Chapter II: Part II (2)

“In freely discussing the subject of a Plurality of Worlds,” says Sir David, “there can be no collision between Reason and Revelation.” He regrets the extravagant conclusion of some, that the inhabitants of all planets but our own, “are sinless and immortal beings that never broke the Divine Law, and enjoying that perfect felicity reserved for only a few of the less favoured occupants of earth. Thus chained to a planet, the lowest and most unfortunate in the universe, the philosopher, with all his analogies broken down, may justly renounce his faith in a Plurality of Worlds, and rejoice in the more limited but safer creed of the anti-Pluralist author, who makes the earth the only world in the universe, and the special object of God’s paternal care.”[52] He proceeds, in accordance with “men of lofty minds and undoubted piety,” to regard the existence of moral evil as a necessary part of the general scheme of the universe, and consequently affecting all its Rational Inhabitants.[53] He “rejects the idea that the inhabitants of the planets do not require a Saviour; and maintains the more rational opinion, that they stand in the same moral relation to their Maker as the inhabitants of the earth; and seeks for a solution of the difficulty—how can there be inhabitants in the planets, when God had but One Son, whom He could send to save them? If we can give a satisfactory answer to this question, it may destroy the objections of the Infidel, while it relieves the Christian from his difficulties.”[54]... “When our Saviour died, the influence of His death extended backward, in the Past, to millions who never heard His name; in the Future, to millions who never will hear it ... a Force which did not vary with any function of the distance.[55]... Emanating from the _middle_ planet of the system.”

——The _earth_ the _middle_ planet of the system? How is this? In an earlier portion of his book (p. 56), Sir David had demonstrated that “our earth is neither the _middle_ [his own italics] planet, nor the planet _nearest_ the sun, nor the planet furthest from that luminary: that therefore the earth, as a planet, has no pre-eminence in the solar system, to induce us to believe that it is the only inhabited world.... _Jupiter_ is the _middle_ planet (p. 55), and is otherwise highly distinguished!” How is this? Can the two passages containing such direct contradictions have emanated from the same _scientific_ controversialist?—To resume, however:

—“Emanating from the middle planet of the system, why may it not have _extended to them all_, ... to the Planetary Races in the Past, and to the Planetary Races in the Future?... But to bring our argument more within the reach of an ordinary understanding”—he supposes our earth split into two parts! the old world and the new (as Biela’s comet is supposed to have been divided in 1846), at the beginning of the Christian era![56]—“would not _both fragments_ have shared in the beneficence of the Cross—the penitent on the shores of the Mississippi, as richly as the pilgrim on the banks of the Jordan?... Should this view prove unsatisfactory to the anxious inquirer, we may suggest another sentiment, even though we ourselves may not admit it into our creed.... May not the Divine Nature, which can neither suffer, nor die, and which, in our planet, _once_ only clothed itself in humanity, _resume elsewhere a physical form, and expiate the guilt of unnumbered worlds_?”[57]

We repeat, that we abstain from offering any of the stern strictures which these passages almost extort from us.

He proceeds to declare himself incompetent to comprehend the Difficulty “put in a form so unintelligible” by the Essayist—that of a kind of existence, similar to that of men, in respect of their intellectual, moral, and spiritual character, and its _progressive_ development, existing in any region occupied by other beings than man. He denies that Progression has been the character of the history of man,[58] but rather frequent and vast retrogressions ever since the Fall; and asks “which of these ever-changing conditions of humanity is the _unique_ condition of the Essayist—incapable of repetition in the scheme of the Universe?”[59] Why may there not be an intermediate race between that of man and the angelic beings of Scripture, where human reason shall pass into the highest form of created mind, and human affections into their noblest development?—

“Why may not the intelligence of the spheres be ordained for the study
of regions and objects unstudied and unknown on earth? Why may not
labour have a better commission than to earn its bread by the sweat of
its brow? Why may it not pluck its loaf from the bread-fruit tree, or
gather its manna from the ground, or draw its wine from the bleeding
vessels of the vine, or _inhale its anodyne breath from the paradise
gas of its atmosphere_?”[60]

And Sir David thus concludes the chapter:—

“The difficulties we have been considering, in so far as they are of a
religious character, have been very unwisely introduced into the
question of a Plurality of Worlds. We are not entitled to remonstrate
with the sceptic, but we venture to doubt the soundness of that
philosopher’s judgment who thinks that the truths of natural religion
are affected by a belief in planetary races, and the reality of that
Christian’s faith who considers it to be endangered by a belief that
there are other Worlds than his own.”

This last paragraph induces us to go so far as to doubt whether Sir David Brewster has addressed his understanding deliberately, to the subject to which so large a portion of the most elaborate reasonings of Dr Whewell have been directed.

Sir David does not quarrel with the Essayist’s account of the constitution of man; and we must now see how he deals with the Essayist’s arguments drawn from Geology.

