52 ONTOLOGY. 



the peculiar excited gravity into a (/lobe. This globe 

 continues to rotate, as it did when under the conditions of 

 orbitar ring, of hollow globe and as aether ; i. e. it pursues 

 a course around the sun. The peripheric globe travels 

 necessarily in the same plane in which the sun rotates. 

 This is therefore called the zodiac. This globe rotates 

 also around its own axis and virtually in the same direc- 

 tion, according to which it performs its course or the 

 sun rotates. A globe coursing and rotating around the 

 sun in its equatorial plane and in its direction is called 

 planet. 



"225. At the first aggregation of the mass of the 

 planetary ring into a planetary globe, the latter was 

 still very much extended, the earth extending beyond the 

 moon. The mass was thus gaseous. What happened in 

 the great globe of aether, of which the sun has become 

 the centre, happens also here. An opposition of centre 

 to periphery again originates ; and a subordinate sun and 

 new orbitar rings are formed. If the mass of the plane- 

 tary equatorial rinj be only small and consequently rare, 

 it rolls into a globe and together with this into moons. 



226. If it be much, consequently so dense, that it 

 coheres, it remains stationary, and is Saturn s ring. 



227. This is the genesis of the planetary system, but 

 everything has become, and remained as it became, at 

 one stroke. The moon can never have existed as an 

 orbitar ring around the earth in time, or else it had been 

 solid. Being once solid, it can no more coagulate into a 

 globe. Still less, however, have the planets originated 

 from conjoined moons. From whence then have the 

 moons come ? The solar system has not arisen mechani- 

 cally, but dynamically; it has not become what it is by 

 being projected or hurled from the hand of God, nor by 

 impulses and aberrations ; but by polarization according 

 to eternal laws, according to the laws of light. 



228. As a necessary number of planetary productions 

 exists, so also is their magnitude, distance and velocity 

 a determinate one. No planet, whatever its situation, 

 has attained that by chance. Were the earth larger, it 



