With respect to the zodiacal light, that rock against which so many reveries have been wrecked, it consists of the most volatile parts of the primitive nebula.  These molecules not having united with the equatorial zones successively abandoned in the plane of the solar equator, continued to revolve at their original distances, and with their original velocities.  The circumstance of this extremely rare substance being included wholly within the earth’s orbit, and even within that of Venus, seemed irreconcilable with the principles of mechanics; but this difficulty occurred only when the zodiacal substance being conceived to be in a state of direct and intimate dependence on the solar photosphere properly so called, an angular movement of rotation was impressed on it equal to that of the photosphere, a movement in virtue of which it effected an entire revolution in twenty-five days and a half.  Laplace presented his conjectures on the formation of the solar system with the diffidence inspired by a result which was not founded upon calculation and observation.[39] Perhaps it is to be regretted that they did not receive a more complete development, especially in so far as concerns the division of the matter into distinct rings; perhaps it would have been desirable if the illustrious author had expressed himself more fully respecting the primitive physical condition, the molecular condition of the nebula at the expense of which the sun, planets, and satellites, of our system were formed.  It is perhaps especially to be regretted that Laplace should have only briefly alluded to what he considered the obvious possibility of movements of revolution having their origin in the action of simple attractive forces, and to other questions of a similar nature.

Notwithstanding these defects, the ideas of the author of the Mecanique Celeste are still the only speculations of the kind which, by their magnitude, their coherence, and their mathematical character, may be justly considered as forming a physical cosmogony; those alone which in the present day derive a powerful support from the results of the recent researches of astronomers on the nebulae of every form and magnitude, which are scattered throughout the celestial vault.

In this analysis, we have deemed it right to concentrate all our attention upon the Mecanique Celeste.  The Systeme du Monde and the Theorie Analytique des Probabilites would also require detailed notices.

The Exposition du Systeme du Monde is the Mecanique Celeste divested of the great apparatus of analytical formulae which ought to be attentively perused by every astronomer who, to use an expression of Plato, is desirous of knowing the numbers which govern the physical universe.  It is in the Exposition du Systeme du Monde that persons unacquainted with mathematical studies will obtain an exact and competent knowledge of the methods to which physical astronomy is indebted for its astonishing progress.  This work, written with a noble simplicity of style, an exquisite propriety of expression, and a scrupulous accuracy, is terminated by a sketch of the history of astronomy, universally ranked in the present day among the finest monuments of the French language.