Sir David “is not disposed to grudge the geologist even periods so marvellous” as “millions of years required for the formation of strata, provided they be considered as merely hypothetical;” and admits that “our seas and continents have nearly the same locality, and cover nearly the same area, as they did at the creation of Adam;” but demurs to the conclusion that the earth was prepared for man by causes operating so gradually as the diurnal change going on around us. “Why may not the Almighty have deposited the earth’s strata, during the whole period of its formation, by a _rapid_ precipitation of their atoms from the waters which suspended them, so as to reduce the period of the earth’s formation to little more than the united generations of the different orders of plants and animals constituting its organic remains? Why not still further shorten the period, by supposing that plants and animals, requiring, in our day, a century for their development, may in primitive times have shot up in rank luxuriance, and been ready, in a few _days!_ or months! or years, for the great _purpose of exhibiting_, by their geological distribution, the progressive formation of the earth?”[61]

These questions, of which a myriad similar ones might be asked by any one, we leave to our geological readers; and hasten to inform them, that in involuntary homage to the powerful reasonings of his opponent, Sir David Brewster is fain to question the “inference that man did not exist during the period of the earth’s formation;”[62] and to suggest that “there may have existed intellectual races in present unexplored continental localities, or the immense regions of the earth now under water!”—“The future of geology may be pregnant with startling discoveries of the remains of intellectual races, even _beneath_ the primitive Azoic[63] formations of the earth!... Who can tell what sleeps beyond? Another creation may be beneath! more glorious creatures may be entombed there! the mortal coils of beings more lovely, more pure, more divine than man, may yet read to us the unexpected lesson that we have not been the first, and may not be the last of the intellectual race!”[64] Is he who can entertain and publish conjectures like these, entitled to stigmatise so severely those of other speculators—as “inconceivable absurdities, which no sane mind can cherish—suppositions too ridiculous even for a writer of romance!” This wild license given to the fancy may not be amiss in a poet, whose privilege it is that his “eye in a fine phrenzy rolling” may “give to airy nothing a local habitation, and a name:”—but when set in the scale against the solemnly magnificent array of facts in the earth’s history established by Geology, may be summarily discarded by sober and grave inquirers.

The Essayist’s suggested analogy between man’s relation to time and to space appears to us not understood, in either its scope or nature, by Sir David Brewster. At this we are as much surprised, as at the roughness with which he characterises the argument, as “the most ingenious though shallow piece of sophistry he has ever encountered in modern dialectics.” The Essayist suggests a comparison between the numbers expressing the four magnitudes and distances,—of the earth, the solar system, the fixed stars, and the nebulæ—and the numbers expressing the antiquity of the four geological periods “_for the sake of giving definiteness to our notions_.” Sir David abstains from quoting these last expressions, and alleges that the Essayist, “quitting the ground of analogy,” founds an elaborate argument on the mutual relation of an atom of time and an atom of space. The “argument” Sir David thus presents to his readers, the capital and italic letters being his own: “That is, _the earth, the_ ATOM OF SPACE, _is the only one of the planetary and sidereal worlds that is inhabited, because it was so long without inhabitants, and has been occupied only an_ ATOM OF TIME.”[65] “If any of our readers,” he adds, “see the force of this argument, they must possess an acuteness of perception to which we lay no claim. To us, it is not only illogical; it is a mere sound in the ear, without any sense in the brain.” This is the language possibly befitting an irritated Professor towards an ignorant and conceited student, but hardly suitable when Sir David Brewster is speaking of such an antagonist as he cannot but know he has to deal with. It does not appear to us the Essayist’s attempt, or purpose, to establish any arbitrary absolute _relation_ between time and space, or definite proportions of either, as concurring or alternative elements for determining the probability of a plurality of worlds. But he says to the dogmatic astronomical objector to Christianity, Such arguments as you have hitherto derived from _your_ consideration of SPACE, MULTITUDE, and MAGNITUDE, for the purpose of depressing man into a being beneath his Maker’s special notice, I encounter by arguments derived from recent disclosures concerning another condition of existence—DURATION, or TIME. Protesting that neither Time nor Space has any true connection with the subject, nevertheless I will turn your own weapons against yourself. My argument from Time shall at least neutralise yours from Space: mine shall involve the conditions of yours, fraught with their supposed irresistible force, and falsify them in fact, as forming premises whence may be deduced derogatory inferences concerning man. The Essayist’s ingenious and suggestive argument is intended not to prove an opinion, but _to remove an objection_; which, according to the profound thinker, Bishop Butler, is the proper office of analogy. It is asked, for instance, _how_ can you suppose that man, such as he is represented to be, occupies only an immeasurably minute fraction of existing matter? and it is answered, I find that man occupies only an immeasurably minute fraction of elapsed time: and this is, to me, an answer to the “_How_,” as concluding improbability. _How_ is balanced against _How_: Difficulty against difficulty: they neutralise each other, and leave the great question, the great reality, standing as it did before either was suggested, to be dealt with according to such evidence as God has vouchsafed us. We, therefore, do not see that the Essayist is driven to say, as Sir David Brewster alleges he is, either that because man has occupied only an atom of space, he must live only an atom of time on the earth;[66] or that because he has lived only an atom of time, he must occupy but an atom of space. In dismissing this leading portion of the Essayist’s reasonings, we shall say only that we consider it worthy of the attention of all persons occupied in speculations of this nature, as calculated to suggest trains of novel, profitable, and deeply interesting reflection.

