Whatever we talk, Things are _as they are_—not as we grant, dispute,
or hope; depending on neither our affirmative nor negative.[2]—JEREMY
TAYLOR.
Let us bear in mind the above passage, pregnant with solemnising
reflection, while dealing with the question before us; always
remembering that it is one purely speculative, however interesting,
however exciting, to imaginative persons; but to weak and superficial
ones—to those of unsettled opinions—capable of becoming mischievous.
The state of that question is exactly this: The heavenly bodies around
us, some or all of them, are, or are not, in point of fact, the abodes
of intellectual and moral beings _like ourselves_—that is, be it
observed, consisting of body and soul. That there are other and higher
orders of intelligent existence, both the Christian and the mere
philosopher may, and the former must, admit as an article of his
“creed;” but what may be the mode of that existence, and its relations
to that physical world of which we are sensible, we know not, and
conjecture would be idle. That beings like ourselves exist elsewhere
than here, is not revealed in Scripture; and the question, consequently,
for us to concern ourselves with is, whether there nevertheless exist
rational grounds for believing the fact to be so. The accomplished and
eminent person who has so suddenly started this discussion, has, since
his _Essay_ appeared,[3] and in strict consistency with it, emphatically
declared—“I do not pretend to disprove a plurality of worlds; but I ask
in vain for any argument which makes the doctrine probable. And as I
conceive the unity of the world to be the result of its being the work
of one Divine Mind, exercising creative power according to His own
Ideas; so it seems to me not unreasonable to suppose that man, the being
which can apprehend, in some degree, those Ideas, is a creature unique
in the creation.” But what says Sir David Brewster, speaking of the
greatest known member of our planetary system, Jupiter?
“With so many striking points of resemblance between the Earth and
Jupiter, the unprejudiced mind cannot resist the conclusion, that
Jupiter has been created, like the Earth, for the express purpose of
being the seat of animal and intellectual life. The Atheist and the
Infidel, the Christian and the Mahommedan, men of all creeds, nations,
and tongues, the philosopher and the unlettered peasant, have all
rejoiced in this universal truth; and we do not believe that any
individual who confides in the facts of astronomy seriously rejects
it. If such a person exists, we would gravely ask him, for what
purpose could so gigantic a world have been framed?”[4]
I am such a person, would say Dr Whewell, and I declare that I cannot
tell why Jupiter was created. “I do not pretend to know for what purpose
the stars were made, any more than the flowers, or the crystalline gems,
or other innumerable beautiful objects.... No doubt the Creator might
make creatures fitted to live in the stars, or in the small planetoids,
or in the clouds, or on meteoric stones; but we cannot believe that he
_has_ done this, without further evidence.”[5] And as to the “facts of
astronomy,” let me patiently examine them, and the inferences you seek
to deduce from them. Besides which, I will bring forward certain facts
of which you seem to have taken no account.
As we foresaw, Dr Whewell’s _Essay_ is attracting increased attention in
all directions; and, as far as we can ascertain the scope of
contemporaneous criticism hitherto pronounced, it is hostile to his
views, while uniformly recognising the power and scientific knowledge
with which they are enforced. “We scarcely expected,” observes an
accomplished diurnal London reviewer,[6] “that in the middle of the
nineteenth century, a serious attempt would have been made to restore
the exploded ideas of man’s supremacy over all other creatures in the
universe; and still less that such an attempt would have been made by
any one whose mind was stored with scientific truths. Nevertheless a
champion has actually appeared, who boldly dares to combat against all
the rational inhabitants of other spheres; and though as yet he wears
his vizor down, his dominant bearing, and the peculiar dexterity and
power with which he wields his arms, indicate that this knight-errant of
nursery notions can be no other than the Master of Trinity College,
Cambridge.” The reviewer falls, it appears to us, into a serious error
as to the sentiments of Dr Whewell, when charging him with requiring us
“to assume that, in the creation of intelligent beings, Omnipotence must
be limited, in its operations, to the ideas which human faculties can
conceive of them: that such beings must be men like ourselves, with
similar powers, and have had their faculties developed by like means.”
In the very passage cited to support this charge, Dr Whewell will be
found thus exactly limiting his proposition so as to exclude so impious
and absurd a supposition:—“In order to conceive, on the Moon, or on
Jupiter, a race of beings intelligent _like man_, we must conceive there
colonies of men, with histories resembling, more or less, the histories
of human colonies: and, indeed, resembling the history of those nations
whose knowledge we inherit, far more closely than the history of any
other terrestrial nation resembles that part of terrestrial history.”[7]
In the passage which we have quoted in the preceding column, Dr Whewell
expressly declares, as of course he could not help declaring, that the
Creator no doubt might make creatures fitted to live on the stars, or
anywhere; but the passage misunderstood by the reviewer, appears to us
possessed of an extensive significance, of which he has hastily lost
sight, but which is closely connected with that portion of the author’s
speculations with which we briefly dealt in our last number, especially
that which regards Man as a being of progressive[8] development. To this
we shall hereafter return, reminding the reader of the course of Dr
Whewell’s argument as thus far disclosed—namely, that man’s
intellectual, moral, religious, and spiritual nature, is of so peculiar
and high an order, as to warrant our regarding him as a special and
unique existence, worthy of the station here assigned him in creation.
