The two parts of the ring being placed at different distances from the planet, could not fail to experience from the action of the sun, different movements of rotation.  It would hence seem that the planes of both rings ought to be generally inclined towards each other, whereas they appear from observation always to coincide.  It was necessary then that some physical cause should exist which would be capable of neutralizing the action of the sun.  In a memoir published in February, 1789, Laplace found that this cause must reside in the ellipticity of Saturn produced by a rapid movement of rotation of the planet, a movement the existence of which Herschel announced in November, 1789.

The reader cannot fail to remark how, on certain occasions, the eyes of the mind can supply the want of the most powerful telescopes, and lead to astronomical discoveries of the highest importance.

Let us descend from the heavens upon the earth.  The discoveries of Laplace will appear not less important, not less worthy of his genius.

The phenomena of the tides, which an ancient philosopher designated in despair as the tomb of human curiosity, were connected by Laplace with an analytical theory in which the physical conditions of the question figure for the first time.  Accordingly calculators, to the immense advantage of the navigation of our maritime coasts, venture in the present day to predict several years in advance the details of the time and height of the full tides without more anxiety respecting the result than if the question related to the phases of an eclipse.

There exists between the different phenomena of the ebb and flow of the tides and the attractive forces which the sun and moon exercise upon the fluid sheet which covers three fourths of the globe, an intimate and necessary connection from which Laplace, by the aid of a series of twenty years of observations executed at Brest, deduced the value of the mass of our satellite.  Science knows in the present day that seventy-five moons would be necessary to form a weight equivalent to that of the terrestrial globe, and it is indebted for this result to an attentive and minute study of the oscillations of the ocean.  We know only one means of enhancing the admiration which every thoughtful mind will entertain for theories capable of leading to such conclusions.  An historical statement will supply it.  In the year 1631, the illustrious Galileo, as appears from his Dialogues, was so far from perceiving the mathematical relations from which Laplace deduced results so beautiful, so unequivocal, and so useful, that he taxed with frivolousness the vague idea which Kepler entertained of attributing to the moon’s attraction a certain share in the production of the diurnal and periodical movements of the waters of the ocean.