Page:On the connexion of the physical sciences (1834).djvu/33

Rh therefore day and night, summer and winter, will continue their vicissitudes while the system endures, or is undisturbed by foreign causes.

Yonder starry sphere Of planets, and of fixed, in all her wheels Resembles nearest mazes intricate, Eccentric, intervolved, yet regular, Then most, when most irregular they seem.

The stability of our system was established by La Grange: 'a discovery,' says Professor Playfair, that must render the name for ever memorable in science, and revered by those who delight in the contemplation of whatever is excellent and sublime.' After Newton's discovery of the mechanical laws of the elliptical orbits of the planets, La Grange's discovery of their periodical inequalities is, without doubt, the noblest truth in physical astronomy; and, in respect of the doctrine of final causes, it may be regarded as the greatest of all.

Notwithstanding the permanency of our system, the secular variations in the planetary orbits would have been extremely embarrassing to astronomers when it became necessary to compare observations separated by long periods. The difficulty was in part obviated, and the principle for accomplishing it established, by La Place; but it has since been extended by M. Poinsot; it appears that there exists an invariable plane passing through