142 KANT'S UNIVERSAL NATURAL HISTORY 



powerful attraction which embraces within the sphere of 

 its attraction all the worlds and systems which time has 

 produced, and which Eternity will produce ; and it may 

 with probability be assumed that around it nature made 

 the beginning of its formation, and that the systems are 

 accumulated most closely there, whereas further from that 

 point, in the infinitude of space, they will disappear more 

 and more with greater and greater degrees of dispersion. 

 This law might be deduced from the analogy of our 

 Solar System ; and such a constitution may moreover 

 serve this purpose, that at great distances not only the 

 universal central body, but all the systems that revolve 

 next round it, may combine their attraction and exercise 

 it as if from one mass upon the systems which are at a 

 still greater distance. This arrangement would then be 

 subservient to embracing the whole of nature in all the 

 infinitude of its extension in a single system. 



Let us now proceed to trace out the construction of 

 this Universal System of Nature from the mechanical laws 

 of matter striving to form it. In the infinite space of the 

 scattered elementary matter there must have been some 

 one place where this primitive material had been most 

 densely accumulated so as through the process of formation 

 that was going on predominantly there, to have procured 

 for the whole Universe a mass which might serve as its 

 fulcrum. It indeed holds true that in an infinite space 

 no point can properly have the privilege to be called the 

 centre ; but by means of a certain ratio, which is founded 

 upon the essential degrees of the density of the primitive 

 matter, according to which at its creation it is accumulated 

 more densely in a certain place and increases in its dis- 

 persion with the distance from it, such a point may have 



