92 KANT'S UNIVERSAL NATURAL HISTORY 



sphere, the space in which the elementary matter was 

 floating must still have exceeded the volume of the 

 earth by 50 bimillion times. Now if we reckon the 

 mass of all the planets with their satellites as, according 

 to Newton, being ^-J^ of the sun, then the earth, which 

 is only y^Vs^ f tnat mass ) w ^^ be related to the whole 

 mass of all the matter in the planets as 1:267^; and 

 if all this matter were reduced to the same specific 

 density as that of the earth, a body would arise out of 

 it which would occupy 277^ times more space than the 

 earth. Hence, if we assume the density of the earth in 

 the whole of its mass to be not much greater than the 

 density of the solid matter which is found under its 

 outmost surface (as the properties of the figure of the 

 earth just require this) ; and if we reckon this surface 

 matter to be about four or five times denser than water, 

 and water a thousand times heavier than air : then the 

 matter of all the planets if they were expanded till they 

 acquired the tenuity of the atmosphere, would occupy 

 almost fourteen hundred thousand times greater space 

 than does the present volume of the earth. This space 

 when compared with the space in which, according to 

 our supposition, all the matter of the planets was dis- 

 persed, is thirty million times less; and therefore the 

 dispersion of the matter of the planets in this space 

 would have a tenuity just as many times greater than 

 that of the particles of our present atmosphere. In 

 fact, this high degree of dispersion, however incredible it 

 may appear, was nevertheless neither unnecessary nor 

 unnatural. It was necessary that it should be as great 

 as possible, in order to allow the floating particles all 

 possible freedom of movement, almost as if they had 



