Taking the solar system altogether, the regularity of its structure is very remarkable. The diagram which represents the orbits of the planets might have consisted of a number of ovals, narrow and wide in all degrees, intersecting and interfering with each other in all directions. The diagram does consist, as all who have opened a book of astronomy know, of a set of figures which appear at first sight concentric circles, and which are very nearly so; no where approaching to any crossing or interfering, except in the case of the small planets, already noticed as irregular. No one, looking at this common diagram, can believe that the orbits were made to be so nearly circles by chance; any more than he can believe that a target, such as archers are accustomed to shoot at, was painted in concentric circles by the accidental dashes of a brush in the hands of a blind man. The regularity, then, of the solar system excludes the notion of accident in the arrangement of the orbits of the planets. There must have been an express adjustment to produce this circular character of the orbits. The velocity and direction of the motion of each planet must have been subject to some original regulation; or, as it is often expressed, the projectile force must have been accommodated to the centripetal force. This once done, the motion of each planet, taken by itself, would go on for ever, still retaining its circular character, by the laws of motion. If some original cause adjusted the orbits of the planets to their circular form and regular arrangement, we can hardly avoid including in our conception of this cause, the intention and will of a Creating Power. We shall consider this argument more fully in a succeeding chapter; only observing here, that the presiding Intelligence, which has selected and combined the properties of the organic creation, so that they correspond so remarkably with the arbitrary quantities of the system of the universe, may readily be conceived also to have selected the arbitrary velocity and direction of each planet’s motion, so that the adjustment should produce a close approximation to a circular motion.