176 DIETERICH'S SUMMARY OF KANT'S THEORY. 



in renewed youth. This idea permits us even to conceive 

 of a system equipped with limited means, a universe of a 

 finite extent and with a finite store of energy, which, by 

 the opposition of the constantly changing combination and 

 dissolution of its minutest parts, may be passing through 

 a history unlimited in time, backwards as well as forwards. 

 When therefore the planets, along with the comets, in con- 

 sequence of the exhaustion of their revolving motion, shall 

 some day plunge into the sun ; when the infinite accession 

 of heat which the sun will experience by this collision, 

 dissolves it into its elements, and disperses these elements 

 in all directions : then the materials thus diffused in space 

 after they have again cooled down and been left to the 

 operation of their attracting and repelling forces, will begin 

 anew the former process of world-forming. And if a single 

 planetary system has repeated more than once this play of 

 the process of decay and restoration by its inner mechanical 

 forces, the higher system to which it belongs may well 

 follow its example. 



The world of the spiritual life arises upon the basis of 

 nature, in her process of eternal self-rejuvenation, as she 

 describes her endless circle between the poles of the com- 

 position and the decomposition of her atoms, on the great 

 as on the small scale. The speculative imagination cannot 

 resist the temptation to draw the evolution of the spirit 

 likewise into the sphere of her universal poetic view of 

 the eternal process of the universe. For Kant there thus 

 already lie in the Natural Philosophy which springs from 

 the bosom of his mechanical cosmogony, the germs of 

 a Philosophy of History. With a few strokes he sketches 

 at least the outlines of a representation of the spiritual 

 world, which completes his philosophical view of nature, 

 by carrying it out to a comprehensive view of the world 

 as a whole. The sketch of this picture undoubtedly 

 bears the impress of the original spirit of Leibnitz, which 

 revived in the historical speculations of Lessing and Schiller; 

 yet in its colouring there are unmistakable Kantian features 

 which reappear especially in Schiller. 



We find nature and spirit on our earth in closest con- 

 nection; and it may be conjectured that this relation 

 between them is repeated through the whole universe. 