Intellectually considered, man “has an element of community with God:
whereupon it is so far conceivable that man should be, in a special
manner, the object of God’s care and favour. The human mind, with its
wonderful and perhaps illimitable powers, is something of which we can
believe God to be mindful:”[9] that He may very reasonably be thus
mindful of a being whom he has vouchsafed to make in his own Image,
after His likeness—the image and likeness of the awful Creator of all
things.
“The privileges of man,” observes Dr Whewell, in a passage essential
to be considered by those who would follow his argument,[10] “which
make the difficulty in assigning him his place in the Vast Scheme of
the universe, we have described as consisting in his being an
_Intellectual, Moral, and Religious_ creature. Perhaps the privileges
implied in the last term, and their place in our argument, may justify
a word more of explanation.... We are now called upon,” proceeds the
Essayist, after a striking sketch of the character and capacity of
man, especially as a spiritual creature, “to proceed to exhibit the
Answer which a somewhat different view of modern science suggests to
this difficulty or objection.”
—“The difficulty[11] appears great either way of considering it. Can
the earth alone be the theatre of such intelligent, moral, religious,
and spiritual action? Or can we conceive such action to go on in the
other bodies of the universe?... Between these two difficulties the
choice is embarrassing, and the decision must be unsatisfactory,
except we can find some further ground of judgment. But this, perhaps,
is not hopeless. We have hitherto referred to the evidence and
analogies supplied by one science, namely, Astronomy. But there are
other sciences which give us information concerning the nature and
history of the Earth. From some of these we may perhaps obtain some
knowledge of the place of the Earth in the scheme of creation; how far
it is, in its present condition, a thing unique, or only one thing
among many like it. Any science which supplies us with evidence or
information on this head, will give us aid in forming a judgment upon
the question under our consideration.”
Thus the Essayist reaches the second stage of his inquiry, entering on
the splendid domain of GEOLOGY. To this great but recently consolidated
science Dr Chalmers made no allusion in his celebrated “Discourses on
the Christian Revelation, viewed in connection with the Modern
Astronomy,”[12] which were delivered in the year 1817, nearly
thirty-seven years ago: and then he spoke, in his first Discourse, of
Astronomy as “the most certain and best established of the sciences.” Dr
Whewell, however, vindicates the claims of Geology, in respect of both
the certainty and vastness of her discoveries, in a passage so just and
admirable, that we must lay it before our readers.
“As to the vastness of astronomical discoveries, we must observe that
those of Geology are no less vast: they extend through time, as those
of Astronomy do through space; they carry us through millions of
years—that is, of the earth’s revolutions—as those of Astronomy
through millions of the earth’s diameters, or of diameters of the
earth’s orbit. Geology fills the regions of duration with events, as
Astronomy the regions of the universe with objects. She carries us
backwards by the relation of cause and effect, as Astronomy carries us
upwards by the relations of geometry. As Astronomy steps on from point
to point of the universe by a chain of triangles, so Geology steps
from epoch to epoch of the earth’s history by a chain of mechanical
and organical laws. If the one depends on the axioms of geometry, the
other depends on the axioms of causation.... But in truth, in such
speculations, Geology has an immeasurable superiority. She has the
command of an implement, in addition to all that Astronomy can use;
and one, for the purpose of such speculations, adapted far beyond any
astronomical element of discovery. She has, for one of her
studies,—one of her means of dealing with her problems,—the knowledge
of life, animal and vegetable. Vital organisation is a subject of
attention which has, in modern times, been forced upon her. It is now
one of the main parts of her discipline. The geologist must study the
traces of life in every form—must learn to decipher its faintest
indications and its fullest development. On the question, then,
whether there be, in this or that quarter, evidence of life, he can
speak with the confidence derived from familiar knowledge; while the
astronomer, to whom such studies are utterly foreign, because he has
no facts which bear upon them, can offer, on such questions, only the
loosest and most arbitrary conjectures, which, as we have had to
remark, have been rebuked by eminent men as being altogether
inconsistent with the acknowledged maxims of his science.”[13]
Before we proceed to state the singular and suggestive argument derived
from this splendid science,[14] we may apprise the reader that Dr
Whewell’s primary object is to show, that even “supposing the other
bodies of the universe to resemble the earth, so far as to seem, by
their materials, forms, and motions, no less fitted than she is to be
the abodes of life, yet that, knowing what we know of Man, we can
believe the earth to be tenanted by a race who are the _special_ objects
of God’s care.”[15] The grounds for entertaining, or rather impugning,
that supposition he subsequently deals with after his own fashion in
Chapters VII., VIII., IX., X.; but the two with which we are at present
concerned are the fifth and sixth, respectively entitled, as we
intimated in our last Number, “Geology,” and “The Argument from
Geology.”
The exact object at which this leading section of the Essay is aimed is,
in the Essayist’s words, this:—“A complete reply to the difficulty which
astronomical discoveries appeared to place in the way of religion:—the
difficulty of the opinion that Man, occupying this speck of earth but as
an atom in the universe, surrounded by millions of other globes larger,
and to all appearance nobler, than that which he inhabits, should be the
object of the peculiar care and guardianship of the favour and
government of the Creator of All, in the way in which religion teaches
us that he is.”[16]
What is that “complete reply?” The following passage contains a key to
the entire speculation of the Essayist, and deserves a thoughtful
perusal:—
“That the scale of man’s insignificance is _of the same order in
reference to time as to space_. That Man—the Human Race from its
origin till now—has occupied but an atom of time as he has occupied
but an atom of space.”... “If the earth, as the habitation of Man, is
a speck in the midst of an infinity of space, the Earth, as the
habitation of Man, is also a speck at the end of an infinity of time.