Thus far the Essayist, as followed by his opponent, on the assumption that the other bodies of the universe are fitted, equally with the earth, to be the abodes of life. _But are they?_ Here we are brought to the last stage of the Essayist’s speculations—What physical EVIDENCE have we that the other bodies of the Solar System, besides the Earth, the Fixed Stars, and the Nebulæ, are structures capable of supporting human life, of being inhabited by Rational and Moral Beings?

The great question, in its physical aspect, is now fully before us: Is there that analogy on which the pluralist relies?

For the existence of Life several conditions must concur; and any of these failing, life, so far as we know anything about it, is impossible. Not air, only, and moisture, but a certain temperature, neither too hot nor too cold, and a certain consistence, on which the living frame can rest. Without the other conditions, an atmosphere alone does not make life possible; still less, prove its existence. A globe of red-hot metal, or of solid ice, however well provided with an atmosphere, could not be inhabited, so far as we can conceive. The old maxim of the logicians is true: that it requires _all_ the conditions to establish the affirmative, but that the negative of any _one_ proves the _negative_.

First, as to the smallest tenants of our system, the thirty[67] planetoids, some of which are certainly no larger than Mont Blanc.

Sir David Brewster dare not venture to suggest that they are inhabited, or in any condition to become so, any more than meteoric stones, which modern science regards as masses of matter, moving, like the planets, in the celestial spaces, subject to the gravitating attraction of the Sun; the Earth encountering them occasionally, either striking directly upon them, or approaching to them so closely that they are drawn by the terrestrial attraction, first within the atmosphere, and afterwards to the earth’s surface.[68] Here our Essayist gives a thrust at his Pluralist opponent not to be parried, asking him why he shrunk from asserting the planetoids and meteoric stones to be inhabited? If it be because of their being found to be uninhabited, or of their smallness, then “the argument that they _are_ inhabited _because_ they are planets fails him.”[69]

“There is, then,” says elsewhere the wary Essayist,[70] “a degree of
smallness which makes you reject the supposition of inhabitants. But
where does that degree of smallness begin? The surface of _Mars_ is
only one-fourth that of the Earth. Moreover, if you allow all the
planetoids to be uninhabited, those planets which you acknowledge to
be probably uninhabited far outnumber those with regard to which even
the most resolute Pluralist holds to be inhabited. The majority swells
every year; the planetoids are now thirty. The fact of a planet being
inhabited, then, is, at any rate, rather the exception than the rule;
and therefore must be proved, in each case, by special evidence. Of
such evidence I know not a trace!”

We may add, also, that Dr Lardner, vouched by Sir David Brewster, as we shall soon see, to be a thoroughly competent witness, gives up the planetoids as seats of habitation for animal life.[71]

Let us now, would say our Essayist, proceed on our negative tour, so to speak, and hasten to pay our respects to the Moon, our nearest neighbour, and whose distance from the Sun is admitted to adapt her, so far, for habitation.[72] If it appear, by strong evidence, that the Moon is not inhabited, then there is an end of the general principle, that _all_ the bodies of the solar system are inhabited, and that we must begin our speculation about each with this assumption. If the Moon be not inhabited, then, it would seem, the belief that each special body in the system _is_ inhabited, must depend upon reasons specially belonging to that body, and cannot be taken for granted without these reasons.[73] Now, as to the Moon, we have latterly acquired the means of making such exact and minute inquiries, that at the meeting of the British Association at Hull last year, Mr Phillips, an eminent geologist, stated that astronomers can discern the shape of a spot on the Moon’s surface, only a few hundred feet in breadth. Passing by, however, the Essayist’s brief but able account of the physical condition of this satellite of ours, we will cite the recent testimony of one accredited by Sir David Brewster[74] as “a mathematician and a natural philosopher, who has studied, more than any preceding writer, the analogies between the Earth and the other planets”—Dr Lardner, who, in the third volume (published since our last Number appeared) of the work placed at the head of this article, thus concludes his elaborate account of the Moon, as now regarded by the most enlightened astronomers—after proving it to be “as exempt from an atmosphere as is the utterly exhausted receiver of a good air-pump!”

