This argument is urged with great force by Newton himself. In his first letter to Bentley, he allows that matter might form itself into masses by the force of attraction. “And thus,” says he, “might the sun and fixed stars be formed, supposing the matter were of a lucid nature. But how the matter should divide itself into two sorts; and that part of it which is fit to compose a shining body should fall down into one mass, and make a sun; and the rest, which is fit to compose an opaque body, should coalesce, not into one great body, like the shining matter, but into many little ones; or if the sun at first were an opake body like the planets, or the planets lucid bodies like the sun, how he alone should be changed into a shining body, whilst all they continue opake; or all they be changed into opake ones, while he continued unchanged: I do not think explicable by mere natural causes, but am forced to ascribe it to the counsel and contrivance of a voluntary Agent.” CHAPTER V. _The Satellites._ 1. A person of ordinary feelings, who, on a fine moonlight night, sees our satellite pouring her mild radiance on field and town, path and moor, will probably not only be disposed to “bless the useful light,” but also to believe that it was “ordained” for that purpose;--that the lesser light was made to rule the night as certainly as the greater light was made to rule the day. Laplace, however, does not assent to this belief. He observes, that “some partisans of final causes have imagined that the moon was given to the earth to afford light during the night:” but he remarks that this cannot be so, for that we are often deprived at the same time of the light of the sun and the moon; and he points out how the moon might have been placed so as to be always “full.” That the light of the moon affords, _to a certain extent_, a supplement to the light of the sun, will hardly be denied. If we take man in a condition in which he uses artificial light scantily only, or not at all, there can be no doubt that the moonlight nights are for him a very important addition to the time of daylight. And as a small proportion only of the whole number of nights are without some portion of moonlight, the fact that sometimes both luminaries are invisible very little diminishes the value of this advantage. Why we have not more moonlight, either in duration or in quantity, is an inquiry which a philosopher could hardly be tempted to enter upon, by any success which has attended previous speculations of a similar nature. Why should not the moon be ten times as large as she is? Why should not the pupil of man’s eye be ten times as large as it is, so as to receive more of the light which does arrive? We do not conceive that our inability to answer the latter question prevents our knowing that the eye was made for seeing: nor does our inability to answer the former, disturb our persuasion that the moon was made to give light upon the earth.