AND THEORY OF THE HEAVENS. 1 29 



rotation of the planet by the revolving forces implanted 

 in it, as a separated portion of it. 1 



The pleasure of having comprehended and explained 

 one of the rarest peculiarities of the heavens, in the whole 

 extent of its nature and production, has led us to treat 

 it in such detail. Let us, with the favour of our indulgent 

 readers, prosecute the subject wherever it leads in further 

 detail, in order that, having given ourselves up to a 

 pleasant sort of imaginative reflection carried on without 

 any restraint, we may return with the more circumspection 

 and care to truth again. 



May it not be imagined that the Earth as well as Saturn 

 once had a ring? This ring would have ascended from 

 its surface just in the same way as that of Saturn, and 

 would maintain itself for a long time, while the Earth 

 would have passed from a much more rapid rotation than 



Statement by Kant in the year 1791.) "The very probable 

 correctness of my theory of the production of this ring from vaporous 

 matter, which kept moving according to central laws, throws at the 

 same time a very favourable light upon the theory of the origin of the 

 great heavenly bodies themselves, according to the same laws only 

 that their projectile force has been produced by the fall of the scattered 

 primitive matter caused by universal gravitation, and not by the axial 

 rotation of the central body. This becomes still more probable if we 

 take into account the further view which was added afterwards as a 

 supplement to the Theory of the Heavens, and which has obtained the 

 important approval of Privy Councillor Lichtenberg, namely, that the 

 primitive vaporous matter diffused through space, which contained in 

 itself all the infinitely varied kinds of matter in an elastic state, in form- 

 ing the heavenly bodies, did it only in this way, that the particles of matter 

 which were endowed with chemical affinity, when, in the course of their 

 fall according to the laws of gravitation, they impinged on each other, 

 mutually destroyed their elasticity, but thereby produced dense masses 

 and brought forth in these that heat, which in the great heavenly bodies 

 (the suns) is combined externally with the property of illumination, and 

 in the lesser bodies (the planets) with internal warmth." 



