streaming from a centre should draw a body towards it. The impulse, if impulse it be, is all the other way. Nor shall we find less difficulty in conceiving a conflux of particles, incessantly flowing to a centre, and carrying down all bodies along with it, that centre also itself being in a state of rapid motion through absolute space; for, by what source is the stream fed, or what becomes of the accumulation? Add to which, that it seems to imply a contrariety of properties, to suppose an ethereal fluid to act, but not to resist; powerful enough to carry down bodies with great force towards a centre, yet, inconsistently with the nature of inert matter, powerless and perfectly yielding with respect to the motions which result from the projectile impulse. By calculations drawn from ancient notices of eclipses of the moon, we can prove that, if such a fluid exist at all, its resistance has had no sensible effect upon the moon's motion for two thousand five hundred years. The truth is, that, except this one circumstance of the variation of the attracting force at different distances agreeing with the variation of the spissitude, there is no reason whatever to support the hypothesis of an emanation; and, as it seems to me, almost insuperable reasons against it.

(*) II. Our second proposition is, that, whilst the possible laws of variation were infinite, the admissible laws, or the laws compatible with the preservation of the system, lie within narrow limits. If the attracting force had varied according to any direct law of the distance, let it have been what it would, great destruction and confusion would have taken place. The direct simple proportion of the distance would, it is true, have produced an ellipse: but the perturbing forces would have acted with so much advantage, as to be continually changing the dimensions of the ellipse, in a manner inconsistent with our terrestrial creation. For instance: if the planet Saturn, so large and so remote, had attracted the earth, both in proportion to the quantity of matter contained in it, which it does; and also in any proportion to its distance, i. e. if it had pulled the harder for being the farther off (instead of the reverse of it), it would have dragged out of its course the globe which we inhabit, and have perplexed its motions, to a degree incompatible with our security, our enjoyments, and probably our existence. Of the inverse laws, if the centripetal force had changed as the cube of distance, or in any higher proportion, that is (for I speak to the unlearned), if, at double the distance, the attractive force had been diminished to an eighth part, or to less than that, the consequence would have been, that the planets, if they once began to approach the sun, would have fallen into his body; if they once, though by ever so little, increased their distance from the centre, would for ever have receded from it. The laws therefore of attraction, by which a system of revolving bodies could be upholden in their motions, lie within narrow limits, compared with the possible laws. I much under-rate the restriction, when I say that, in a scale of a mile, they are confined to an inch. All direct ratios of the distance are excluded, on account of danger from perturbing forces: all reciprocal ratios, except what lie beneath the cube of the distance, by the demonstrable consequence, that every the least change of distance would, under the operation of such laws, have been fatal to the repose and order of the system. We do not know, that is, we seldom reflect, how interested we are in this matter. Small irregularities may be endured; but, changes within these limits being allowed for, the permanency of our ellipse is a question of life and death to our whole sensitive world.

(*) III. That the subsisting law of attraction falls within the limits which utility requires, when these limits bear so small a proportion to the range of possibilities upon which chance might equally have cast it, is not, with any appearance of reason, to be accounted for, by any other cause than a regulation proceeding from a designing mind. But our next proposition carries the matter somewhat farther. We say, in the third place, that, out of the different laws which lie within the limits of admissible laws, the best is made choice of; that there are advantages in this particular law which cannot be demonstrated to belong to any other law; and concerning some of which, it can be demonstrated that they do not belong to any other.

(*) 1. Whilst this law prevails between each particle of matter, the united attraction of a sphere composed of that matter, observes the same law. This property of the law is necessary, to render it applicable to a system composed of spheres, but it is a property which belongs to no other law of attraction that is admissible. The law of variation of the united

attraction is in no other case the same as the law of attraction of each particle, one case excepted, and that is of the attraction varying directly as the distance; the inconveniency of which law, in other respects, we have already noticed.