If we are as nothing in the surrounding universe, we are as nothing in
the elapsed eternity; or rather in the elapsed organic antiquity
during which the Earth has existed, and been the abode of life. If Man
is but one small family in the midst of innumerable possible
households, he is also but one small family, the successor of
innumerable tribes of animals, not possible only, but actual. If the
planets may be the seats of life, we know that the seas, which have
given birth to our mountains, were so. If the stars may have hundreds
of systems of tenanted planets rolling round them, we know that the
secondary group of rocks does contain hundreds of tenanted beds,
witnessing of as many systems of organic creation. If the Nebulæ may
be planetary systems in the course of formation, we know that the
primary and transition rocks either show us the earth in the course of
formation, as the future seat of life, or exhibit such life as already
begun.
“How far that which Astronomy thus asserts as possible, is
probable—what is the value of these possibilities of life in distant
regions of the universe, we shall hereafter consider; but in what
Geology asserts, the case is clear. It is no possibility, but a
certainty. No one will now doubt that shells and skeletons, trunks and
leaves, prove animal and vegetable life to have existed. Even,
therefore, if Astronomy could demonstrate all that her most fanciful
disciples assume, Geology would still have a complete right to claim
an equal hearing—to insist on having _her analogies_ regarded. She
would have a right to answer the questions of Astronomy, when she
asks, How can we believe this? And to have her answer accepted.”[17]
We regret that our space prevents our laying before the reader the
masterly and deeply interesting epitome of geological discoveries
contained in these two chapters. The stupendous series of these
revelations may be thus briefly indicated:—That countless tribes of
animals tenanted the earth for countless ages before Man’s advent; that
former ocean-beds now constitute the centres of our loftiest mountains,
as the results of changes gradual, successive, and long continued; that
these vast masses of sedimentary strata present themselves to our notice
in a strangely disordered state; that each of these rocky layers
contains a vast profusion of the remains of marine animals, intermingled
with a great series of fresh-water and land animals and plants endlessly
varied—all these being different, not only in species, but in kind!—and
each of these separate beds must have lasted as long, or perhaps longer,
than that during which the dry land has had its present form.
The careful prosecution of their researches has forced on the minds of
geologists and naturalists “the general impression that, as we descend
in this long staircase of natural steps, we are brought in view of a
state of the earth in which life was scantily manifested, so as to be
near its earliest stages.”[18]
In the opinion of the most eminent geologists, some of these epochs of
organic transition were also those of mechanical violence, on a vast and
wonderful scale—as it were, a vast series of successive periods of
alternate violence and repose. The general nature of such change is
vividly sketched by the Essayist, in a passage to which we must refer
the reader.[19] When, continues the Essayist, we find strata bearing
evidence of such a mode of deposit, and piled up to the height of
thousands and tens of thousands of feet, we are naturally led to regard
them as the production of myriads of years; and to add _new_ myriads, as
often as we are brought to new masses of strata of the like kind; and
again to interpolate new periods of the same order, to allow for the
transition from one group to another.[20]
The best geologists and naturalists are utterly at fault, in attempting
to account for the successive introduction of these numerous _new
species_, at these immense intervals of time, except by referring them
to the exercise of a series of distinct Acts of Creation. The chimerical
notion of some natural cause effecting a transmutation of one series of
organic forms into another, has been long exploded, as totally destitute
of proof: and “the doctrine of the successive CREATION of species,” says
the Essayist, “remains firmly established among geologists.”[21] There
is nothing known of the cosmical conditions of our globe, to contradict
the terrestrial evidence for its vast antiquity as the seat of organic
life,[22] says Dr Whewell: and then proceeds thus, in a passage which is
well worth the reader’s attention, and has excited the ire of Sir David
Brewster:—
“If, for the sake of giving definiteness to our notions, we were to
assume that the numbers which express the antiquity of these four
periods—the present organic condition of the earth; the tertiary
period of geologists which preceded that; the secondary period which
was anterior to that; and the primary period which preceded the
secondary—were _on the same scale_ as the numbers which express these
four magnitudes:—The magnitude of the earth; that of the solar system
compared with the earth; the distance of the nearest fixed stars
compared with the solar system; and the distance of the most remote
nebulæ compared with the nearest fixed stars,—there is, in the
evidence which geological science offers, nothing to contradict such
an assumption. And as the infinite extent which we necessarily ascribe
to space allows us to find room, without any mental difficulty, for
the vast distances which astronomy reveals, and even leaves us rather
embarrassed with the infinite extent which lies beyond our furthest
explorations; so the infinite duration which we, in like manner,
necessarily ascribe to past time, makes it easy for us, so far as our
powers of intellect are concerned, to go millions of millions of years
backwards, in order to trace the beginning of the earth’s
existence—the first step of terrestrial creation.”
To return, however, to the course of the argument. We hear the oppressed
observer asking, as he reascends this “long staircase of natural steps”
which had brought time down to the mystic origin of animal existence;
his eye dimmed with its efforts to “decipher,” in the picturesque
language of Sir David Brewster, “downwards, the pale and perishing
alphabet[23] of the Chronology of Life”—WHERE, ALL THIS WHILE, WAS MAN?
Were Europe at this moment to be submerged beneath the ocean, or placed
under a vast rocky stratum, what countless proofs would present
themselves to the exploring eyes of remote future geologists, of the
existence of both Man and his handiwork!—of his own skeleton, of the
products of his ingenuity and power, and the various implements and
instruments with which he had effected them!