“In fine, the entire geographical character of the moon, thus
ascertained by long-continued and exact telescopic surveys, leads to
the conclusion, that no analogy exists between it and the earth which
could confer any probability on the conjecture that it fulfils the
same purposes in the economy of the universe; and we must infer, that
whatever be its uses in the solar system, or in the general purposes
of creation, it is not a world inhabited by organised races such as
those to which the earth is appropriated.”[75]

We must leave Sir David and Dr Lardner to settle their small amount of differences together; for Sir David will have it that “the moon exhibits such proofs of an atmosphere that we have a new ground from analogy for believing that she either has, or is in a state of preparation for receiving, inhabitants;”[76] whom, “with monuments of their hands,” he “hopes may be discovered with some magnificent telescope which may be constructed!”[77] And he is compelled to believe that “all the other unseen satellites of the solar system are homes to animal and intellectual life.”[78] The Essayist would seem not to have deemed it necessary to deprive the sun of inhabitants; but our confident Pluralist will not surrender the stupendous body so easily. His friend Dr Lardner properly regards it “as a vast globular furnace, the heat emitted from each square foot of which is seven times greater than the heat issuing from a square foot of the fiercest blast-furnace: to what agency the light and heat are due, no one can do more than conjecture. According to our hypothesis, it is a great ELECTRIC LIGHT in the centre of the system;”[79] and “entirely removed from all analogy with the earth”—“utterly unsuited for the habitation of organised tribes.”[80] Nevertheless Sir David believes that “the sun is richly stored with inhabitants”—the probability “being doubtless greatly increased by the simple consideration of its enormous size”—a “domain so extensive, so blessed with perpetual light;” but it would seem that “if it be inhabited,” it is probably “occupied by the highest orders of intelligence!”[81] who, however, are allowed to enjoy their picturesque, and, it must be owned, somewhat peculiar, but doubtless blessed position, only by peeping every now and then through the sun’s spots, and so “seeing distinctly the planets and stars”—in fact, “large portions of the heavens!”[82] Perhaps it may be thought that this is not a very handsome way of dealing with such exalted beings!

The Essayist has now our seven principal sister-planets to deal with—the two _infra_-terrestrial, Mercury and Venus, and the five _extra_-terrestrial—Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune;—and as to all these, the question continues, do they so _resemble_ the earth in physical conditions, as to lead us safely to the conclusion that they resemble it in that other capital particular, of being the habitations of intellectual and moral beings? Here, be it observed, that every symptom of unlikeness which the Essayist can detect, greatly augments the burthen of proof incumbent upon his opponents.

When it was discovered that the old planets in certain important particulars resembled the earth, being opaque and solid bodies, having similar motions round the sun and on their own axis, some accompanied by satellites, and all having arrangements producing day and night, summer and winter, who could help wondering whether they must not also have inhabitants, reckoning and regulating their lives and employments by days, months, and years? This was, at most, however, a mere guess or conjecture; and whether it is now more probable than then, depends on the intervening progress of astronomy and science in general. Have subsequent discoveries strengthened or impugned the validity of the conjecture? The limits of our system have been since vastly extended by the discovery of Uranus and Neptune; and the planetary sisterhood has also increased in number by thirty little and very eccentric ones.

Now, as to NEPTUNE, says the Essayist, in substance, what reason has a sensible person for believing it peopled, as the earth is, by human beings—_i. e._ consisting of body and soul? He is thirty times further than we are from the sun, which will appear to it a mere star—about the size of Jupiter to us; and Neptune’s light and heat will be nine hundred times less than ours![83] _If_ it, nevertheless, contain animal and intellectual life, we must try to conceive how they get on with such a _modicum_ of those useful elements!

But have we general grounds for assuming _all_ the planetary bodies inhabited? Beginning with the moon, we have encountered a decided negative. If any planet, however, have sufficient light, heat, clouds, winds, and a due adjustment of gravity, and the strength of the materials of which organisation consist, there _may_ be life of some sort or other. Now we can measure and weigh the planets, exactly, by the law of gravitation, which embraces every particle of matter in our system, and find the mass of our earth to be only five times heavier than water. Comparing it with JUPITER—the bulk of which is 1331 times greater than that of the Earth—his density is, as a whole, only a quarter of that of the Earth—not greater than it would be as a sphere of water; and he is _conjectured_ to be such, and the existence of his belts to be lines of clouds, fed with vapours raised by the sun’s action on such a watery sphere—the lines of such clouds being of so steady and determined a character, in consequence of his great rotatory velocity. Equal bulk for equal bulk, he is lighter than the Earth, but of course much heavier altogether; and as he is five times the Earth’s distance from the Sun, he must get a proportionally smaller amount of light and heat, and even that diminished by the clouds enveloping him to so great an extent. What a low degree of vitality, and what kind of organisation must animal existence possess, to suit such physical conditions, especially with reference to gravity, which, at his surface, is nearly two and a half times that on the Earth! Boneless, watery, pulpy inhabitants of the cold waters; or they may be frozen so far as to exclude the idea of animal existence; or it may be restricted to shallow parts in a planet of ice.[84] But if this be so, to what end his gorgeous array of satellites?—his four moons? “Precisely the same,” answers our pertinacious Essayist, “as the use of our moon during the countless ages before man was placed on the earth; while it was tenanted by corals, madrepores, shell-fish, belemnites, the cartilaginous fishes of the old red sandstone, or the Saurian monsters of the lias. With these _differences_, it is asked, what becomes of analogy—of resemblances justifying our belief that Jupiter is inhabited like ourselves?”

