i88 3 .] 
of the Solar System. 
65 
The world of bodies and forms is in the enumeration of 
its proportions to be represented as a faCt, as existent and 
real, not as an object of intellectual conclusions, not of a 
connection discovered in its causes. No general law has 
been found here, neither for the celestial spaces, nor for the 
Earth in the site of culminating mountain-chains, or in the 
shape of continents. They are acts of Nature, born from 
the conflict of manifold conditions of projecting and attracting 
forces to us unknown. We step here with strained and un- 
satisfied curiosity in the unexplored empire of the becoming. 
— (Alexander von Humboldt.) 
As socially we strive for legality, so we presume it every- 
where in Nature. Kepler’s sagacity remarked that strange 
chasm between the planetary distances. Lagrange pro- 
claimed, with his authority as mathematician, that the 
density of planets increases with distance. Descartes had 
his theory of vortices; Newton’s views told with character- 
istic reserve ; Leibnitz, Franklin, and above all Laplace, 
formed their theory with more regard to Nature and Me- 
chanics; Kant, Oken failed by profusion of ideas. Every 
philosopher, mathematician or not, high or low, ancient or 
modern, has meditated about order in Nature. 
I have tried to trace these laws. I am no mathematician, 
not possessed with the analytical power of some to give to 
my thoughts that decisiveness of formulae, often ill-founded, 
nor with the philosophical profundity of others ; but re- 
fraining imagination, shaping my conclusions with the pre- 
caution of him who does not feel himself strong in the 
possession of knowledge, instrument, and reputation, I reach 
maybe at truth by logic. 
The probability of a central sun, bright or dark, has been 
suggested ; it is an explanation too eager for explaining. I 
deny this proposition. Indifferent how far we may recede 
with sun round sun, a central sun contradicts our concept of 
the immeasurable ; it is a beginning, a fixed point from 
which Archimedes might lift creation from its hinges ; it 
would be a centre, in the infinite there is none. The idea of 
the infinite and eternal is necessary, therefore true ; there is 
something of which we must confess, with Schiller, “ What 
the mind of the mindful cannot see, a childlike heart in its 
simplicity does find.” If we examine only what is nearer, 
we do not' know where we arrive, but we advance. 
We shall not meditate if our sun revolves round another 
sun, it cannot escape existing influences ; if it migrates from 
or to other systems which be the path of the individual be- 
tween individuals. It has not always been what it is; it 
