“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.
One immense step more, however,—and it is our last, brings to “the
outskirts of creation,” as the Essayist calls it,—the _Nebulæ_: and here
we find him once more confronted by his indefatigable and implacable
opponent. We must therefore take our biggest and best mental telescope
to behold these two Specks intellectual, so far off in infinitude,
wrangling about a faint cloud vastly further off than themselves. Do you
see how angry one of them looks, and how provokingly stolid the other?
’Tis all about the nature of that same cloud, or Nebula; and if we could
only hear what they said, we might catch a chord or two of the music of
the spheres! The Essayist is required, by his brother speck, to believe
that the faintly-luminous patch at which they are gazing—a thousandth
part of the visible breadth of our own Sun—contains in it more life than
exists in as many such systems as the unassisted eye can see stars in
the heavens on the clearest winter night:—a view of the greatness of
creation so stupendous, that the astounded speck, the Essayist, asks for
a moment’s time to consider the matter. “We are entitled to draw the
conclusion,” says the other, “that these _Nebulæ_ are clusters of stars,
at such an immense distance from our own system, that each star of which
they are composed is the sun or centre of a system of planets; and that
these planets are inhabited—like our Earth, the seat of vegetable,
animal, and intellectual life:”[114] that all the Nebulæ are resolvable
into stars; and appear as Nebulæ only because they are more distant than
the region in which they can appear as stars.[115] The conclusion,
however, at which the Essayist arrives, after an elaborate examination
of evidence, and especially of the latest discoveries in this dim and
distant region by Sir John Herschell and the Earl of Rosse, is—that
“Nebulæ are vast masses of incoherent or gaseous matter, of immense
tenuity, diffused in forms more or less irregular, but all of them
destitute of any regular system of solid moving bodies.... So far,
then,” he concludes, “as these Nebulæ are concerned, the improbability
of _their_ being inhabited appears to amount to the highest point that
can be conceived. We may, by the indulgence of fancy, people the summer
clouds, or the beams of the aurora borealis, with living beings of the
same kind of substance as those bright appearances themselves; and in
doing so, we are not making any bolder assertion than when we stock the
Nebulæ with inhabitants, and call them, in that sense, inhabited
worlds.”[116] The Essayist contends that the argument for the vastness
of the scheme of the Universe, suggested by the resolution of the
Nebulæ, is found to be untenable:—inasmuch as the greatest astronomers
now agree in believing Nebulæ to have _distances of the same order_ as
Fixed Stars. Their filmy appearance is a true indication of a highly
attenuated substance: so attenuated as to destroy all probability of
their being inhabited worlds. With this opinion as to the tenuity of
Nebulæ agrees the absence of all _observed_ motion among their parts;
while the extraordinary spiral arrangement of many of them, prove that
nevertheless many of them really _have_ motion, and suggests modes of
calculating their tenuity, and showing how extreme it is. “It is
probable,” said Lord Rosse, in a paper which we ourselves heard him read
not long ago, from the chair of the Royal Society, “that in the Nebular
systems, motion exists. If we see a system with a distinct spiral
arrangement, all analogy leads us to conclude that there has been
motion; and that if there has been motion, that motion still
continues.”... “Among the Nebulæ,” he says, “there are vast numbers,
much too faint to be sketched or measured with any prospect of
advantage: the most powerful instruments we possess showing in them
nothing of an organised structure, but merely a confused mass of
nebulosity, of varying brightness.”[117] The Essayist makes powerful
use, moreover, of Sir John Herschell’s celebrated observation of the
Magellanic Clouds, lying near the South Pole; exhibiting the
coexistence, in a limited compass, and in indiscriminate position, of
stars, clusters of stars, nebulæ regular and irregular, and nebular
streaks and patches, things different not merely to us, but in
themselves: nebulæ, side by side with stars and clusters of stars;