The rudest conceivable work of human art would carry us to any extent
backward, but it is not to be found! Man’s existence and history
incontestably belong to the existing condition of the earth; and the
Essayist now addresses himself to the two following propositions:—
_First_, That the existence and history of man are facts of an Entirely
Different Order from any which existed in any of the previous states of
the earth.
_Secondly_, That his history has occupied a series of years which,
compared with geological periods, may be regarded as very brief and
limited.
Here opens the “Argument from Geology”—and with it Chapter VI.
That the existence of man upon the earth is an event of an order quite
different from any previous part of the earth’s history; and that there
is no transition from animals to MAN, in even his most degraded,
barbarian, and brutish condition, the Essayist demonstrates, with
affecting eloquence, and with great argumentative power. No doubt there
are kinds of animals very intelligent and sagacious, and exceedingly
disposed and adapted to companionship with man; but by elevating the
intelligence of the brute, we do not make it become that of the man; nor
by making man barbarous, do we make him cease to be man. He has a
capacity, not for becoming sagacious, but _rational_,—or rather he has a
capacity for PROGRESS, in virtue of his being rational.
After adverting to Language, as an awful and mysterious evidence of his
exalted endowments, and felicitously distinguishing instinct from
reason, the Essayist observes that we need not be disturbed in our
conclusions by observing the condition of savage and uncultivated
tribes, ancient or modern—the Scythians and Barbarians, the Australians
and Negroes. The history of man, in the earliest times, is as truly a
history of a wonderful, intellectual, social, political, spiritual
creature, as it is at present.[24] The savage and ignorant state is not
the state of nature out of which civilised life has everywhere emerged:
their savage condition is one rather of civilisation degraded and lost,
than of civilisation incipient and prospective. And even were it to be
assumed to be otherwise, that man, naturally savage, had a tendency to
become civilised, that TENDENCY is an endowment no less wonderful than
those endowments which civilisation exhibits.
When, however, we know not only what man is, but what he _may become_,
both intellectually and morally, as we have already seen; when we cast
our mind’s eye over the history of the civilised section of our race,
wherever authentic records of their sayings and doings exist, we find
repeated and radiant instances of intellectual and moral greatness,
rising into sublimity—such as compel us to admit that man is
incomparably the most perfect and highly endowed creature which appears
to have ever existed on the earth.
“How far previous periods of animal existence were a necessary
preparation of the earth as the habitation of man, or a gradual
progression towards the existence of man, we need not now inquire. But
this, at least, we may say, that man, now that he is here, forms a
climax to all that has preceded—a term incomparably exceeding in value
all the previous parts of the series—a complex and ornate capital to
the subjacent column—a personage of vastly greater dignity and
importance than all the preceding line of the procession.”[25]
If we are thus to regard man as the climax of the creation in space, as
in time, “can we point out any characters,” finally asks the Essayist,
“which may tend to make it conceivable that the Creator should thus
distinguish him, and care for him—should prepare his habitation, if it
be so, by ages of chaotic and rudimentary life, and by accompanying orbs
of brute and barren matter? If man be thus the head, the crowned head,
of the creation, is he worthy to be thus elevated? Has he any qualities
which make it conceivable that, with such an array of preparation and
accompaniment”—the reader will note the sudden introduction of these
elements of the question, the “_accompanying orbs!_”—“he should be
placed upon the earth, his throne? Does any answer _now_ occur to us,
after the views which have been presented to us? That answer,” continues
the Essayist, “is the one which has been already given:” “the
transcendent intellectual, moral, and religious character of man—such as
warrants him in believing that God, in very deed, is not only mindful of
him, but visits him.”[26]
This may be, the objector is conceived to say; but my difficulty haunts
and harasses me: that, while man’s residence is, with reference to the
countless glistening orbs revealed by Astronomy, scarcely in the
proportion of a single grain of sand to the entire terraqueous structure
of our globe, I am required to believe that the Almighty has dealt with
him, and with the speck in which he resides, in the awfully exceptional
manner asserted in the Scriptures. Let us here remind the reader of a
coarser, and an insolent and blasphemous, expression of this
“difficulty,” by Thomas Paine, already quoted:—[27]
“The system of a plurality of worlds renders the Christian faith at once
little and ridiculous, and scatters it in the mind like feathers in the
air: the two beliefs cannot be held together in the same mind.” With
such an opponent Dr Whewell expressly states that he has no concern; he
deals with a “‘difficulty’ felt by a friend:” wishing “rather to examine
how to quiet the troubled and perplexed believer, than how to triumph
over the dogmatical and self-satisfied unbeliever.”
“Let the difficulty,” he says, “be put in any way the objector pleases.”
I. Is it that it is unworthy of the greatness and majesty of God,
according to our conception of Him, to bestow such peculiar care on so
SMALL A PART of His creation?[28]
But a narrow inspection of the atom of space assigned to man, proves
that He _has_ done so. He has made the period of mankind, though only a
moment in the ages of animal life, the only period of Intelligence,
Morality, Religion. If it be contrary to OUR! conception of Him, to
suppose Him to have done so, it is plain that these conceptions are
wrong. God has not judged as to what is worthy of Him, as we have
presumed to judge. He has deemed it worthy of Himself to bestow upon man
this special care, though he occupy so small a portion of TIME:—why not,
then, though he occupy so small a portion of SPACE?