We may follow this regulation somewhat further, and still more strikingly perceive that it proceeded from a designing mind. A law both admissible and convenient was requisite. In what way is the law of the attracting globes obtained? Astronomical observations and terrestrial experiments shew that the attraction of the globes of the system is made up of the attraction of their parts; the attraction of each globe being compounded of the attractions of its parts*. Now the admissible and convenient law which exists, could not be obtained in a system of bodies gravitating by the united gravitation of their parts, unless each particle of matter were attracted by a force varying by one particular law, viz. varying inversely as the square of the distance: for, if the action of the particles be according to any other law whatever, the admissible and convenient law, which is adopted, could not be obtained. Here then are clearly shewn regulation and design. A law both admissible and convenient was to be obtained; the mode chosen for obtaining that law was by making each particle of matter act. After this choice was made, then farther attention was to be given to each particle of matter, and one, and one only particular law of action to be assigned to it. No other law would have answered the purpose intended.

(*) 2. All systems must be liable to perturbations. And therefore, to guard against these perturbations, or rather to guard against their running to destructive lengths, is perhaps the strongest evidence of care and foresight that can be given. Now, we are able to demonstrate of our law of attraction, what can be demonstrated of no other, and what qualifies the dangers which arise from cross but unavoidable influences; that the action of the parts of our system upon one another, will not cause permanently increasing irregularities, but merely periodical or vibratory ones; that is, they will come to a limit, and then go back again. This we can demonstrate only of a system, in which the following properties concur, viz. that the force shall be inversely as the square of the distance; the masses of the revolving bodies small, compared with that of the body at the centre; the orbits not much inclined to one another; and their eccentricity little. In such a system, the grand points are secure. The mean distances and periodic times, upon which depend our temperature, and the regularity of our year, are constant. The eccentricities, it is true, will still vary; but so slowly, and to so small an extent, as to produce no inconveniency from fluctuation of temperature and season. The same as to the obliquity of the planes of the orbits. For instance, the inclination of the ecliptic to the equator will never change above two degress (out of ninety), and that will require many thousand years in performing.

It has been rightly also remarked, that, if the great planets, Jupiter and Saturn, had moved in lower spheres, their influences would have had much more effect as to disturbing the planetary motions, than they now have. While they revolve at so great distances from the rest, they act almost equally on the sun and on the inferior planets; which has nearly the same consequence as not acting at all upon either.

If it be said, that the planets might have been sent round the sun in exact circles, in which case, no change of distance from the centre taking place, the law of variation of the attracting power would have never come in question, one law would have served as well as another; an answer to the scheme may be drawn from the consideration of these same perturbing forces. The system retaining in other respects its present constitution, though the planets had been at first sent round in exact circular orbits, they could not have kept them: and if the law of attraction had not been what it is, or, at least, if the prevailing law had transgressed the limits above assigned, every evagation would have been fatal: the planet once drawn, as drawn it necessarily must have been, out of its course, would have wandered in endless error.

• This universal influence of attraction has been poetically alluded to by Rogers. In some of his stanzas he says-
The very law which moulds a tear,
And bids it trickle from its source,
That law preserves the earth a sphere,
And guides the planets in their course.

