i88z.] 
Origin of the Solar System. 
705 
the near than on the further side of each individual planet ; 
the effeCt of this, combined with their rotation, being to 
cause them to fly off at right angles to the attracting power, 
but still held by the attractive influence they were swung to 
the same plane, and rolled round the sun as a centre. 
If the whole had ended here, and the planets been desti- 
tute of the power to increase or diminish the sun’s attraction, 
the retarding influence of such attraction would have gra- 
dually overcome centrifugal force, and the planets would 
have been gently swept on to his surface, the whole matter 
of the Universe thus ultimately coalescing into one monster 
mass, which, being no longer aCted on by external matter, 
would have eventually returned to that void from which it 
sprang. But such was not the case ; each planet, as it was 
added to our system, increased the sun’s attraction, enabling 
him to stretch his influence still further out, and bring within 
his sway the more distant worlds. Attraction was increased, 
but so was motion ; the fight between attraction and cen- 
trifugal force began, the core of our huge dynamo-machine 
became covered with a brilliant shroud, and the Sun shone 
out in all his splendour, radiating his light in every direction, 
as it were in payment of the force expended to maintaim 
him in his glory. 
Along with these formations and arrangements of new 
worlds there were at the same time small bodies, which, at 
the balancing of the more important masses, were situated 
midway between two contending powers, one of which for a 
time got them within its influence. Their speed, at first 
slow, gradually went on increasing as they got nearer to the 
attracting body; and as they were almost destitute of centri- 
fugal force, owing to their having two centres of revolution, 
they appeared to be driving right on to the surface of the 
sun. Faster and faster they rushed along, until it almost 
seemed as if the puny masses were destined to overturn the 
equipoise of our system. But a sudden change took place ; 
the comets had reached the region of contending forces, 
attraction was immediately changed into repulsion, and they 
swept round their huge relation uninjured by his power. 
Out into space they went, throwing off their bright trappings 
as they neared their starting-points, there to set out on a new 
pilgrimage, through other systems and round other suns. 
The chief use of the comets in the celestial mechanism 
is to hold system unchangeably separated from system, so 
that the motion of the one shall not in any way interfere 
with the correCt working of the other. If some kind of stay 
had not been provided all would have been confusion ; system 
