166 COSMICAL ARRANGEMENTS. 



the "ecliptic from no degrees to ninety degrees. 

 Mercury, which again deviates most widely, is 

 inclined 71 degrees, Venus 3|, Saturn 21, Jupiter 

 1J, Mars 2. How came it that their motions are 

 thus contained within such a narrow strip of the 

 sky ? One, or any number of them, might have 

 moved from east to west : none of them does 

 so. And these circumstances, which appear to 

 be, each in particular, requisite for the stability 

 of the system and the smallness of its disturb- 

 ances, are all found in combination. Does not 

 this imply both clear purpose and profound skill? 



It is difficult to convey an adequate notion of 

 the extreme complexity of the task thus executed. 

 A number of bodies, all attracting each other, 

 are to be projected in such a manner that their 

 revolutions shall be permanent and stable, their 

 mutual perturbations always small. If we return 

 to the basin with its rolling balls, by which we 

 before represented the solar system, we must 

 complicate with new conditions the trial of skill 

 which we supposed. The problem must now be 

 to project at once seven such balls, all connected 

 by strings which influence their movements, so 

 that each may hit its respective mark. And we 

 must further suppose, that the marks are to be 

 hit after many thousand revolutions of the balls. 

 No one will imagine that this could be done by 

 accident. 



In fact it is allowed by all those who have 



