DIETERICH'S SUMMARY OF KANT'S THEORY. 169 



declares that Kant's peculiar genius shines forth most 

 radiantly in his views on the Structure of the Starry 

 Heavens ; for the subject-matter, which is of itself of a 

 sublime nature, here furnishes the imagination with a wide 

 field under the leading of a great idea. How deeply the 

 thought of his Cosmogony filled Kant's soul is evidenced 

 by himself, even in his later years, when, at the close of 

 his Critique of Practical Reason, he breaks forth in the 

 striking words : " Two things there are that fill the soul 

 with ever new and increasing wonder and awe, the oftener 

 and the more persistently our reflection is occupied with 

 them the Starry Heavens above me and the Moral Law 

 within me." The ideas of Newton's Natural Philosophy^ 

 which drew Kant's thought into their magic circle with 

 such irresistible and lasting attraction, and which was the 

 ruling centre of his own striving from the very beginning 

 of his scientific development, are now seen to be carried 

 out with equal independence and logical sequence, on the 

 basis of incessant labour of thought. The magnificent 

 idea of a strictly regulated and ascending evolution of the 

 universe, the idea of a mechanical connection in nature 

 embracing the whole history of the System of the Planets 

 and Fixed Stars, had hovered as a beautiful ideal in a 

 yet uncertain way before the eyes of the youth of twenty- 

 two ; and now it gained a definite form in the mind of the 

 man of thirty-one, and is unveiled by him in its sharp 

 outlines before our gaze. 



Newton had stopped short at the origin of our Planetary 

 System. But Kant dares to represent the Natural History 

 of the Heavens as a necessary consequence of Newton's 

 theory, or as a logical development of it. The spirit 

 of the author of the Principles of Natural Philosophy 

 imperatively demanded that the natural causal exploration 

 in the domain of astronomy, should be extended as far 

 as possible. To the scholar it seemed a vital question 

 for the exact science which had been carried by his master 

 to a perfection hitherto unattained, that all supernatural 

 interferences should be banished from the connection of 

 the development of nature ; and that its most complicated 

 forms should be derived from the universal Laws of Motion 

 regulating the simplest elements of matter. The recognition 

 of the boundary line which Newton had drawn between 



