124 KANTS UNIVERSAL NATURAL HISTORY 



and suppose that the movement continues there in the 

 state in which it formerly was, and must be, in order to 

 be able to accomplish a free revolution, then the lower 

 particles, owing to their having been much retarded, 

 would not maintain themselves revolving at their height 

 but would cross each other in oblique and eccentric 

 movements, while the more distant particles, by receiving 

 the impetus of a greater motion than that which 

 would correspond to the central force of their distance, 

 would be removed further away from the sun than the 

 solar action which determines the external boundary of 

 the ring; and thereby they could not but be scattered 

 beyond the planet and thus carried away. 



But none of this disorder need be feared. The mechanism 

 of the movement generating the ring leads to a determina- 

 tion which, by means of the very causes which might 

 thus destroy it, puts it into a secure state. This comes 

 about by its being divided into a certain number of 

 concentric circular bands which, on account of the 

 intervals that separate them, have no longer any com- 

 munity with each other. For, as the particles which 

 circulate in the inner border of the ring carry forward 

 the further particles by their more rapid motion and 

 accelerate their revolution, so the increased degree of 

 velocity in these particles causes a preponderance of the 

 centrifugal force and the removal of them further from 

 the place where they revolved. But if we suppose that 

 as these particles strive to separate from the nearer 

 particles, they will have to overcome a certain cohesion, 

 which, although that of diffused vapours, yet appears 

 to be not quite insignificant in such cases, then this 

 increased degree of the momentum will tend to over- 



