way that we have been able to devise. All these tests have tended to confirm that law. The law is therefore believed to be true, at all events throughout the regions of space accessible to us and to our telescopes.
Assuming this law and the other principles analogous to it, we can apply them to the case of the revolution of the earth around the sun. As the earth is not moving in a straight line, it must be acted upon by some force. It can be shown that this force must be directed towards the sun. It will further appear that the intensity of this force will vary inversely as the square of the distance between the earth and the sun. The movements of the planets can be made to yield the same conclusions. All these movements can be accounted for on the supposition that each planet is attracted by the sun with a force which varies directly as the product of the masses, and inversely as the square of the distance between the two bodies. When more careful observations are introduced it is seen that the planets exhibit some slight deviations from the movements which they would have were each planet only acted upon by the attraction of the sun. These deviations do not invalidate the principle of attraction. They have been shown to arise from the mutual attractions of the planets themselves. Each of the planets is thus seen to attract each of the other planets. The intensity of this attraction between any pair of the planets is proportional to the masses of these planets and varies inversely as the square of the distance between them. We may use similar language with regard to the satellites by which so many of the planets are attended. Each satellite revolves around its primary. The movements of each satellite are mainly due to the preponderating attraction of the