nebulous matter resolvable, close to nebulous matter irresolvable;—the
last and widest step by which the dimensions of the Universe have been
expanded, in the notions of eager speculators, being checked by a
completer knowledge, and a sager spirit of speculation.[118] In
discussing such matters as these, he finely observes—“It is difficult to
make men feel that so much ignorance can lie close to so much knowledge;
to make them believe that they have been allowed to discover so much,
and yet are not allowed to discover more.”[119]
In alluding to the Nebulæ, as subjects of our most powerful telescopic
observation, the Essayist speaks in a tone of sarcasm concerning the
“_shining dots_,”—the “_lumps of light_” which are rendered apparent
amidst them: asking, what are these lumps? (1.) How large? (2.) At what
distances? (3.) Of what structure? (4.) Of what use?—adding, he must be
a bold man who undertakes to answer the question, that each is a Sun,
with attendant systems of planets. Sir David, exceedingly irate, says,
“We accept the challenge, and appeal to our readers:”—(1.) The size of
the dot, or lump, is large enough to be a Sun. (2.) He cannot answer
this, for want of knowing ‘the apparent distance between the centres of
the dots.’ (3.) Like our Sun—‘It will consist of a luminous envelope,
enclosing a dark nucleus.’ (4.) Of no conceivable use, but to give light
to planets, or to the solid _nuclei_ of which they consist. In his turn,
he asks the Essayist—what is the size, distance, structure, and use of
the dots, upon his hypothesis? The Essayist, he observes, is
silent;[120] but in his Essay, he had said, distinctly enough, “Let us
not wrangle about words. By all means let these dots be stars, if we
know about what we are speaking: if a star mean, merely, a luminous dot
in the sky. But that these stars shall resemble, in their nature, Stars
of the First Magnitude, and that such stars shall resemble Our Sun, are
surely very bold structures of assumption, to build on such a basis.
Some nebulæ are resolvable into distinct points: but what would it
amount to? That the substance of all nebulæ is not continuous; separate,
and separable into distinct luminous elements:—nebulæ are, it would then
seem, as it were of a curdled or granulated texture; they have run into
_lumps_ of light, or been formed originally of such lumps.” And then
follow some very ingenious and refined speculations, into which we have
not space to enter; and indeed we may be well content with what we have
done, having travelled from a tolerable depth in the crust of our own
little planet, past planet after planet, star after star, till we
reached the nebulous “outskirts of creation;” accompanied by two Mentors
of Infinitude,—whispering into our ear—one, that life, animal,
intellectual, moral, was swarming around us at every step; the other,
that that life ceased with our own Earth, as far as we were able to
detect its existence, and giving us very solemn and mysterious reasons
why it should be so.
Our Essayist, however, is not exhausted by the efforts he has made in
his destructive career. If he be a “proud setter down” of cosmological
systems, he determines, in turn, to be a “putter up:” and so presents us
with his own _Theory of the Solar System_; and an explanation of the
mode in which all appearances in the Universe beyond may be reconciled
with it. “It may serve” he says, “to confirm his argument, if he give a
description of the system which shall continue and connect his views of
the constitution and peculiarities as to physical circumstances of each
of the planets. It will help us in our speculation, if we can regard the
planets as not only a collection, but a scheme;—if we can give not an
Enunciation only, but a Theory. Now, such a SCHEME, such a THEORY,
appears to offer itself to us.”[121] The scope of this scheme, or
theory, is, as we some time ago saw, to make our earth, in point of
astronomical fact and reality, the largest Planetary Body in the solar
system; its domestic hearth; the only part of the frame revolving round
the Sun which has become a “WORLD.” We must, however, make short work of
it.
The planets exterior to Mars—especially Jupiter and Saturn—appear
spheres of water, or aqueous vapour. The Earth has a considerable
atmosphere of air and of vapour; while on Venus or Mercury—so close to
the sun—we see nothing of a gaseous or aqueous atmosphere; they and Mars
differing little in density from the earth.
