426 



tiling actually existing in nature ; and not as the subject of 

 intellectual deductions of previously known causal relations. 

 No universal law for the cosmical regions is here traced, any 

 more than for terrestrial regions in the culminating points of 

 mountain- chains, or in the configuration of continents. These 

 are natural facts which have resulted from the conflict of 

 numerous attractive and repulsive forces, under conditions 

 which are unknown to us. We l^ere enter with eager and 

 unsatisfied curiosity upon the obscure domain of incipient 

 formation. It is to these phenomena that the so-frequently 

 misused term of natural facts may be applied in its strictest 

 sense, cosmical processes which have taken place during spaces 

 of time of, to us, immeasurable extent. If the planets have 

 been formed from revolving rings of nebulous matter, it must, 

 after having commenced to aggregate into globes, according 

 to the preponderating influence of individual centres of attrac- 

 tion, have passed through an interminable series of conditions 

 in order to have formed sometimes simple, sometimes inter- 

 woven orbits, planets of such different magnitudes, flattening, 

 and density, with and without moons, and even in one case 

 to blend the satellites into a solid ring. The present form of 

 things, and the exact numerical determinations of their 

 relations, has not hitherto been able to lead us to a knowledge 

 of the past states, or a clear insight into the conditions under 

 which they originated. These conditions must not, however, 

 on that account be called accidental^ as men call everything 

 whose genetic organ they are not able to explain. 



3. Absolute and apparent magnitude; Configuration. The 

 diameter of the largest of all the planets (Jupiter) is 30 times 

 as great as the diameter of the smallest of those which have 

 been determined with certainty (Mercury); nearly 11 times 

 as great as the diameter of the Earth. Very nearly the same 

 relation obtains between Jupiter and the Sun. Their diame- 

 ters are nearly as 1 to 10. It has been asserted, perhaps 





