"If... our solar system had been composed of a greater number of planets concentrated into a less space, and nearly equal in mass; if their orbits had presented very different inclinations, and considerable eccentricities; if these bodies had been of a more complicated form, such as very eccentric ellipsoids... supposing the same law of gravitation to exist, we should not yet have succeeded in subjecting the... celestial phenomena to our mathematical analysis, and probably we should not even have been able to disentangle the present principal law."