Cosmos, Vol. 4

(Pages 4, 18, 21–25, 594, and 626), through the exclusion of everything perceptible, it presents a diversity of matter; it offers the solution to the great problem of a celestial mechanics original: "Himmels-Mechanik", which subjects everything changeable in the uranological The study of the heavens or astronomical phenomena. sphere to the sole dominion of the laws of motion.

Periodic changes of light phenomena on the surface of Mars certainly point toward meteorological processes, depending on the diversity of the seasons there, and toward polar precipitation caused by cold in the atmosphere of that planet (Cosmos Vol. III. p. 513). Guided by analogies and the association of ideas, we may here conclude the presence of ice or snow (oxygen and hydrogen), just as we might infer a diversity of rock types in the eruptive masses of the Moon or its flat ring-plains; however, direct observation cannot instruct us on this matter. Even Newton only allowed himself conjectures regarding the elementary constitution of the planets belonging to the same solar region: as we hear in an important conversation held at Kensington with Conduit John Conduitt, Newton's nephew-in-law, who recorded many of his private thoughts. (Cosmos Vol. I. pp. 137 and 407). The uniform image of gravitationally bound matter, identical in substance and balled into celestial bodies, occupies the intuitive imagination of man in manifold ways; indeed, myth even lends the magic of sound to the silent wasteland of outer space (Cosmos Vol. III. pp. 437–439 and 477) A reference to the "Music of the Spheres," an ancient philosophical concept regarding the proportions of celestial bodies..

In the infinite richness of chemically diverse substances and the interplay of their manifestations of force; in the creative, form-giving activity of all organic nature and many inorganic substances; in the matter—