To this answers Sir David Brewster—Jupiter’s great size “is alone a proof that it must have been made for some _grand_ and _useful_ purpose:” it is flattened at its poles; revolves on its axis in nearly ten hours; has different climates and seasons; and is abundantly illuminated, in the short absence of the sun, by its four moons, giving him, in fact, “perpetual moonlight.” Why does the sun give it days, nights, and years? Why do its moons irradiate its continents and seas? Its equatorial breezes blow perpetually over its plains? To what purpose could such a gigantic world have been framed, unless to supply the wants, and minister to the happiness, of living beings? Still, it is admitted,[85] “that certain objections or difficulties naturally present themselves.” The distance of Jupiter from the sun precludes the possibility of sufficient light and heat from that quarter, to support either such vegetable or animal life as exists on the earth; the cold must be very intense—its rivers and seas must be tracks and fields of ice.[86] But it may be answered, that the temperature of a planet depends on other causes—the condition of its atmosphere, and the internal heat of its mass—as is the case with our earth; and such “may” be the case in Jupiter; and, “if” so, may secure a temperature sufficiently genial to sustain such animal and vegetable life as ours; yet, it is owned, it cannot “increase the feeble light which Jupiter derives from the sun; but an enlargement of the pupil of the eye, and increased sensibility of the retina, would make the sun’s light as brilliant to Jovians as to us.”[87] Besides, a brilliant phosphorescent light “may” be excited in the satellites by the sun’s rays. Again, the day of ten hours may be thought insufficient for physical repose; but, it is answered, five hours’ repose are sufficient for five of labour. “A difficulty of a more serious kind,[88] however, is presented by the great force of gravity on so gigantic a planet as Jupiter;” but Sir David gives us curious calculations to show that a Jovian’s weight would be only double that of a man on the earth.

Struck by such a formidable array of differences, when he was in quest of _resemblances_ only,

“Alike, but, oh! how different!”

Sir David rebukes the sceptic for forming so low an opinion of Omnipotent Wisdom, as to assume that “the inhabitants of the planets must be either men, or anything resembling them;—is it,” he asks, “necessary that an immortal soul should be hung upon a skeleton of bone, or imprisoned in a cage of cartilage and skin? Must it see with two eyes, and hear with two ears, and touch with ten fingers, and rest on a duality of limbs? May it not rest in a Polyphemus with one eyeball, or in an Argus with a hundred? May it not reign in the giant forms of the Titans, and direct the hundred hands of Briareus?[89] The being of another world may have his home in subterranean cities, warmed by central fires; or in crystal caves, cooled by ocean tides; or he may float with the Nereids upon the deep; or mount upon wings as eagles; or rise upon the pinions of the dove, that he may flee away, and be at rest!”[90]

Let us pause at this point, and see how the question stands on the showing of the respectively imaginative and matter-of-fact disputants themselves. Sir David Brewster, being bound to show that analogy forces us to believe Jupiter inhabited, is compelled to admit a series of signal discrepancies in physical condition; expecting his opponent, in turn, to admit such a series of essential alterations, both of inert matter and organisation, as will admit of what?—_totally different_ modes of animal and intellectual existence—so different, as to drive a philosopher into the fantastic dreams in which we have just seen him indulging. Not so the Essayist, a master of the Inductive Philosophy. He does not presume impiously to limit Omnipotence; but reverently owns His power to create whatever forms and conditions of existence He pleases. But when it is asserted that He has, in fact, made beings wholly different from any that we see, “he cannot believe this without further _evidence_.”[91] And on this very subject of the imaginary inhabitants of Jupiter, he says, after reading what his heated and fanciful opponent has advanced,—“You are hard,” he makes an objector say, “on our neighbours in Jupiter, when you will not allow them to be anything better than ‘boneless, watery, pulpy creatures.’” To which he answers, “I had no disposition to be hard on them when I entered upon these speculations. I drew, what appeared to me, probable conclusions from all the facts of the case. _If the laws of attraction, of light, of heat, and the like, be the same there as they are here, which we believe to be certain, the laws of life must also be the same; and, if so, I can draw no other conclusions than those which I have stated._”[92]

Says the Essayist, I know that my Maker _can_ invest with the intellect of a Newton, each of

“The gay motes that people the sunbeams;”

but before I believe that he has done so, give me reasonable and adequate evidence of so wonderful and sublime a fact; or I must believe in any kind of nonsense that any one can imagine.

The planet Jupiter affords a fair sample of the procedure of the Essayist and his opponent, with reference to all the other primary planets of the Solar system. From Mercury, in red-hot contiguity to the Sun, to Neptune, which is at thirty times the Earth’s distance from it, and from which as we have seen it derives only _one nine-hundredth_ part of the light and heat imparted to ourselves by the Sun,—Sir David Brewster will have all inhabited, and the physical condition of each correspondingly altered to admit of it: central heat, and eyes the pupils of which are sufficiently enlarged, and the retina’s sensibility sufficiently increased, to admit of seeing with nine hundred times less light than is requisite for our own organs of sight! “Uranus and Neptune,” concludes the triumphant Pluralist[93]—nothing daunted by the overwhelming evidences of physical difference of condition—“are _doubtless_”—with the Sun—“the abodes of Life and Intelligence: the colossal temples where their Creator is recognised and worshipped—the remotest watch-towers of our system, from which his works may be _better_ studied, and his glories _more easily_ descried!”