II. Is the difficulty this:—That supposing the earth, alone, to be
occupied by inhabitants, all the other globes of the universe are
WASTED?—turned to NO PURPOSE?[29]
Is “waste” of this kind to be considered unsuited to the character of
our Creator? But here again we have the like “waste” in the occupation
of this earth! All its previous ages, its seas and its continents, have
been “wasted” upon mere brute life: often, apparently, on the lowest,
the least conscious forms of life:—upon sponges, coral, shell-fish. Why,
then, should not the seas and continents of other planets be occupied
with life of this order, or with no life at all? Who shall tell how many
ages elapsed before this earth was tenanted by life at all? Will the
occupation of a spot of land, or a little water, by the life of a
sponge, a coral, or an oyster, save it from being “wasted”? If a spot of
rock or water be sufficiently employed by its being the mere seat of
organisation, of however low and simple a type,—why not, by its being
the mere seat of attraction? cohesion? crystalline power? All parts of
the universe appear pervaded by attraction, by forces of aggregation and
atomic relation, by light and heat: why may not these be sufficient, in
the eyes of the Creator, to prevent the space from being “wasted,” as,
during a great part of the earth’s past history, and over vast portions
of its mass in its present form, they are actually held by Him to be
sufficient? since these powers, or forces, are all that occupy such
portions. This notion, therefore, of the improbability of there being in
the universe so vast an amount of “waste” spaces, or “waste” bodies, as
is implied in the notion that the earth alone is the seat of life, or of
intelligence, is confuted by matter-of-fact, existing, in respect of
vast spaces, waste districts, and especially waste times, upon our own
earth. The _avoidance_ of such “waste,” according to our notions of
waste, is no part of the economy of creation, so far as we can discern
that economy in its most certain exemplification.
III. Is the difficulty this:—That giving such a peculiar dignity and
importance to the earth is CONTRARY TO THE ANALOGY OF CREATION?[30]
This objection, be it observed, _assumes_ that there are so many globes
similar to the earth, and like her revolving,—some accompanied as she
is, by satellites,—on their axis, and that therefore it is reasonable to
suppose the destination and office of all, the same;—that there are so
many stars, each, like our sun, a source of light, probably also of
heat; and that it is consequently reasonable to suppose their light and
heat, like his, imparted, as from so many centres of systems, to uphold
life;—and that all this affords strong ground for believing all such
planets, as well those of our own as of other systems, inhabited like
our planet.
But the Essayist again directs the eye of the questioner to the state of
our own planet, as demonstrated by Geology, in order to show the
precariousness, if not futility, of supposing such an analogy to exist.
It would lead us to a palpably false conclusion—viz., that during all
the vast successive periods of the Earth’s history, that Earth was
occupied with life of the same order—nay, even, that since the Earth is
now the seat of an intelligent population, it must have been so in all
its former conditions. For it was then able, and adapted, to support
animal life, and that of creatures pretty closely resembling man[31] in
physical structure. Nevertheless, if evidence go for anything, the Earth
did not do so! “Even,” says Dr Whewell, “those geologists who have dwelt
most on the discovery of fossil monkeys, and other animals nearest to
man, have not dreamed that there existed, before him, a race of
rational, intelligent, and progressive creatures.”[32] Here, however, he
is mistaken, as we shall presently see Sir David Brewster revelling in
such a dream. As, then, the notion that one period of time in the
Earth’s history must resemble another in the character of its
population, because it resembles it in physical conditions, is negatived
by the history of the Earth itself; so the notion that one part _of the
universe_ must resemble another in its population, because it has a
resemblance in physical conditions, is negatived, as a law of creation.
Analogy really affords no support to such a notion.
IV. Nay, continues Dr Whewell,[33] we may go further: instead of the
analogy of creation pointing to such entire resemblance of similar
parts, it points in the opposite direction: it is not entire
resemblance, but universal difference, that we discover: not the
repetition of exactly similar cases, but a series of cases perpetually
dissimilar, presents itself: not constancy, but change—perhaps advance;
not one permanent and pervading scheme, but preparation, and completion
of successive schemes:—not uniformity, and a fixed type of existences,
but progression and a climax.
Viewing the advent of Man, and what preceded it, it seems the analogy of
nature that there should be inferior, as well as superior, provinces in
the universe, and that the inferior may occupy an immensely larger
portion of Time than the superior. Why not, then, of Space?
“The earth was brute and inert, compared with its present condition;
dark and chaotic, so far as the light of reason and intelligence are
concerned, for countless centuries before man was created. Why then
may not other parts of creation be still in this brute and inert and
chaotic state, while the earth is under the influence of a higher
exercise of creative power? If the earth was for ages a turbid abyss
of lava and of mud, why may not Mars or Saturn be so still?... The
possibility that the planets are such rude masses, is quite as
tenable, on astronomical grounds, as the possibility that the planets
resemble the earth, in matters of which astronomy can tell us nothing.
We say, therefore, that the example of geology refutes the argument
drawn from the supposed analogy of one part of the universe with
another; and suggests a strong suspicion that the force of analogy,
better known, may tend _in the opposite direction_.”[34]
We have now gone through a large portion, embracing two of the three
sections into which we had divided this startling _Essay_; presenting as
full and fair an account of it as is consistent with our limits. Though
the author professes that he “does not pretend to disprove the Plurality
of Worlds, but to deny the existence of arguments making the doctrine
probable,” his undisguised object is to assign cogent reasons for
holding the opposite to be the true doctrine—the Unity of the World.
