THE ASTRONOMY OF ATOMS. 387 



It is thus that in chemistry, which I would call the 

 astronomy of atoms, it is shown that bodies are only so far 

 decomposed as to admit of their recombination in new forms ; 

 the end of one is the beginning of another. 



Now, that which is true of the systems of the elementary 

 bodies composing terrestrial matter, is, in all probability, true 

 also why should it not be ? of the systems of the celestial 

 bodies. 



Differences of magnitude, of space, and of time, which over- 

 whelm our feeble imaginations, vanish before the unity of plan 

 of the Creator's thought. A crystalline molecule, which will 



further and further into the mysterious infinity of space. It is true enough 

 that these catastrophes are very distant, distant to a period of time which 

 the human imagination cannot even grasp, and the " common herd" will 

 certainly feel no anxious apprehension about an event which will not take 

 place until myriads of years have elapsed. 



Yet, in the last century, the question excited the curiosity of certain 

 scientific societies, and they directed the attention of the geometers to 

 these formidable perturbations. Euler and Lagrange spent their keen in- 

 tellects upon them to no profit. Laplace discovered that between the mean 

 velocities of Jupiter and Saturn the ratios are simple, and capable of calcu- 

 lation; five times the velocity of Saturn perceptibly equals ten times the 

 velocity of Jupiter. These terms, which, in the regularly-decreasing and 

 indefinite series, might have been neglected, have acquired a value which 

 was worthy of being taken into consideration. From thence result, in the 

 movements of the two planets, those perturbations whose complete develop- 

 ment necessitates a period of upwards of nine hundred years This 



will be, then, another periodic inequality. 



But, independently of the centres, which we suppose to be in themselves 

 variable, may there not exist, in the space traversed by our planet, some 

 cause of perturbation ? Is our system so isolated in the universe that it 

 neither receives nor loses aught of that which constitutes its force and mat- 

 ter ? Is there no solidarity between its different worlds ? And if this soli- 

 darity exists, is not their transformation a necessity? 



