Kant resembled his predecessor in his recognition of the bearing on moral and religious conceptions of the study of the heavens and also in his treatment of many astronomical details, sometimes merely adopting, more frequently developing or modifying, the teachings of Wright. He held that the stars constitute a system just as much as do the planets of our solar system, and that other solar systems and other Milky Ways may have been produced in the boundless fields of space. Indeed, he is inclined to identify with the latter systems the small luminous elliptical areas in the heavens reported by Maupertuis in 1742. Kant also accepted Wright's conjecture of a central sun or globe and even made selection of one of the stars to serve in that office, and taught that the stars consist like our sun of a fiery mass. One cannot contemplate the world-structure without recognizing the excellent orderliness of its arrangement, and perceiving the sure indications of the hand of God in the completeness of its relations. Reason, he says in the _Allgemeine Naturgeschichte_, refuses to believe it the work of chance. It must have been planned by supreme wisdom and carried into effect by Omnipotence. Kant was especially stimulated by the analogy between the Milky Way and the rings of Saturn. He did not agree with Wright that they, or the cloudy areas, would prove to be stars or small satellites, but rather that both consisted of vapor particles. Giving full scope to his imagination, he asks if the earth as well as Saturn may not have been surrounded by a ring. Might not this ring explain the supercelestial waters that gave such cause for ingenuity to the medieval writers? Not only so, but, had such a vaporous ring broken and been precipitated to the earth, it would have caused a prolonged Deluge, and the subsequent rainbow in the heavens might very well have been interpreted as an allusion to the vanished ring, and as a promise. This, however, is not Kant's characteristic manner in supporting moral and religious truth. To account for the origin of the solar system, the German philosopher assumes that at the beginning of all things the material of which the sun, planets, satellites, and comets consist, was uncompounded, in its primary elements, and filled the whole space in which the bodies formed out of it now revolve. This state of nature seemed to be the very simplest that could follow upon nothing. In a space filled in this way a state of rest could not last for more than a moment. The elements of a denser kind would, according to the law of gravitation, attract matter of less specific gravity. Repulsion, as well as attraction, plays a part among the particles of matter disseminated in space. Through it the direct fall of particles may be diverted into a circular movement about the center toward which they are gravitating.