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22 C0SM0?5.Newton^ even distin.'tio-inagiietic, and organic processes.guished tlie attraction of tiuisses, as manifested in the motionof CGsmical bodies and in the phenomena of the tides,from tnolecular attraction, which acts at infinitely smalldistances and in the closest contact.Thus we see that among the various attempts which havebeen made to refer whatever is unstable in the sensuousworld to a single fundamental principle, the theory of gravitationis the most comprehensive and the richest in cosmica.1results. It is indeed true, that notwithstanding the brilliantprogress that has been made in recent times in stoBchiometry(the art of calculating with chemical elements andin the relations of volume of mixed gases),all the physicaltheories of matter have not yet been referred to mathematically-determinableprinciples of explanation. Empirical lawshave been recognized, and by means of the extensively- diffusedviews of the atomic or corpuscular philosophy, manypoints haA'e been rendered more accessible to mathematicalinvestigation but, owing to the unbounded heterogeneousnessof mattei and the manifold conditions of aggregation of;particles, the proofs of these empirical laws can not as yetby any means be developed from the theory of contact-attractionwith that certainty which characterizes the establishmentof Kepler's three great empirical laws derived fromthe theory of the attraction of masses or gravitation.At the time, however, that Newton recognized all movementsof the cosmical bodies to be the results of one and thesame force, he did not, like Kant, regard gravitation as anessential property of bodies,! but considered it either as the* Adjicere jamlicet de spirita quodam subtilissimo corpora crassapervadente et in iisdem lateiite, cujus vi et actionibus particular corporumad mitumas distanlias se mutuo altrahunt et coutiguoe facta coluerent.—Newton, Prlncipla Phil. Nat. (ed. Le Sueur et Jacquier, 1760),Scliol. gen., t. iii., p. G7G; compare also Newton's Optics (ed. 1718),Query 31, p. 305, 333, 3G7, 372. (Laplace, Syst. du Monde, p. 384, andCosmos, vol. i., p. 63 (note).)t Hactenus ph