168 COSMICAL ARRANGEMENTS. 



an original adjustment of the system on which 

 these laws are to act ; a selection of the arbitrary 

 quantities which they are to involve ; a primitive 

 cause which shall dispose the elements in due 

 relation to each other ; in order that regular 

 recurrence may accompany constant change ; 

 that perpetual motion may be combined with 

 perpetual stability ; that derangements which go 

 on increasing for thousands or for millions of 

 years may finally cure themselves ; and that the 

 same laws which lead the planets slightly aside 

 from their paths, may narrowly limit their de- 

 viations, and bring them back from their almost 

 imperceptible wanderings. 



If a man does not deny that any possible 

 peculiarity in the disposition of the planets with 

 regard to the sun could afford evidence of a con- 

 trolling and ordering purpose, it seems difficult 

 to imagine how he could look for evidence stronger 

 than that which there actually is. Of all the in- 

 numerable possible cases of systems, governed by 

 the existing laws of force and motion, that one is 

 selected which alone produces such a steadfast pe- 

 riodicity, such aconstant average of circumstances, 

 as are, so far as we can conceive, necessary condi- 

 tions for the existence of organic and sentient life. 

 And this selection is so far from being an obvious 

 or easily discovered means to this end, that the 

 most profound and attentive consideration of the 

 properties of space and number, with all the 



