FIRST PART. 



OF THE SYSTEMATIC CONSTITUTION AMONG 

 THE FIXED STARS. 



THE scientific theory of the Universal Constitution of the 

 World has obtained no remarkable addition since the 

 time of Huygens. At the present time nothing more 

 is known than what was already known then, namely, 

 that six planets with ten satellites, all performing the 

 circle of their revolution almost in one plane, and the 

 eternal comets which sweep out on all sides, constitute 

 a system whose centre is the sun, towards which they all 

 fall, around which they perform their movements, and by 

 which they are all illuminated, heated, and vivified ; 

 finally, that the fixed stars are so many suns, centres of 

 similar systems, in which everything may be arranged just 

 as grandly and with as much order as in our system ; 

 and that the infinite space swarms with worlds, whose 

 number and excellency have a relation to the immensity 

 of their Creator. 



The systematic arrangement which was found in the 

 combination of the planets which move around their sun, 

 seemed in the view of astronomers of that time to 

 disappear in the multitude of the fixed stars; and it 



