ss and void." It pictures the condensation--coagulation, if
you will--of portions of this mass to form segregated masses, and the
ultimate development out of these masses of the sidereal bodies that we
see.

Perhaps the first elaborate exposition of this idea was that given by
the great German philosopher Immanuel Kant (born at Konigsberg in 1724,
died in 1804), known to every one as the author of the Critique of Pure
Reason. Let us learn from his own words how the imaginative philosopher
conceived the world to have come into existence.

"I assume," says Kant, "that all the material of which the globes
belonging to our solar system--all the planets and comets--consist, at
the beginning of all things was decomposed into its primary elements,
and filled the whole space of the universe in which the bodies formed
out of it now revolve. This state of nature, when viewed in and by
itself without any reference to a system, seems to be the very simplest
that can follow upon nothing. At that time nothing has yet been formed.
The construction of heavenly bodies at a distance from one another,
their distances regulated by their attraction, their form arising out of
the equilibrium of their collected matter, exhibit a later state.... In
a region of space filled in this manner, a universal repose could last
only a moment. The elements have essential forces with which to put
each other in motion, and thus are themselves a source of life. Matter
immediately begins to strive to fashion itself. The scattered elements
of a denser kind, by means of their attraction, gather from a sphere
around them all the matter of less specific gravity; again, these
elements themselves, together with the material which they have united
with them, collect in those points where the particles of a still denser
kind are found; these in like manner join still denser particles, and
so on. If we follow in imagination this process by which nature fashions
itself into form through the whole extent of chaos, we easily perceive
that all the results of the process would consist in the formation of
divers masses which, when their formation was complete, would by the
equality of their attraction be at rest and be forever unmoved.

"But nature has other forces in store which are specially exerted when
matter is decomposed into fine particles. They are those forces by which
these particles repel one another, and which, by their conflict with
attractions, bring forth