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The assertion, however, that Kant's cosmogony was an anticipatory 'Meteoritic Hypothesis' lacks foundation. It is only true in the sense that his building materials were pulverulent, not 'fluid.' Laplace's primitive nebula was a coherent mass. It rotated as a whole; it divided only under considerable strain; its separated parts had individual unity—they held together with, so to speak, a purpose of concentration. Kant's elemental matter, on the contrary, was a loose aggregate of independent particles, each pursuing its way, disturbed, indeed, by its neighbours, but essentially isolated from them. They were, in short, genuine Lucretian atoms, intended to stand for the irreducible minima of Nature. The chaos that they formed was in nowise a 'meteoritic plenum,' unless the phrase be emptied of all distinctive meaning. Meteorites, so far from being primordial units, have the show and semblance of advanced cosmical products. They raise special questions in chemistry, mineralogy, geology, and physics, claiming to be dealt with by experts in each branch. Before serving for explanatory purposes, in fact, they themselves need to be explained.