Note 21 — Chapter VIII

Humboldt, very justly, regards the force of analogy as tending in the opposite direction. "After all," he asks, (Cosmos, iii. 373,) "is the assumption of satellites to the Fixed Stars so absolutely necessary? If we were to begin from the outer planets, Jupiter, &c., analogy might seem to require that all planets have satellites. But yet this is not true for Mars, Venus, Mercury." To which we may further add the twenty-three Planetoids. In this case there is a much greater number of bodies which have not satellites, than which have them.