What has gone before is, moreover, on the assumption that the other
bodies of the universe are fitted, equally with the Earth, to be the
abodes of life. Before passing on, however, to the remaining section of
the _Essay_, which is decidedly hostile to that assumption, let us here
introduce on the scene Dr Whewell’s only hitherto avowed antagonist, Sir
David Brewster.
Though it is impossible to treat otherwise than with much consideration,
whatever is published by this gentleman, we must express our regret that
he did not more deliberately approach so formidable an opponent as Dr
Whewell, and, as we are compelled to add, in a more calm and courteous
spirit. We never read a performance less calculated than this _Essay_,
from its modesty and moderation of tone, and the high and abstract
nature of the topics which it discusses with such powerful logic, and
such a profusion of knowledge of every kind, to provoke an acrimonious
answer. It is happily rare, in recent times, for one of two philosophic
disputants, to speak of the other’s “exhibiting an amount of knowledge
so massive as occasionally to smother his reason;”[35] “ascribing his
sentiments only to some morbid condition of the mental powers, which
feeds upon paradox, and delights in doing violence to sentiments deeply
cherished, and to opinions universally believed;”[36] characterising
some of his reasonings as “dialectics in which a large dose of banter
and ridicule is seasoned with a little condiment of science;”[37] and an
elaborate argument, of great strength and originality, whether sound or
not, as “the most ingenious, though shallow piece of sophistry, which
_we!_ (Sir David Brewster) have encountered in modern times;”[38]
referring his “theories and speculations to no better a feeling than a
love of notoriety.”[39] It is not to be supposed that Sir David was not
perfectly aware who his opponent was,[40] which occasions extreme
surprise at the tone adopted throughout _More Worlds than One_. In his
preface, he explains as a cause of his anger, that he found that “the
author” of the _Essay_, “under a title calculated to mislead the public,
had made an elaborate attack upon opinions consecrated, as Sir David had
thought, by reason and revelation,”—that the author had not only adopted
a theory (the Nebular) so universally condemned as a dangerous
speculation, “but had taken a view of the condition of the solar system
calculated to disparage the science of astronomy, and throw a doubt over
the noblest of its truths.” We dismiss this topic with a repetition of
our regret, that so splendid a subject was not approached in a serener
spirit; that greater respect was not shown by one of his contemporaries
for one of the most eminent men of the age; and that sufficient time was
not taken, in order to avoid divers surprising _maculæ_ occurring in
even the composition, and certain rash and unguarded expressions and
speculations.
If Dr Whewell may be regarded as (_pace tanti viri!_) a sort of
Star-Smasher, his opponent is in very truth a Star-Peopler. Though he
admits that “there are some difficulties to be removed, and some
additional analogies to be adduced, before the mind can admit the
startling proposition[41] that the Sun, Moon, and all the satellites,
are inhabited spheres”—yet he believes that they are:[42] that all the
planets of their respective systems are so; as well as all the single
stars, double stars, and nebulæ, with all planets and satellites
circling about them!—though “our _faltering reason utterly fails_ us!”
he owns,[43] “when called on to believe that even the _Nebulæ_ must be
surrendered to life and reason! Wherever there is matter _there must_ be
life!” One can by this time almost pardon the excitement, the alarm
rather, and anger, with which Sir David ruefully beheld Dr Whewell go
forth on his exterminating expedition through Infinitude! It was like a
father gazing on the ruthless slaughter of his offspring. Planet after
planet, satellite after satellite, star after star, sun after sun,
single suns and double suns, system after system, nebula after nebula,
all disappeared before this sidereal Quixote! As for Jupiter and Saturn,
the pet planets of Sir David, they were dealt with in a way perfectly
shocking. The former turned out, to the disordered optics and unsteady
brain of the Essayist, to be a sphere of water, with perhaps a few
cinders at the centre, and peopled “with cartilaginous and glutinous
monsters—boneless, watery, pulpy creatures, floating in the fluid;”
while poor Saturn may be supposed turning aghast on hearing that, for
all his grand appearance, he was little else than a sphere of vapour,
with a little water, tenanted, if at all, by “aqueous, gelatinous
creatures—too sluggish almost to be deemed alive—floating in their
ice-cold waters, shrowded for ever by their humid skies!” But talk after
this of the pensive Moon! “She is a mere cinder! a collection of sheets
of rigid slag, and inactive craters!” This could be borne no longer; so
thus Sir David pours forth the grief and indignation of the Soul
Astronomic, in a passage fraught with the spirit, and embodying the
results, of his whole book, and which we give, as evidently laboured by
the author with peculiar care.
“Those ungenial minds that can be brought to believe that the earth is
the only inhabited body in the universe, will have no difficulty in
conceiving that it also might have been without inhabitants. Nay, if
such minds are imbued with geological truth, they must admit that for
millions of years the earth was without inhabitants; and hence we are
led to the extraordinary result, that for millions of years there was
not an intelligent creature in the vast dominions of the universal
King; and that before the formation of the protozoic strata, there was
neither a plant nor an animal throughout the infinity of space! During
this long period of universal death, when Nature herself was
asleep—the sun, with his magnificent attendants—the planets, with
their faithful satellites—the stars in the binary systems—the solar
system itself, were performing their daily, their annual, and their
secular movements unseen, unheeded, and fulfilling no purpose that
human reason can conceive; lamps lighting nothing—fires heating
nothing—waters quenching nothing—clouds screening nothing—breezes
fanning nothing—and everything around, mountain and valley, hill and
dale, earth and ocean, all meaning nothing.