Why, with such elastic principles of analogy as his, stop short of peopling the Meteoric Stones with rational inhabitants? whom, and whose doings, as in the case of the Moon, “some magnificent” instrument, yet to be constructed, may discover to us?

Thus much for the planets,—before quitting which, however, we may state that, according to Dr Lardner, about as staunch a Pluralist as his admirer Sir David Brewster, a greater rapidity of rotation, and smaller intervals of light and darkness, are among the characteristics distinguishing the group of major planets from the terrestrial group. He also adds that another “striking distinction” is the comparative lightness of the matter constituting the former. The density of Venus, Mars, and our earth, is nearly equal—about the same as that of ironstone; while the density of the thoroughly-baked planet Mercury is equal to that of gold. “Now it appears, on the contrary,” he continues, “that the density of Jupiter very little exceeds that of water; that of Uranus and Neptune is exactly that of water; while Saturn is so light, that it would float in water like a globe of pine wood.... The seas and oceans of these planets must consist of a liquid far lighter than water. It is computed that a liquid on Jupiter, which would be analogous to the terrestrial oceans, would be three times lighter than sulphuric ether, the lightest known liquid; and would be such that cork would scarcely float in it!”[94]

Commending these trifling discrepancies to Sir David’s attention, while manufacturing his planetary inhabitants in conformity with them, shall we now follow his flight beyond the solar system, and get among the Fixed Stars? Here we are gazing at the Dog-Star! “I allow,” says a pensive objector to the Essayist,[95] “that if you disprove the existence of inhabitants in the planets of our system, I shall not feel much real interest in the possible inhabitants of the Sirian system. Neighbourhood has its influence upon our feelings of regard,—even neighbourhood on a scale of millions of miles!”

Here our Pluralist is quite at home, and evidently in great favour. The stars twinkle and glitter with delight at his gleeful approach, to elevate them into moral and intellectual dignity, and at the same time, perhaps, select “some bright particular” one, to be hereafter distinguished as the seat of his own personal existence; whence he is to spend eternity in radiating astronomical emanations throughout infinitude.

“Then, unembodied, doth he trace,
By steps each planet’s heavenly way?
A Thing of Eyes, that all survey, ...
A Thought Unseen, yet seeing all!”[96]

He stands in the starry solitude, waving his wand, and lo! he peoples each glistening speck with intellectual existence, with the highest order of intelligence, as in the case of that little star, the sun, which he has quitted. Now as to these same FIXED STARS, we can easily guess the steps of Sir David’s brief and satisfactory argument. _If_ the stars be suns, they are inhabited like our sun; and if they be suns, each has its planets, like our sun; and if they have planets, they are inhabited like our planets; and if they have satellites like some of ours, they are also inhabited. But the stars _are_ suns, and they all have planets, and at least some of these planets, satellites; therefore, all the fixed stars, with their respective planetary systems, are inhabited (Q. E. D.) Here are Sir David’s words:—“We are compelled to draw the conclusion that wherever there is a sun, there must be a planetary system; and wherever there is a planetary system, there must be Life and Intelligence.”[97] This is the way in which, it seems, we worms of the earth feel ourselves at liberty to deal with our Almighty Creator: dogmatically insisting that every scene of existence in which He may have displayed His omnipotence, is but a repetition of that particular one in which we have our allotted place! As if He had but one pattern for Universal Creation! Only one scheme for peopling and dealing with infinitude! O, that _the clay_ should think thus of _Him that fashioneth it_![98] Forgetting, in an exulting moment of blindness and presumption, His own awful words, _My thoughts are not as your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways. For as the Heavens are higher than the Earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts!_[99]

We are now, however, about to people the Fixed Stars. The only proof that they are the centres of planetary systems, resides in the assumption that these Stars are _like the Sun_; and as resembling him in their nature and qualities, so having the same offices and appendages:—independent sources of light, and thence probably of heat; therefore having attendant planets, to which they may impart such light and heat,—and these planets’ inhabitants living under and enjoying those benign influences. Everything here depends on this proposition, that the Stars are like the Sun; and it becomes essential to examine what evidence we have of the exactness of their likeness.[100] In the Preface to his Second Edition, the Essayist, whose scientific knowledge few will venture to impugn, boldly asserts that “man’s knowledge of the physical properties of the luminaries which he discerns in the skies, is, even now, _almost nothing_;” and “such being the state of our knowledge, as bearing on the doctrine of the plurality of worlds, the time appeared to be not inopportune for a calm discussion of the question,—upon which, accordingly,” he adds, “I have ventured in the following pages.” In the same Preface he has ably condensed into a single paragraph his views on the nature and extent of our present knowledge on the subject of the Fixed Stars.[101]

In the opening of the chapter devoted to this subject (ch. viii.), he admits “the special evidence,” as to the probability of these stars containing, in themselves, or in accompanying planets, inhabitants of any kind, “is, indeed, slight, _either way_.”

