

PROGRESS OF MODERN ASTRONOMY 



the imaginative philosopher conceived the world to 

 have come into existence. 



"I assume," says Kant, "that all the material of 

 which the globes belonging to our solar system all 

 the planets and comets consist, at the beginning of 

 all things was decomposed into its primary elements, 

 and filled the whole space of the universe in which the 

 bodies formed out of it now revolve. This state of 

 nature, when viewed in and by itself without any ref- 

 erence to a system, seems to be the very simplest that 

 can follow upon nothing. At that time nothing has 

 yet been formed. The construction of heavenly bod- 

 ies at a distance from one another, their distances reg- 

 ulated by their attraction, their form arising out of the 

 equilibrium of their collected matter, exhibit a later 

 state. ... In a region of space filled in this manner, a 

 universal repose could last only a moment. The ele- 

 ments have essential forces with which to put each 

 other in motion, and thus are themselves a source of 

 life. Matter immediately begins to strive to fashion 

 itself. The scattered elements of a denser kind, by 

 means of their attraction, gather from a sphere around 

 them all the matter of less specific gravity ; again, these 

 elements themselves, together with the material which 

 they have united with them, collect in those points 

 where the particles of a still denser kind are found; 

 these in like manner join still denser particles, and so 

 on. If we follow in imagination this process by which 

 nature fashions itself into form through the whole ex- 

 tent of chaos, we easily perceive that all the results of 

 process would consist in the formation of divers 

 ses which, when their formation was complete, 



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