136 KANT'S UNIVERSAL NATURAL HISTORY 



particles of the elementary matter that filled empty 

 space that infinite receptacle of the Divine Presence. 

 If, then, all the worlds and systems acknowledge the 

 same kind of origin, if attraction is unlimited and universal, 

 while the repulsion of the elements is likewise everywhere 

 active ; if, in presence of the infinite, the great and small are 

 small alike; have not all the universes received a relative 

 constitution and systematic connection similar to what the 

 heavenly bodies of our solar world have on the small 

 scale such as Saturn, Jupiter, and the Earth, which are 

 particular systems by themselves, and yet are connected 

 with each other as members of a still greater system ? If 

 in the immeasurable space in which all the suns of the 

 Milky Way have formed themselves, we assume a point 

 around which, through some .cause or other, the first 

 formation of nature out of chaos began, there the largest 

 mass and a body of extraordinary attraction will have 

 arisen which has thereby become capable of compelling 

 all the systems in the process of being formed within an 

 enormous sphere around it, to fall towards itself as their 

 centre, and to build up a system around it on the great 

 scale similar to that which the elementary matter that 

 formed the planets has constructed in the small scale 

 around the sun. Observation puts this conjecture almost 

 beyond doubt. The host of the stars, by their relative 

 positions towards a common plane, constitute a system 

 just as much as do the planets of our Solar System around 

 the sun. The Milky Way is the Zodiac of those higher 

 worlds, which diverge as little as possible from its zone 

 and whose strip of space is always illuminated by their 

 light, just as the zodiac of the planets always glitters here 

 and there although only in a few points with the splendour 



