30 KANT'S UNIVERSAL NATURAL HISTORY 



fThese are the grounds on which I base my confidence 

 that the physical part of universal science may hope in 

 the future to reach the same perfection as that to which 

 Newton has raised the mathematical half of it.\ Next to 

 the laws by which the universe subsists in the constitution 

 in which it is found, there are perhaps no other laws in 

 the whole sphere of natural science that are capable of 

 such exact mathematical determination as those in accord- 

 ance with which the system arose. And undoubtedly the 

 hand of a skilful mathematician may here reap no unfruitful 

 fields. 



Having thus taken occasion to recommend the subject 

 here considered to a favourable reception, I may now be 

 allowed to explain briefly the manner in which I have 

 treated it. The First Part deals with a new system of 

 the universe generally. Mr Wright of Durham, whose 

 treatise I have come to know from the Hamburg publica- 

 tion entitled the Freie Urteile, of 1751, first suggested 

 ideas that led me to regard the fixed stars not as a mere 

 swarm scattered without visible order, but as a system 

 which has the greatest resemblance with that of the planets; 

 so that just as the planets in their system are found very 

 nearly in a common plane, the fixed stars are also related 

 in their positions, as nearly as possible, to a certain plane 

 which must be conceived as drawn through the whole 

 heavens, and by their being very closely massed in it 

 they present that streak of light which is called the Milky 

 Way. I have become persuaded that because this zone, 

 illuminated by innumerable suns, has very exactly the form 

 of a great circle, our sun must be situated very near this 

 great plane. In exploring the causes of this arrangement, 



