226 COSMICAL ARRANGEMENTS. 



kind ; yet exerting an impulse on every material 

 body, permeating every portion of common 

 matter, flowing with inconceivable velocity, in 

 inexhaustible abundance, from every part of the 

 abyss of infinity on one side, to the opposite 

 part of the same abyss ; and so constituted that 

 through all eternity it can never bend its path, 

 or return, or tarry in its course. 



If we were to accept this theory, it would little 

 or nothing diminish our wonder at the structure 

 of the universe. We might well continue to 

 admire the evidence of contrivance, if such a 

 machinery should be found to produce all the 

 effects which flow from the law of gravitation. 



7. The law of the force of gravity, which we 

 have explained in the beginning of this chapter, 

 namely, that the attraction between all bodies 

 varies inversely as the square of their distance 

 from each other, has often been a subject of dis- 

 cussion, with reference to the reasons why it is 

 so rather than otherwise. The arguments for and 

 against the assertion that this is the necessary 

 and inevitable law of such a force, were can- 

 vassed with great animation about the middle of 

 the last century. 



Newton and other astronomers had found that 

 the line of the moon's apsides (that is of her 

 greatest and least distances from the earth) moves 

 round to different parts of the heavens with a 

 velocity twice as great as that which the calcu- 