As to Clustered and Double stars, they appear to give us, he says, but little promise of inhabitants. In what degree of condensation the matter of these binary systems is, compared with that of our solar system, we have no means whatever of knowing: but even granting that each individual of the pair were a sun like ours, in the nature of its material, and its state of condensation, is it probable that it resembles our Sun also in having planets revolving about it? A system of planets revolving about, or among, a pair of Suns, which are at the same time revolving about one another, is so complex a scheme [apparently], so impossible to arrange in a stable manner, that the assumption of the existence of such schemes, without a vestige of evidence, can hardly require refutation. No doubt, if we were really required to provide such a binary system of Suns with attendant planets, this would be best done by putting the planets so near to one Sun that they should not be sensibly affected by the other; and this is accordingly what has been proposed. For, as has been well said by Sir John Herschell, of the supposed planets in making this proposal, “unless closely nestled under the protecting wing of their immediate superior, the sweep of the other Sun in his perihelion passage round their own, might carry them off, or whirl them into orbits utterly inconsistent with the existence of their inhabitants.” “To assume the existence of the inhabitants, in spite of such dangers, and to provide against the dangers by placing them so close to one Sun as to be out of the reach of the other, though the whole distance of the two may not, and as we know in some cases does not, exceed the dimensions of our solar system, is showing them all the favour which is possible. But in making this provision, it is overlooked that it may not be possible to keep them in permanent orbits so near to the selected centre. Their Sun may be a vast sphere of luminous vapour, and the planets plunged into this atmosphere may, instead of describing regular orbits, plough their way in spiral paths through the nebulous abyss of its central nucleus.”[102]

In dealing with the Single Stars, which are, like the Sun, self-luminous, can they be proved, like him, to be definite dense masses? [_His_ density is about that of water.] Or are they, or many of them, luminous masses in a far more diffused state, visually contracted to points through their immense distance? Some of those which we have the best means of examining are one-third, or even less, in mass, than he: and if Sirius, for instance, be in this diffused condition, though that would not of itself prevent his having planets, it would make him so unlike our Sun, as much to break the force of the presumption that he must have planets as he has. Again: As far back as our knowledge of our Sun extends, his has been a permanent condition of brightness: yet many of the fixed stars not only undergo changes, but periodical, and possibly progressive changes:—whence it may be inferred, perhaps, that they are not, generally, in the same permanent condition as our Sun. As to the evidence of their revolution on their axis, this has been inferred from their having periodical recurrences of fainter and brighter lustre; as if revolving orbs with one side darkened by spots. Of these, five only can be at present spoken of by astronomers[103] with precision. Nothing is more probable than that these periodical changes indicate the revolution of these stellar masses on their axis—a universal law, apparently, of all the large compact masses of the Universe, but by no means inferring their being, or having accompanying planets, inhabited. The Sun’s rotation is not shown, intelligibly, connected with its having near it the inhabited Earth. In the mean time, in so far as these stars are periodical, they are proved to be, not like, but _unlike_ our Sun. The only real point of resemblance, then, is that of being self-luminous, in the highest degree ambiguous and inconclusive, and furnishing no argument entitled to be deemed one from analogy. Humboldt deems the force of analogy to tend even in the _opposite_ direction. “After all,” he asks,[104] “is the assumption of satellites [attendant planets] 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:—yet this is not so with Mars, Venus, Mercury;” to which may now be added the thirty Planetoids—making a much greater number of bodies that have not, than that have satellites. The assumption, then, that the fixed stars are of exactly the same nature as the Sun, was originally a bold guess; but there has not since been a vestige of any confirmatory fact:—no planet, nor anything fairly indicating the existence of one revolving round a fixed star, has ever hitherto been discerned;—and the subsequent discovery of nebulæ; binary systems; clusters of stars; periodical stars; of varied and accelerating periods of such stars,—all seem to point the other way: leaving, though possibly facts small in amount, the original assumption a mere guess, unsupported by all that three centuries of most diligent, and in other respects, successful research, have been able to bring to light. All the knowledge of times succeeding Copernicus, Galileo, and Kepler, (who might well believe the stars to be in every sense suns);—among other things, the disclosure of the history of our own planet, as one in which such grand changes have been constantly going on; the certainty that in by far the greatest part of the duration of its existence it has been tenanted by creatures entirely different from those which give an interest, and thence a persuasiveness, to the belief of inhabitants in worlds appended to each star; the impossibility of which appears, in the gravest consideration of transferring to other worlds such interests as belong to our race in this world;—all these considerations, it would seem, should have prevented that old and arbitrary conjecture from growing up, among a generation _professing philosophical caution and scientific discipline_, into a settled belief. Finally, it will be time enough to speculate about the inhabitants of the planets which belong to such systems, as soon as we shall have ascertained that there are such planets,—or that there is one such.[105]

