However great the probability of what I have advanced on the formation of the planets and their satellites may appear to me, yet, every man has his particular measurement, to estimate probabilities of this nature; and as this measurement depends on the strength of the understanding to combine more or less distant relations, I do not pretend to convince the incredulous. I have not only thought it my duty to offer these ideas, because they appear to me reasonable, and calculated to clear up a subject, on which, however important, nothing has hitherto been written, but because the impulsive motion in the planets enter at least as one half of the composition of the universe, which gravity alone cannot unfold. I shall only add the following questions to those who are inclined to deny the possibility of my system.
1. Is it not natural to imagine, that a body in motion has received that motion by the stroke of another body?
2. Is it not very probable, that when many bodies move in the same direction, that they have received this direction by one single stroke, or by many strokes directed in the same manner?
3. Is it not more probable that when many bodies have the same direction in their motion, and are placed in the same plane, that they received this direction and this position by one and the same stroke, rather than by a number?
4. At the time a body is put in motion by the force of impulsion, is it not probable that it receives it obliquely, and, consequently, is obliged to turn on its axis so much the quicker, as the obliquity of the stroke will have been greater? If these questions should not appear unreasonable, the theory, of which we have presented the outlines, will cease to appear an absurdity.
Let us now pass on to something which more nearly concerns us, and examine the figure of the earth, on which so many researches and such great observations have been made. The earth being, as it appears by the equality of its diurnal motion and the constancy of the inclination of its axis, composed of homogeneous parts, which attract each other in proportion to their quantity of matter, it would necessarily have taken the figure of a globe perfectly spherical, if the motion of impulsation had been given it in a perpendicular direction to the surface; but this stroke having been obliquely given, the earth turned on its axis at the moment it took its form; and from the combination of this impulsive force, the attraction of the parts, there has resulted a spheroid figure, more elevated under the great circle of rotation, and lower at the two extremities of the axis, and this because the action of the centrifugal force proceeding from the diurnal rotation must diminish the action of gravity. Thus, the earth being homogeneous, and having received a rotative motion, necessarily took a spheroidical figure, the two axes of which differ a 230th part from each other. This may be clearly demonstrated, and does not depend on any hypothesis whatever. The laws of gravity are perfectly known, and we cannot doubt that bodies attract each other in a direct ratio of their masses, and in an inverted ratio, at the squares of their distances; so likewise we cannot doubt, that the general action of any body is not composed of all the particular actions of its parts. Thus each part of matter mutually attracts in a direct ratio of its mass and an inverted ratio of its distance, and from all these attractions there results a sphere when there is no rotatory motion, and a spheroid when there is one. This spheroid is longer or shorter at the two extremities of the axis of rotation, in proportion to the velocity of its diurnal motion, and the earth has then, by virtue of its rotative velocity, and of the mutual attraction of all its parts, the figure of a spheroid, the two axes of which are as 229 to 230 to one another.