106 COSMICAL AGENCY OF LIGHT. 



ample, it is obvious that if light obey the same laws 

 as other projectile bodies, a much larger proportion 

 of what is radiated from the sun would lose its 

 original force and velocity at the distance of Jupi- 

 ter, Saturn, and Uranus, than at that of any one 

 of the planets nearer to the sun ; so that a corre- 

 sponding amount of luminous matter would be 

 aggregated into comets, which may successively 

 fall into those great masses and their satellites, 

 in the same way that many thousand meteoric 

 stones, and showers of stones, have fallen from 

 unknown heights upon our planet, since the 

 historical era, a fact which clearly demonstrates 

 that the earth has been augmenting in size, inde- 

 pendently of the constant additions of matter it re- 

 ceives from the sun in the form of light. And as 

 it is equally evident that the tropical portion of 

 planets receives much greater quantities of light 

 from the sun than the middle and polar latitudes, 

 this fact affords a more satisfactory reason for 

 their equatorial protuberances than the prevalent 

 theory, which refers them to the rapid diurnal 

 motion of their equatorial zones. 



If the foregoing views be well founded, it fol- 

 lows that light, in connexion with caloric, which 

 is the active principle in its generation, and 

 always forms a constituent portion of it, is the 

 primitive basis of all material existence, or the 

 physical Ens entium consequently cannot be re- 

 solved into the mere vibrations of an setherial 