THE EARTH’S ORBIT, according to the Essayist’s theory, IS THE TEMPERATE
ZONE OF THE SOLAR SYSTEM, where only the play of hot and cold, moist and
dry, is possible. Water and gases, clouds and vapours, form, mainly, the
planets in the outer part of the solar system; while masses, such as
result from the fusion of the most solid materials, lie nearer the Sun,
and are found principally within the orbit of Jupiter. After a further
exposition of his “theory,” the Essayist observes that it agrees with
the nebular hypothesis, SO FAR as it applies to the _Solar System_;
exactly, and very sternly, repudiating that hypothesis as it applies to
the Universe in general.[122] “If we allow ourselves,” says he, “to
speculate _at all_ on physical grounds respecting the origin of the
Earth, the hypothesis, that it has passed through a fluid and a gaseous
condition, does not appear more extravagant than any other cosmogonical
hypothesis: not even if we suppose that the other bodies of the Solar
System have shared in the like changes. _But_, that all the stars and
the nebulæ have gone, or are going through, a series of changes such as
those by which the Solar System has been formed,—the nebular hypothesis,
as it applies to the _Universe_ in general, is precisely the doctrine
which I here reject, giving my reasons.”[123]
The whole of the Chapter devoted to “the Theory of the Solar System,” is
distinguished by remarkable ingenuity and originality. It is, however,
that entitled _the Argument from Design_, which, independently of all
connection with the speculations of the author as already laid before
our readers, is worthiest of consideration, by all interested in Natural
Theology. It touches many topics which must have occupied the
profoundest thoughts of mankind, and touches them with the utmost
caution and delicacy. In the 34th Section will be found a passage of
singular boldness and imaginative eloquence; but liable, in our opinion,
to serious misconception, and susceptible of misrepresentation—by those,
at least, who are either unable, or indisposed, to weigh the entire
chapter, and ascertain its real value and tendency. Some expressions
have startled us not a little, when reflecting that they relate to the
possible mode of action of Omniscient Omnipotence; and we shall be
gratified by seeing them vindicated or explained in the next edition of
his “Essay.”
Each of our speculators closes his book with a chapter devoted to “The
Future.” The ideas of Sir David concerning the duration of the human
race upon the earth (which Inspiration tells us is so awfully uncertain,
and will be cut short suddenly—in a moment—in _the twinkling of an
eye_), seem to be curiously definite; for we have seen that in his sixth
chapter he states that “from the birth of man to the extinction of his
race, the Solar System to which he belongs will have described but an
infinitesimal arc in that grand cosmical orbit in which it is destined
to move.” Without pausing to ask who told him this, let us intimate,
that in his final chapter he says that the scientific truths on which
depends the plurality of worlds are intimately associated with the
future destiny of man: he turns to the future of the sidereal systems,
as the hallowed spots in which is to be spent his immortal existence.
Scripture has not spoken articulately of the future locality of the
blest; but Reason has combined the scattered utterances of Inspiration,
and with an almost oracular voice declared that the Maker of the worlds
will place _in these_ the beings of his choice. In what region, reason
does not determine; but it is _impossible_ for man, with the light of
Revelation as his guide, to doubt for a moment that on the celestial
spheres his future is to be spent in lofty inquiries; social
intercourse; the renewal of domestic ties; and in the service of his
Almighty benefactor. The Christian’s future, not defined in his creed,
enwrapt in apocalyptic mysteries, evades his grasp: it is only Astronomy
that opens the mysterious expanse of the Universe to his eye, and
creates an intelligible paradise in the world to come: wherefore, says
Sir David, we must impregnate the popular mind with the truths of
natural science; teaching them in every school, and recommending, if not
illustrating, them from every pulpit: fixing in the minds and
associating in the affections, alike of age and youth, the great truths
in the planetary and sidereal universe, on which the doctrine of More
Worlds than One must respectively rest—the philosopher scanning with a
new sense the sphere in which he is to study; and the Christian the
temples in which he is to worship.—Such, in his own words, is Sir David
Brewster’s final and authoritative exposition of the CREED of the
philosopher, and the HOPE of the Christian:—of such a nature are to be
the _new heavens and the new earth wherein dwelleth righteousness_; and
such, henceforth, as he has indicated, becomes the duty of the Christian
teacher in the Family, in the School, in the Pulpit! So absolutely and
irrefragably, it seems, are demonstrated the stupendous facts of
astronomical science on which this Creed and this Faith depend: so
unerring are our telescopes and other instruments, that he who does not
receive this “Creed” is no philosopher, nor he who rejects the “Hope” a
Christian. But, in the mean time, how inconceivably embarrassing to such
a philosopher, and to such a Christian, is the possibility that many, or
a few years hence, such immense improvements may be made in telescopes,
or in other modes of acquiring a knowledge of the celestial structures,
as to demonstrate to the sense, as well as reason, of us impatient and
presumptuous tenants of the earth, that the planets are _not_ inhabited!
