153 
his valuable Essays on the Existence of the Deity, 
&c. and a Future State. 
‘La Place ascribes [the assumed uniformity of 
the directions of the primary and secondary pla- 
nets in their orbits | to the influence of a revolving 
fluid, determined, it would seem, rather than admit 
an Intelligent Cause, to adopt a gratuitous, an un- 
satisfactory, and, as Vince has shewn, an untenable 
hypothesis. La Place assumes that all the motions 
are direct, whereas those of the satellites of Herschel 
are retrograde, and nearly perpendicular. Vince cor- 
rects this error, and, adding the newly discovered 
primaries which La Place had omitted, calculates the 
probability that, supposing the revolutions to have 
resulted from chances, any one would be retrograde, 
as more than seventeen thousand millions to one.” 
The assumption of necessity, constant and irresistible 
as the governing cause, excludes in terms the possi- 
bility of such variation. ‘ We know that the orbits 
of the comets are extremely diversified, these bodies 
traversing the heavens in all points of the compass. 
These are facts manifestly irreconcilable with the 
existence of a revolving fluid. In these revolutions 
we have such regularity as to indicate an Intelligent 
Cause, combined with such deviations, though few 
in number, in the planetary motions, as to convince 
us, that this Cause does not act by a physical neces- 
sity, but is capable of producing order and harmony 
by different means*.” 
S See also Robinson’s Elements of PhysicalAstronomy, section 
736. to the end of vol. i. to the same effect. 
