DIETERICH'S SUMMARY OF KANT'S THEORY. 173 



System, probably also the similarly organized System of 

 the Fixed Stars, and perhaps the whole Universe, have been 

 formed. For our Planetary System at least, there follow, 

 unsought, certain consequences from the mechanical theory 

 of its origin, which agree in a striking manner with facts 

 of observation that lay originally quite away from it. These 

 are supplementary confirmations of the hypothesis by 

 experience, which are fitted to lend it that certainty which 

 any hypothesis as such is capable of receiving. One of 

 these facts is the relation between the density of the sun 

 and the average density of the planets, which the calcula- 

 tion of Buffon had established. The other fact is the form 

 and time of the revolution of Saturn's Ring, which Kant 

 first deduced from its supposed mechanical origin, and 

 which was brilliantly established a considerable time after- 

 wards by Herschel's observation. 



The strictly scientific view of the evolution of the Solar 

 System which may be extended to every other cosmic 

 system of similar constitution was expanded in the mind 

 of Kant into a poetical representation of the evolution of 

 the whole Universe, but which he sharply distinguishes as 

 imaginative speculation from his astronomical theory. The 

 mechanical cosmogony opens up an enormous perspective 

 into immeasurable distances of time and space ; it lets us 

 look back into the remotest past of our Planetary System 

 and look out to unlimited connections of this system with 

 ever more widely extended higher systems. The imagina- 

 tion cannot deny itself the charm of sweeping, under the 

 guiding thread of analogy, beyond the bounds still accessible 

 to scientific calculation and shaping out for itself a single 

 collective view of the eternal economy of the whole uni- 

 verse. Natural science draws with certainty only the lines 

 within which the Solar System, and perhaps also the 

 System of the Fixed Stars, has developed itself from its 

 simplest beginnings down to the present time ; it gives us 

 no definite information about the earlier history which 

 preceded that state of vaporous dispersion, nor about the 

 later history which will follow the development hitherto. 

 If we allow ourselves to step into the domain of mere 

 conjecture, it is very probable that the same mechanical 

 laws which led to the formation of a system of celestial 



