the purpose of preventing contact among the atoms, and thus as made
in the ratio of the approach to contact--that is to say, in the ratio of
condensation.[7] In other words, _Electricity_, with its involute
phaenomena, heat, light and magnetism, is to be understood as proceeding
as condensation proceeds, and, of course, inversely as density proceeds,
or the _cessation to condense_. Thus the Sun, in the process of its
aggregation, must soon, in developing repulsion, have become excessively
heated--perhaps incandescent: and we can perceive how the operation of
discarding its rings must have been materially assisted by the slight
incrustation of its surface consequent on cooling. Any common experiment
shows us how readily a crust of the character suggested, is separated,
through heterogeneity, from the interior mass. But, on every successive
rejection of the crust, the new surface would appear incandescent as
before; and the period at which it would again become so far encrusted
as to be readily loosened and discharged, may well be imagined as
exactly coincident with that at which a new effort would be needed, by
the whole mass, to restore the equilibrium of its two forces,
disarranged through condensation. In other words:--by the time the
electric influence (Repulsion) has prepared the surface for rejection,
we are to understand that the gravitating influence (Attraction) is
precisely ready to reject it. Here, then, as everywhere, _the Body and
the Soul walk hand in hand_.

[7] See page 70.

These ideas are empirically confirmed at all points. Since condensation
can never, in any body, be considered as absolutely at an end, we are
warranted in anticipating that, whenever we have an opportunity of
testing the matter, we shall find indications of resident luminosity in
_all_ the stellar bodies--moons and planets as well as suns. That our
Moon is strongly self-luminous, we see at her every total eclipse, when,
if not so, she would disappear. On the dark part of the satellite, too,
during her phases, we often observe flashes like our own Auroras; and
that these latter, with our various other so-called electrical
phaenomena, without reference to any more steady radiance, must give our
Earth a certain appearance of luminosity to an inhabitant of the Moon,
is quite evident. In fact, we should regard all the phaenomena referred
to, as mere manifestations, in different moods and degrees, of the
Earth's feebly-continued conde