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74 KANT'S UNIVERSAL NATURAL HISTORY 



I assume that all the material of which the globes 

 belonging to our solar system all the planets and 

 comets consist, at the beginning of all things was 

 decomposed into its primary elements, and filled the 

 whole space of the universe in which the bodies formed 

 out of it now revolve. This state of nature, when 

 viewed in and by itself without any reference to a 

 system, seems to be the very simplest that can follow 

 upon nothing. At that time nothing had yet been 

 termed. The construction of heavenly bodies at a 

 distance from each other, their distances regulated by 

 their attraction, their form arising out of the equilibrium 

 of their collected matter, exhibit a later state. The state 

 of nature which immediately bordered on the creation 

 was as crude, as unformed, as possible. But even in the 

 essential properties of the elements that constituted this 

 chaos, there could be traced the mark of that perfection 

 which they have derived from their origin, their essential 

 character being a consequence of the eternal idea of the 

 Divine Intelligence. The simplest and most general 

 properties which seem to be struck out without design, 

 the matter which appears to be merely passive and 

 wanting form and arrangement, has in its simplest state 

 a tendency to fashion itself by a natural evolution into a 

 more perfect constitution. But the variety in the kinds 

 of elements, is what chiefly contributes to the stirring of 

 nature and to the formative modification of chaos, as it 

 is by it that the repose which would prevail in a 

 universal equality among the scattered elements is done 

 away, so that the chaos begins to take form at the points 

 where the more strongly attracting particles are. The 

 kinds of this elementary matter are undoubtedly infinitely 