(*) V. What we have seen in the law of the centripetal force, viz. a choice guided by views of utility, and a choice of one law out of thousands which might equally have taken place, we see no less in the figures of the planetary orbits. It was not enough to fix the law of the centripetal force, though by the wisest choice; for, even under that law, it was still competent to the planets to have moved in paths possessing so great a degree of eccentricity, as, in the course of every revolution, to be brought very near to the sun, and carried away to immense distances from him. The comets actually move in orbits of this sort: and, had the planets done so, instead of going round in orbits nearly circular, the change from one extremity of temperature to another must, in ours at least, have destroyed every animal and plant upon its surface. Now, the distance from the centre at which a planet sets off, and the absolute force of attraction at that distance, being fixed, the figure of its orbit, its being a circle, or nearer to, or farther off from a circle, viz. a rounder or a longer oval, depends upon two things, the velocity with which, and the direction in which, the planet is projected. And these, in order to produce a right result, must be both brought within certain narrow limits. One, and only one, velocity, united with one, and only one, direction, will produce a perfect circle. And the velocity must be near to this velocity, and the direction also near to this direction, to produce orbits, such as the planetary orbits are, nearly circular; that is, ellipses with small eccentricities. The velocity and the direction must both be right. If the velocity be wrong, no direction will cure the error; if the direction be in any considerable degree oblique, no velocity will produce the orbit required. Take, for example, the attraction of gravity at the surface of the earth. The force of that attraction being what it is, out of all the degrees of velocity, swift and slow, with which a ball might be shot off, none would answer the purpose of which we are speaking, but what was nearly that of five miles in a second. If it were less than that, the body would not get round at all, but would come to the ground; if it were in any considerable degree more than that, the body would take one of those eccentric courses, those long ellipses, of which we have noticed the inconveniency. If the velocity reached the rate of seven miles in a second, or went beyond that, the ball would fly off from the earth, and never be heard of more. In like manner with respect to the direction; out of the innumerable angles in which the ball might be sent off (I mean angles formed with a line drawn to the centre), none would serve but what was nearly a right one: out of the various directions in which the cannon might be pointed, upwards and downwards, every one would fail, but what was exactly or nearly horizontal. The same thing holds true of the planets of our own amongst the rest. We are entitled therefore to ask, and to urge the question, Why did the projectile velocity and projectile direction of the earth happen to be nearly those which would retain it in a circular form? Why not one of the infinite number of velocities, one of the infinite number of directions, which would have made it approach much nearer to, or recede much farther from, the sun?

The planets going round all in the same direction, and all nearly in the same plane, afforded to Buffon a ground for asserting, that they had all been shivered from the sun by the same stroke of a comet, and by that stroke projected into their present orbits. Now, beside that this is to attribute to chance the fortunate concurrence of velocity and direction which we have been here noticing, the hypothesis, as I apprehend, is inconsistent with the physical laws by which the heavenly motions are governed. If the planets were struck off from the surface of the sun, they would return to the surface of the sun again. Nor will this difficulty be got rid of, by supposing that the same violent blow which shattered the sun's surface, and separated large fragments from it, pushed the sun himself out of his place; for, the consequence of this would be, that the sun and system of shattered fragments would have a progressive motion, which, indeed, may possibly be the case with our system; but then each fragment would, in every revolution, return to the surface of the sun again. The hypothesis is also contradicted by the vast difference which subsists between the diameters of the planetary orbits. The distance of Saturn from the sun (to say nothing of the Georgium Sidus) is nearly five-and-twenty times that of Mercury; a disparity, which it seems impossible to reconcile with Buffon's scheme. Bodies starting from the same place, with whatever difference or direction or velocity they set off, could not have been found at these different

distances from the centre, still retaining their nearly circular orbits. They must have been carried to their proper distances, before they were projected.

To conclude: in astronomy, the great thing is to raise the imagination to the subject, and that oftentimes in opposition to the impression made upon the senses. An illusion, for example, must be gotten over, arising from the distance at which we view the heavenly bodies, viz. the apparent slowness of their motions. The moon shall take some hours in getting half a yard from a star which it touched. A motion so deliberate we may think easily guided. But what is the fact? The moon, in fact, is, all this while, driving through the heavens, at the rate of considerably more than two thousand miles in an hour; which is more than double of that with which a ball is shot off from the mouth of a cannon. Yet is this prodigious rapidity as much under government, as if the planet proceeded ever so slowly, or were conducted in its course inch by inch. It is also difficult to bring the imagination to conceive (what yet, to judge tolerably of the matter, it is necessary to conceive) how loose, if we may so express it, the heavenly bodies are. Enormous globes, held by nothing, confined by nothing, are turned into free and boundless space, each to seek its course by the virtue of an invisible principle; but a principle, one, common, and the same in all; and ascertainable. To preserve such bodies from being lost, from running together in heaps, from hindering and distracting one another's motions, in a degree inconsistent with any continuing order; i. e. to cause them to form planetary systems, systems that, when formed, can be upheld, and most especially, systems accommodated to the organized and sensitive natures, which the planets sustain, as we know to be the case, where alone we can know what the case is, upon our earth: all this requires an intelligent interposition, because it can be demonstrated concerning it, that it requires an adjustment of force, distance, direction, and velocity, out of the reach of chance to have produced; an adjustment, in its view to utility, similar to that which we see in ten thousand subjects of nature which are nearer to us; but in power, and in the extent of space through which that power is exerted, stupendous.

