172 DIETERICH'S SUMMARY OF KANT'S THEORY. 



further course of this motion is determined until it ulti- 

 mately brings about the present state of the System of 

 the World. The heavier elements begin to attract the 

 lighter. There thus arises a universal movement towards 

 one gravitating point. But in the course of this movement 

 the material particles that are gravitating simultaneously 

 in a straight line towards the centre of the whole system 

 mutually repel each other, and in this manner experience 

 a deviation of their path from their direction in a straight 

 line to the centre. The consequence is a universal whirling 

 movement of the elements, with the most manifold mutual 

 disturbances and frictions, which lead ultimately to a uni- 

 versal circular movement limited, as far as possible, to 

 one plane as the state of the slightest hindrance, or of 

 the least reciprocal action. Within the disc of atoms 

 moving circularly around the centre of the whole, there 

 arise single centres of smaller masses, around which the 

 matter in their environment gradually groups itself according 

 to the laws of attraction. In this way, by condensation 

 of that disc-like mass of vapour into smaller connected 

 systems of elements, the individual heavenly bodies are 

 agglomerated and form globes. They move in the same 

 form in a circular path; in the same direction in the 

 direction of the rotation of the sun around its axis ; and 

 in the same plane in the prolonged plane of the sun's 

 equator as do the material elements out of which they 

 have been composed. 



The deviations from the regular circular form and the 

 common plane, are explained from small differences between 

 the velocity of the original elements, and from the merely 

 approximate limitation of their earlier circular movement 

 to one plane. The inclination of the axes of the several 

 heavenly bodies to the plane of their path is presumably 

 to be referred to transformations of their surfaces, which 

 were fluid at the beginning. For with the condensation 

 of the primordial vaporous matter diffused through space, 

 there comes in at the same time an enormous develop- 

 ment of heat a view that is more exactly carried out 

 in Kant's treatise of 1785 on the Volcanoes in the Moon, 

 which draws attention to chemical attraction along with 

 mechanical attraction. 



In the way thus stated Kant supposes that our Solar 