‘The stars
Did wander darkling in the eternal space.’
To our apprehension, such a condition of the earth, of the solar
system, and of the sidereal universe, would be the same as that of our
own globe if all its vessels of war and of commerce were traversing
its seas with empty cabins and freightless holds; as if all the
railways on its surface were in full activity without passengers and
goods; and all our machinery beating the air and gnashing their iron
teeth without work performed. A house without tenants, a city without
citizens, present to our minds the same idea as a planet without life,
and a universe without inhabitants. Why the house was built, why the
city was founded, why the planet was made, and why the universe was
created, it would be difficult even to conjecture. Equally great would
be the difficulty were the planets shapeless lumps of matter, poised
in ether, and still and motionless as the grave. But when we consider
them as chiselled spheres, and teeming with inorganic beauty, and in
full mechanical activity, performing their appointed motions with such
miraculous precision that their days and their years never err a
second of time in hundreds of centuries, the difficulty of believing
them to be without life is, if possible, immeasurably increased. To
conceive any one material globe, whether a gigantic clod slumbering in
space, or a noble planet equipped like our own, and duly performing
its appointed task, to have no living occupants, or not in a state of
preparation to receive them, seems to us one of those notions which
could be harboured only in an ill-educated and ill-regulated mind—a
mind without faith and without hope: but to conceive a whole universe
of moving and revolving worlds in such a category, indicates, in our
apprehension, a mind dead to feeling and shorn of reason.”[44]
“It is doubtless possible,” observes Sir David, however, a little
further on,[45] as if with a twinge of misgiving, “that the Mighty
Architect of the universe may have had other objects in view,
incomprehensible by us, than that of supporting animal and vegetable
life in these magnificent spheres.” Would that Sir David Brewster would
allow himself to be largely influenced by this rational and devout
sentiment! His book is, on the contrary, crammed with assertions from
beginning to end, and of a peremptory and intolerant character unknown
to the spirit of genuine philosophy.
The Essayist, however, is not incapable of quiet humour: and the
following pregnant passage is at least worthy to stand side by side with
that which we have just quoted from his indignant and eloquent
opponent:—
“Undoubtedly, all true astronomers, taught caution and temperance of
thought by the discipline of their magnificent science, abstain from
founding such assumptions upon their discoveries. They know how
necessary it is to be upon their guard against the tricks which fancy
plays with the senses; and if they see appearances of which they
cannot interpret the meaning, they are content that they should have
no meaning for them, till the due explanation comes. We have
innumerable examples of this wise and cautious temper in all periods
of astronomy. One has occurred lately. Several careful astronomers,
observing the stars by day, had been surprised to see globes of light
glide across the field of view of their telescopes, often in rapid
succession, and in great numbers. They did not, as may be supposed,
rush to the assumption that these globes were celestial bodies of a
new kind, before unseen, and that, from the peculiarity of their
appearance and movement, they were probably inhabited by beings of a
peculiar kind. They proceeded differently. They altered the focus of
their telescopes, looked with other glasses, made various changes and
trials; and finally discovered that these globes of light were the
winged seeds of certain plants, which were wafted through the air, and
which, illuminated by the sun, were made globular by being at
distances unsuited to the focus of the telescopes!”[46]
Before proceeding to give our readers some idea of the mode in which Sir
David Brewster encounters Dr Whewell, let us offer a general observation
concerning both these eminent gentlemen. While the latter exhibits
throughout his Essay a spirit of candour and modesty, without one harsh
expression or uncharitable insinuation with reference to the holder of
doctrines which he is bent upon impugning with all his mental power and
multifarious resources; the former, as we have seen, uses language at
once heated, uncourteous, and unjustifiable: especially where he more
than insinuates that his opponent, whose great knowledge and ability he
admits, either deliberately countenances doctrines tending really to
Atheism, or may be believed “_ignorant_ of their tendency, and to have
forgotten the truths of Inspiration, and even those of Natural
Religion.”[47] To venture, however circuitously, to hint such
imputations upon an opponent whom he had the slightest reason to suspect
being one of such high and responsible academic position, is an offence
equally against personal courtesy and public propriety; as we think Sir
David Brewster would, on reflection, acknowledge. Both Dr Whewell and
Sir David Brewster must excuse us, if, scanning both through the cold
medium of impartial criticism, their speculations, questions, or
assertions appear to us disturbed and deflected by a leading
prepossession or foregone conclusion, which we shall indicate in the
words of each.
Dr WHEWELL.—“The Earth is really the largest Planetary body in the
Solar system; its domestic hearth, and the Only World [_i. e._
collection of intelligent creatures] in the Universe.”[48]
Sir DAVID BREWSTER.—“Life is almost a property of matter.... Wherever
there is Matter, there must be Life:—Life physical, to enjoy its
beauties; Life Moral, to worship its Maker; and Life Intellectual, to
proclaim His wisdom and His power.... Universal Life upon Universal
matter, is an idea to which the mind instinctively clings.... Every
star in the Heavens, and every point in a nebula which the most
powerful telescope has not separated from its neighbour, is a sun
surrounded by inhabited planets like our own.... In peopling such
worlds with life and intelligence, we assign the cause of their
existence; and when the mind is once alive to this great Truth, it
cannot fail to realise the grand combination of infinity of life with
infinity of matter.”[49]
The composition of Sir David Brewster, though occasionally too
declamatory and rhetorical, and so far lacking the dignified simplicity
befitting the subjects with which he deals, has much merit. It is easy,
vivid, and vigorous, but will bear retrenchment, and lowering of tone.
