Now is it probable that the occurrence of these conditions of stability in the disposition of the solar system is the work of chance? Such a supposition appears to be quite inadmissible. Any one of the orbits might have had any excentricity. In that of Mercury, where it is much the greatest, it is only one-fifth. How came it to pass that the orbits were not more elongated? A little more or a little less velocity in their original motions would have made them so. They might have had any inclination to

Mercury and Mars, which have much the largest excentricities among the old planets, are those of which the masses are much the smallest. The mass of Jupiter is more than 2000 times that of either of these planets. If the orbit of Jupiter were as excentric as that of Mercury is, all the security for the stability of the system, which analysis has yet pointed out, would disappear. The earth and the smaller planets might in that case change their approximately circular orbits into very long ellipses, and thus might fall into the sun, or fly off into remote space.

It is further remarkable that in the newly discovered planets, of which the orbits are still more excentric than that of Mercury, the masses are still smaller, so that the same provision is established in this case also. It does not appear that any mathematician has even attempted to point out a necessary connexion between the mass of a planet and excentricity of its orbit on any hypothesis. May we not then consider this combination of small masses with large excentricities, so important to the purposes of the world, as a mark of provident care in the Creator?

• The excentricity of a planet's orbit is measured by taking the proportion of the difference of the greatest and least distances from the sun, to the sum of the same distances. Mefcury's greatest and least distances are as 2 and 3; his excentricity therefore is one-fifth.

the ecliptic from no degrees to ninety degrees. Mercury, which again deviates most widely, is inclined 73 degrees, Venus 3, Saturn 24, Jupiter 11, Mars 2. How came it that their motions are thus contained within such a narrow strip of the sky? One, or any number of them, might have moved from east to west: none of them does So. And these circumstances, which appear to be, each in particular, requisite for the stability of the system and the smallness of its disturbances, are all found in combination. Does not this imply both clear purpose and profound skill?

It is difficult to convey an adequate notion of the extreme complexity of the task thus executed. A number of bodies, all attracting each other, are to be projected in such a manner that their revolutions shall be permanent and stable, their mutual perturbations always small. If we return to the basin with its rolling balls, by which we before represented the solar system, we must complicate with new conditions the trial of skill which we supposed. The problem must now be to project at once seven such balls, all connected by strings which influence their movements, so that each may hit its respective mark. And we must further suppose, that the marks are to be hit after many thousand revolutions of the balls. No one will imagine that this could be done by accident.

In fact it is allowed by all those who have

considered this subject, that such a coincidence of the existing state with the mechanical requisites of permanency cannot be accidental. Laplace

has attempted to calculate the probability that it is not the result of accident. He takes into account, in addition to the motions which we have mentioned, the revolutions of the satellites about their primaries, and of the sun and planets about their axes: and he finds that there is a probability, far higher than that which we have for the greater part of undoubted historical events, that these appearances are not the effect of chance. "We ought, therefore," he says, "to believe, with at least the same confidence, that a primitive cause has directed the planetary motions."

The solar system is thus, by the confession of all sides, completely different from anything which we might anticipate from the casual operation of its known laws. The laws of motion are no less obeyed to the letter in the most irregular than in the most regular motions; no less in the varied circuit of the ball which flies round a tennis court, than in the going of a clock; no less in the fantastical jets and leaps which breakers make when they burst, in a corner of a rocky shore, than in the steady swell of the open sea. The laws of motion alone will not produce the regularity which we admire in the motions of the heavenly bodies. There must be

an original adjustment of the system on which these laws are to act; a selection of the arbitrary quantities which they are to involve; a primitive cause which shall dispose the elements in due relation to each other; in order that regular recurrence may accompany constant change; that perpetual motion may be combined with perpetual stability; that derangements which go on increasing for thousands or for millions of years may finally cure themselves; and that the same laws which lead the planets slightly aside from their paths, may narrowly limit their deviations, and bring them back from their almost imperceptible wanderings.

If a man does not deny that any possible peculiarity in the disposition of the planets with regard to the sun could afford evidence of a controlling and ordering purpose, it seems difficult to imagine how he could look for evidence stronger than that which there actually is. Of all the innumerable possible cases of systems, governed by the existing laws of force and motion, that one is selected which alone produces such a steadfast periodicity, such a constant average of circumstances, as are, so far as we can conceive, necessary conditions for the existence of organic and sentient life. And this selection is so far from being an obvious or easily discovered means to this end, that the most profound and attentive consideration of the properties of space and number, with all the

appliances and aids we can obtain, are barely sufficient to enable us to see that the end is thus secured, and that it can be secured in no other way. Surely the obvious impression which arises from this view of the subject is, that the solar system, with its adjustments, is the work of an Intelligence, who perceives, as self-evident, those truths, to which we attain painfully and slowly, and after all imperfectly; who has employed in every part of creation refined contrivances, which we can only with effort understand; and who, in innumerable instances, exhibits to us what we should look upon as remarkable difficulties remarkably overcome, if it were not that, through the perfection of the provision, the trace of the difficulty is almost obliterated.

CHAPTER IV.

The Sun in the Centre.

THE next circumstance which we shall notice as indicative of design in the arrangement of the material portions of the solar system, is the position of the sun, the source of light and heat, in the centre of the system. This could hardly have occurred by any thing which we can call chance. Let it be granted, that the law of gravitation is established, and that we have a large