Ixxiv KANT'S UNIVERSAL NATURAL HISTORY 



theory, recommended, as it was, by his great 

 mathematical genius and undisputed authority, soon 

 won large adherence ; it long ruled with undis- 

 puted sway, and almost dogmatically, the domain of 

 astronomical speculation ; and notwithstanding the 

 strong objections which have been accumulating 

 against it, and the revival of Kant's better auth- 

 enticated rival Theory, it still largely holds the 

 field. 



There is now no possible question as to the priority 

 of Kant's speculation ; but the question is still raised 

 as to whether Laplace worked out his theory in entire 

 independence and ignorance of Kant's earlier view. 

 German writers have been occasionally inclined to 

 question Laplace's independence and originality ; but 

 while Laplace had not the scrupulous literary con- 

 scientiousness of Kant, and while Zollner reproduces 

 in parallel columns passages from Kant and Laplace 

 which have an astonishing agreement, the indepen- 

 dence of Laplace is now generally admitted. The 

 supposition that Laplace obtained some knowledge 

 of Kant's views through the Cosmological Letters of 

 Lambert, in the original German, or in the French 

 translation, is quite untenable, and must be given up 

 as erroneous. For even Lambert himself, as we have 

 seen, knew nothing of Kant's views when he wrote 

 them, and they are relevant only to Kant's discussion, 

 founded on Wright, of the systematic constitution of 

 the stellar universe, with which Laplace does not 

 deal, and not to the Cosmogony proper, with which 



