It might be imagined that comets pass from one system to the other, and that if they happened to approach the confines of the two empires they would be attracted by the preponderating power, and forced to obey the laws of a new master. But, by the immensity of space which is beyond the aphelion of our comets, it appears that the Sovereign Ruler has separated each system by immense desarts, a thousand and a thousand times larger than all the extent of known spaces. These desarts, which numbers cannot fathom the depth of, are external and invincible barriers, that all the powers of created nature cannot surmount. To form a communication from one system to the other, and for the subjects of one to pass into the other, it would be requisite that the centre was not immoveable, for the sun, the head of the system, changing place, would draw with it in its course all the bodies which depend thereon, and hence might approach and invade another demesne. If its route were directed towards a weaker star, it would commence by carrying off the subjects of its most distant provinces, afterwards those more interior, and would oblige them all to increase its train by revolving round it; and its neighbour thus deprived of its subjects, no longer having planets nor comets, would lose both its light and fire, which their motion alone can excite and support; hence this detached star, being no longer maintained in its place by the equilibrium of its forces, would be obliged to change nutrition, by changing nature, and becoming an obscure body, would, like the rest, obey the power of the conqueror, whose fire would increase in proportion to the number of its conquests.