In the _Dialogue_, written after the first edition of the “Essay” had appeared, the Essayist greatly strengthened the position for which he had contended in it, by an important passage containing the results of the eminent astronomer _M. Struve’s_ recent examination of double stars, and the result of his elaborate and comprehensive comparison of the whole body of facts in stellar astronomy. Among the brighter stars, he arrives at the conclusion, that _every_ FOURTH such star is physically double; and that a completed knowledge of double stars may prove every THIRD bright star to be physically double! And in the case of stars of inferior magnitude, that the number of _insulated_ stars, though indeed greater than that of such compound systems, is nevertheless only three times, perhaps only twice as great. Thus the loose evidence of resemblance between our Sun and the fixed stars becomes feebler the more it is examined; and the assumption of stellar _planetary_ systems appears, when closely scrutinised, to dwindle away to nothing.[106]

Now, to so much of the foregoing facts and speculations as are contained in the Essay, from which we have faithfully and carefully extracted the substance, in order that our readers may judge for themselves, Sir David Brewster answers, in effect, and generally in words, thus:—

The greatest and grandest truth in astronomy, is the motion of the solar system, advancing with all the planets and satellites in the heavens, at the rate of fifty-seven miles a second, round some distant invisible body, in an orbit of such inconceivable dimensions, that millions of years may be required for a single orbit. When we consider that this centre must be a sun with attendant planets like our own, revolving in like manner round our sun, [?] or round their common centre of gravity, the mind rejects, almost with indignation, the ignoble sentiment that Man is the only being performing this immeasurable journey—and that Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune, with their bright array of regal train-bearers, are but as colossal blocks of lifeless clay, encumbering the Earth as a drag, and mocking the creative majesty of Heaven. From the birth of man _to the extinction of his race_ [!] the system to which he belongs will have described but an infinitesimal arc in that grand cosmical orbit in which it is destined to move. This affords a new argument for the plurality of worlds. Since every fixed star must have planets, the fact of our system revolving round a similar system of planets, furnishes a new argument from analogy; for as there is at least one inhabited planet in the one system, there must for the same reason be one in the other, and consequently as many as there are systems in the Universe.[107] Thus our system is not absolutely fixed in space, but is connected with the other systems in the Universe.

The Fixed Stars are suns of other systems, whose planets are invisible from their distance, as are ours from the nearest fixed star. Every _single_ star shining by its own native light is the centre of a planetary system like our own—the lamp that lights, the stove that heats, and the power that guides in their orbits, inhabited worlds like our own. Many are _double_, with a system of planets round each, or the centre of gravity of both. No one can believe that two suns would be placed in the heavens, for no other purpose than to revolve round their common centre of gravity. It is “highly probable,” that our Sun is one of a binary system, and has at present an unseen partner; and we are “entitled to conclude” that all the other binary systems have at least an inhabited planet: wherever there is a self-luminous fixed or movable Sun there must be a planetary system; and wherever there is a planetary system, there must be life and intelligence.[108]

Apart from the assertion of his cardinal principle with which we are familiar, namely, that since our Sun has an inhabited planet, all others must; and also that all planets must be inhabited;—the argumentative value of these two chapters seems to lie in this that they annihilate one of the Essayist’s points of _unlikeness_ between our Sun and other Fixed Stars, inasmuch as it, together with so many of them, is one of a binary system: wherefore what is true of it, is true of them, _et vice versa_. He bases this proposition, viz., that our Sun is one of a binary system, on “high probability,” from “the motion of our own system round a distant centre.”[109] The great truth of this motion, he says the Essayist “has completely misrepresented, foreseeing its influence on the mind as an argument for more worlds than one.”[110] What the Essayist had said on the subject, was this:[111] he speaks of “the _attempt_ to show that the Sun, carrying with it the whole solar system, is in motion; and the further attempt to show the direction of that motion;—and again, the hypothesis that the Sun itself revolves round some distant object in space.” These minute inquiries and bold conjectures, he says, “cannot throw any light on the question, whether any part besides the earth _be inhabited_: any more than the investigation of the movements of the ocean and their laws can prove or disprove the existence of _marine plants and animals_. They do not, on that account, cease to be important and interesting objects of speculation, but they do not belong to our subject.” As to the Sun’s motion, we are bound to say, that the Astronomer Royal has recently declared that “every astronomer who has examined the matter carefully, has come to the conclusion of Sir William Herschell, that the whole solar system is moving towards a point in the constellation Hercules.”[112] Before quitting this part of the subject, we may state that the Essayist, in his second Preface,[113] points out the insecure character of astronomical calculations as to the amount of absolute light ascribed to some of the fixed stars. It has been estimated that the illuminating power of _Alpha_ Centauri is nearly double that of the Sun, placed at that distance, which is two hundred thousand times as far off as is the Sun; but Sir John Herschell will not concur in more of the calculation than attributes to the star the emission of _more_ light than our Sun. Surely the critical and precarious character of such calculations should not be lost sight of by candid inquirers, but incline them to scan somewhat closely any pretensions tinctured by astronomic dogmatism.