138 KANT'S UNIVERSAL NATURAL HISTORY 



of a body of incomparably mightier attraction, and acting 

 from the centre of their regulated positions. The attraction 

 which is the cause of the systematic constitution among 

 the fixed stars of the Milky Way acts also at the distance 

 even of those worlds, so that it would draw them out of 

 their positions and bury the world in an inevitably im- 

 pending chaos, unless the regularly distributed forces of 

 rotation formed a counterpoise or equilibrium with attrac- 

 tion, and mutually produced in combination that connection 

 which is the foundation of the systematic constitution. 

 Attraction is undoubtedly a property of matter extending 

 as far as that co-existence which constitutes space, seeing 

 that it combines substances by their mutual dependence ; 

 or, to speak more exactly, attraction is just that universal 

 relation which unites the parts. of nature in one space. It 

 reaches, therefore, to the whole extent of space, even to 

 all the distance of nature's infinitude. If light reaches us 

 from these distant systems light which is only an impressed 

 motion must not attraction, that original source of motion, 

 which is prior to all motion, which needs no foreign cause 

 and can be stopped by no obstacles, because it penetrates 

 into the inmost recesses of matter without any impact 

 even in the universal repose of nature ; must not, I say, 

 attraction have put those fixed star-systems, notwithstanding 

 their immense distances, into motion when nature began 

 to stir through the unformed dispersion of her material? 

 And as we have seen on the small scale, is not this 

 attraction the source of the systematic combination and 

 the lasting persistence of the members of these systems, 

 and that which secures them from falling to pieces? 



But what is at last the end of these systematic arrange- 

 ments ? Where shall creation itself cease ? It is evident 



