but it does not at all follow that the motion of the rotation
of the planets should be in the same direction.
Thus the earth should rotate from east to west, but
nevertheless the absolute movement of its molecules
should be from east to west; and this ought also to
apply to the movement of the revolution of the satellites,
in which the direction, according to the hypothesis
which he offers, is not necessarily the same as that
of the progressive movement of the planets.

"A phenomenon not only very difficult to explain
under this hypothesis, but one which is even contrary
to it, is the slight eccentricity of the planetary orbits.
We know, by the theory of central forces, that if a body
moves in a closed orbit around the sun and touches it,
it also always comes back to that point at every revolution;
whence it follows that if the planets were originally
detached from the sun, they would touch it at
each return towards it, and their orbits, far from being
circular, would be very eccentric. It is true that a mass
of matter driven from the sun cannot be exactly compared
to a globe which touches its surface, for the impulse
which the particles of this mass receive from one
another and the reciprocal attractions which they exert
among themselves, could, in changing the direction
of their movements, remove their perihelions from the
sun; but their orbits would be always most eccentric,
or at least they would not have slight eccentricities
except by the most extraordinary chance. Thus we
cannot see, according to the hypothesis of Buffon,