126 KANT'S UNIVERSAL NATURAL HISTORY 



This conjecture gives me not a little pleasure from the 

 hope of seeing it yet confirmed by actual observations. 

 Some years ago it was reported from London that in 

 observing Saturn with a new Newtonian telescope im- 

 proved by Mr. Bradley, it appeared that its ring was 

 properly composed of many concentric rings, which were 

 separated by intervals. This news has not been con- 

 firmed by further reports. 1 The optical instruments have 

 opened up for the understanding the means of obtaining 

 knowledge of the furthest regions of the universe. If 

 new progress in this department of knowledge is mainly 

 dependent upon such instruments, the attention which 

 our century gives to all that can enlarge the knowledge 

 of men may well justify us in hoping, with all probability, 

 that it will be turned predomi-nantly to that side of the 



1 Since I made this statement, I find in the Memoires of the Royal 

 Academy of Sciences at Paris, of the year 1705, in a paper by M. 

 Cassini "On the Satellites and Ring of Saturn" (on page 571 of 

 Steinwehr's translation), a confirmation of this conjecture, which 

 leaves almost no doubt of its correctness. M. Cassini begins by 

 suggesting an idea which might be regarded as to some extent an 

 approximation to the truth which we have expounded, although it is 

 improbable in itself: namely, that this ring may perhaps be a swarm 

 of small satellites which would present the same appearance from 

 Saturn as the Milky Way does from the Earth an idea which may 

 be accepted if we substitute for these small satellites the vapour- 

 particles which revolve around the planet with the same motion. He 

 then proceeds to say: " This idea is confirmed by the observations 

 which have been made in years -when Saturn's ring appeared broader 

 and opener. For the breadth of the ring was seen divided into two parts 

 by a dark elliptical line whose nearest part towards the planet was 

 brighter than the most distant part. This line marked, as it were, a 

 small interval between the two parts of the ring, just as the distance 

 of the globe from the ring is indicated by the greatest extent of the 

 darkness lying between them" 