But many of the heavenly bodies, as the sun and fixed stars, are stationary. Their rest must be the effect of an absence or of an equilibrium of attractions. It proves also, that a projectile impulse was originally given to some of the heavenly bodies, and not to others. But farther; if attraction act at all distances, there can only be one quiescent centre of gravity in the universe: and all bodies whatever must be approaching this centre, or revolving round it. According to the first of these suppositions, if the duration of the world had been long enough to allow of it, all its parts, all the great bodies of which it is composed, must have been gathered together in a heap round this point. No changes, however, which have been observed, afford us the smallest reason for believing, that either the one supposition or the other is true; and then it will follow, that attraction itself is controlled or suspended by a superior agent that there is a power above the highest of the powers of material nature: a will, which restrains and circumscribes the operations of the most extensive*.

It must bere, however, be stated, that many astronomers deny that any of the heavenly bodies are absolutely stationary. Some of the brightest of the fixed stars have certainly small motions; and of the rest the distance is too great, and the intervals of our observation too short, to enable us to pronounce with certainty that they may not have the same. The motions in the fixed stars which have been observed, are considered either as proper to each of them, or as compounded of the motion of our system, and of motions proper to each star. By a comparison of these motions, a motion in our system is supposed to be discovered. By continuing this analogy to other, and to all systems, it is possible to suppose that attraction is unlimited, and that the whole material universe is revolving round some fixed point within its containing sphere or

space.

The progress of astronomical discoveries since Paley's time, has not weakened the force of any of his conclusions; other and more distant stars, suns, satellites, and systems have been explored by improved instruments, but amid all the difficulties necessarily attendant upon such a distant view, the

conviction of the divine order, the regularity, and the contriving adaptation of the means to the end, still forces itself upon the mind of the astronomer.

"In turning, says Professsor Whewell, to the satellites of the other planets of our System, there is one fact which immediately arrests our attention; the number of such attendant bodies appears to increase as we proceed to planets farther and farther from the sun. Such at least is the general rule. Mercury and Venus, the planets nearest the sun, have no such attendants, the Earth has one. Mars indeed, who is still farther removed, has none; nor have the minor planets, Juno, Vesta, Ceres, Pallas, so that the rule only is approximately verified. But Jupiter, who is at five times the Earth's distance, has four satellites; and Saturn, who is again at a distance nearly twice as great, has seven, besides that most extraordinary phenomenon, his ring, which, for the purposes of illumination, is equivalent to many thousand satellites. Of Uranus, it is difficult to speak, for his great distance renders it almost impossible to observe the smaller circumstances of his condition. It does not appear at all probable that he has a ring like

CHAPTER XXIII.

OF THE PERSONALITY OF THE DEITY.

CONTRIVANCE, if established, appears to me to prove every thing which we wish to prove. Amongst other things, it proves the personality of the Deity, as distinguished from what is sometimes called nature, sometimes called a principle: which terms, in the mouths of those who use them philosophically, seem to be intended, to admit and to express an efficacy, but to exclude and to deny a personal agent. Now that which can contrive, which can design,