As to the substantial texture of his work, we think it betrays, in
almost every page, haste and impetuosity, and evidence that the writer
has sadly under-estimated the strength of his opponent. Another feature
of _More Worlds than One_, is a manifest desire _provocare ad populum_—a
greater anxiety, in the first instance, to catch the ear of the million,
than to convince the “fit audience, though few.” Now, however, to his
work; and, as we have already said, on him lies the labouring oar of
proof. All that his opponent professes to do, is to ask for arguments
“rendering probable” that “doctrine” which Sir David pledges himself to
demonstrate to be not only the “_hope_” of the Christian, but the
_creed_ of the philosopher: as much, that is, an article of his belief,
as the doctrines of attraction and gravitation, or the existence of
demonstrable astronomical facts.
He commences with a brief introduction, sketching the growth of the
belief in a plurality of worlds—one steadily and firmly increasing in
strength, till it encountered the rude shock of the Essayist, whose
“very remarkable work” is “ably written,” and who “defends ingeniously
his novel and extraordinary views:” “the direct tendency of which is to
ridicule and bring into contempt the grand discoveries in sidereal
astronomy by which the last century has been distinguished.” In his next
chapter, Sir David discusses “the religious aspect of the question,”
representing man, especially the philosopher, as always having pined
after a knowledge of the scene of his future being. He declares that
neither the Old nor the New Testament contains “a single expression
incompatible with the great truth that there are other worlds than our
own which are the seats of life and intelligence;” but, on the contrary,
there are “other passages which are inexplicable without admitting it to
be true.” He regards, as we have seen, the noble exclamation of the
Psalmist, “What is man,” as “a positive argument for a plurality of
worlds;” and “cannot doubt” that he was gifted with a plenary knowledge
of the starry system, inhabited as Sir David would have it to be! Dr
Chalmers, let us remark, in passing, expressed himself differently, and
with a more becoming reserve: “It is not for us to say whether
inspiration revealed to the Psalmist the wonders of the modern
astronomy,” but “even though the mind be a perfect stranger to the
science of these enlightened times, the heavens present a great and an
elevating spectacle, the contemplation of which awakened the piety of
the Psalmist”—a view in which Dr Whewell concurs. Sir David then comes
to consider the doctrine of “Man, in his future state of existence,
consisting, as at present, of a spiritual nature residing in a corporeal
frame.” We must, therefore, find for the race of Adam, “_if not for the
races which preceded him_!”[50] “a material home upon which he may
reside, or from which he may travel to other localities in the
universe.” That house, he says, cannot be the earth, for it will not be
big enough—there will be such a “population as the habitable parts of
our globe could not possibly accommodate;” wherefore, “_we can scarcely
doubt_ that their future abode must be on some of the primary or
secondary planets of the solar system, whose inhabitants have ceased to
exist, like those on the earth; or on planets which have long been in a
state of preparation, as our earth was, for the advent of intellectual
life.” Here, then, is “the creed of the philosopher,” as well as “the
hope of the Christian.” Passing, according to the order adopted in this
paper, from the first chapter (“Religious Aspect of the Question”), we
alight on the seventh, entitled “_Religious Difficulties_.” We entertain
too much consideration for Sir David Brewster to speak harshly of
anything falling from his pen; but we think ourselves justified in
questioning whether this chapter—dealing with speculations of an awful
nature, among which the greatest religious and philosophical intellects
tremble as they “go sounding on their dim and perilous way”—shows him
equal to cope with his experienced opponent, whom every page devoted to
such topics shows to have fixed the DIFFICULTY with which he proposed to
deal, fully and steadily before his eyes, in all its moral,
metaphysical, and philosophical bearings, and to have discussed it
cautiously and reverently. We shall content ourselves with briefly
indicating the course of observation on that “difficulty” adopted by Sir
David Brewster, and leaving it to the discreet reader to form his own
judgment whether Sir David has left the difficulty where he found it, or
removed, lessened, or enhanced it.
Dr Whewell, in his _Dialogue_, thus temperately and effectively deals
with this section of his opponent’s lucubrations:—
“His own solution of the question concerning the redemption of other
worlds appears to be this, that the provision made for the redemption
of man by what took place upon earth eighteen hundred years ago, may
have extended its influence to other worlds.
“In reply to which astronomico-theological hypothesis three remarks
offer themselves: In the first place, the hypothesis is entirely
without warrant or countenance in the revelation from which all our
knowledge of the scheme of redemption is derived; in the second place,
the events which took place upon earth eighteen hundred years ago,
were connected with _a train of events in the history of man_, which
had begun at the creation of man, and extended through all the
intervening ages; and the bearing of this whole series of events upon
the condition of the inhabitants of other worlds must be so different
from its bearing on the condition of man, that the hypothesis needs a
dozen other auxiliary hypotheses to make it intelligible; and, in the
third place, this hypothesis, making the earth, insignificant as it
seems to be in the astronomical scheme, the centre of the theological
scheme, ascribes to the earth a peculiar distinction, quite as much at
variance with the analogies of the planets to one another, as the
supposition that the earth alone is inhabited; to say nothing of the
bearing of the critic’s hypothesis on the other systems that encircle
other suns.”[51]
“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]