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Nevertheless, he owned to a community of ideas with Democritus as to the origin of the universe. Lucretius had cast over him the spell of his lofty diction, and captured his scientific adhesion by the stately imagery of his verse. With reservations, however. Docile discipleship was not in his line. He availed, then, of the Democritean atoms, but by no means admitted their concourse to be fortuitous. Chaos itself, as he conceived it, half concealed, half revealed the rough draft of a 'perfect plan.' His postulates were few. He demanded only a limitless waste of primordial matter, animated by no forces save those of gravitation and molecular repulsion, and undertook to produce from it a workable solar system. The attempt was no more than partially successful. Retrogressive investigations lead at the best to precarious results, and this one, in particular, was vitiated by a fundamental error of principle. Its author clearly perceived that planetary circulation must be the outcome of a vortical swirl in the nebulous matrix; but he failed to see that no interaction of its constituent particles could have set this swirl going.