In this enumeration of the forms which compose the world in space, we have delineated them as possessing an actual existence, and not as objects of intellectual contemplation, or as mere links of a mental and causal chain of connection. The planetary system, in its relations of absolute size and relative position of the axes, density, time of rotation, and different degrees of eccentricity of the orbits, does not appear to offer to our apprehension any stronger evidence of a natural necessity than the proportion observed in the distribution of land and water on the Earth, the configuration of continents, or the height of mountain chains. In these respects we can discover no common law in the regions of space or in the inequalities of the earth's crust. They are 'facts' in nature that have arisen from the conflict of manifold forces acting under unknown p 95 conditions, although man considers as 'accidental' whatever he is unable to explain in the planetary formation on purely genetic principles. If the planets have been formed out of separate rings of vaporous matter revolving round the Sun, we may conjecture that the different thickness, unequal density, temperature, and electro-magnetic tension of these rings may have given occasion to the most various agglomerations of matter, in the same manner as the amount of tangential velocity and small variations in its direction have produced so great a differencein the forms and inclinations of the elliptic orbits. Attractions of mass and laws of gravitation have no doubt exercised an influence here, no less than in the geognostic relations of the elevations of continents; but we are unable from the present forms to draw any conclusions regarding the series of conditions through which they have passed. Even the so-called law of the distances of the planets from the Sun, the law of progression (which led Kepler to conjecture the existence of a planet supplying the link that was wanting in the chain of connection between Mars and Jupiter), has been found numerically inexact for the distances between Mercury, Venus, and the Earth, and a variance with the conception of a series, owing to the necessity for a supposition in the case of the first member.