction, or the state of the centre of gravity of the 

 system. Su-ch an exquisite structure of things could only arise from 

 the contrivance and powerful influences of an intelligent, free, and 

 most potent agent. The same powers, therefore, which at present 

 govern the material universe, and conduct its various motions, are 

 very different from those, which were necessary to have produced it 

 from nothing, or to have disposed it in the admirable form in which it 

 now proceeds." Maclaurin's Account of JVewton's Phil. p. 407, ed.3. 