that the fixed stars are not suns, and have not a planet a piece—no, not
even a solitary planet among them! Thus rendering our astounded and
dismayed philosopher homeless and creedless, and the Christian helpless
and hopeless:—the former one of those who _professing themselves to be
wise become fools_;[124] the latter, _likened unto a foolish man which
built his house upon the sand_.[125]
The “_Future_” of the Essayist is of a different kind, and adumbrated
with becoming humility and diffidence. “I did not,” he says, “venture
further than to intimate, that when we are taught, that _as we have
borne the image of the Earthy, we shall also bear the image of the
Heavenly_, we may find, in even natural science, reasons for opening our
minds to the reception of the cheering and elevating announcement.”[126]
We have now placed before our readers the substance of the arguments for
and against a plurality of worlds, so far as developed in the essays of
Dr Whewell and Sir David Brewster. The former is a work so replete with
subtle thought, bold speculation, and knowledge of almost every kind,
used with extraordinary force and dexterity, as to challenge the patient
and watchful attention of the most thoughtful reader; and that whether
he be, or be not, versed in astronomical speculations. Great as are the
power and resources of the author, we detect no trace of dogmatism or
arrogance, but, on the contrary, a true spirit of fearless, but patient
and candid, inquiry. It is a mighty problem of which he proposes a
solution, and he does no more than propose it: in his Preface declaring
that, to himself at least, his arguments “appear to be of no small
philosophical force, though he is quite ready to weigh carefully and
candidly any answer which may be offered to them.”
We feel grateful to the accomplished Essayist for the storehouse of
authentic facts, and the novel combination of inferences from them, with
which he has presented us; and we are not aware that he has given us
just reason to regret confiding in his correctness or candour. And in
travelling with him through his vast and chequered course, we feel that
we have accompanied not only the philosopher and the divine, but the
gentleman: one who, while manifestly knowing what is due to himself, as
manifestly respects his intelligent reader. In several of his
astronomical assumptions and inferences we may be unable to concur,
particularly in respect of the nebulous stars. We may also well falter
at expressing a decisive “Aye” or “No,” to the great question proposed
by him for discussion, on scientific grounds, and independently of
Scriptural Revelation; yet we acknowledge that he has sensibly shaken
our opinion as to the validity of the reasons usually assigned for
believing in a plurality of worlds. He remorselessly ties us down to
EVIDENCE, as he ought to do; and all the more rigorously, because the
affirmative conclusion, at which many heedless persons are disposed to
jump, is one which, if well founded, occasions religious difficulties of
a grave character among the profoundest and perhaps even devoutest
thinkers. To suppose that Omnipotence may not have peopled already, or
contemplate a future peopling of the starry spheres with intelligent
beings, of as different a kind and order as it is possible for our
limited faculties to conceive, yet in some way involved in physical
conditions, altogether inexplicable to us, would be the acme of impious
presumption. When we look at Sirius, in his solitary splendour in the
midnight sky, pouring forth _possibly_ fifty times the light and heat of
our sun, upon a prodigiously greater planetary system than our own, it
is natural to conjecture whether, among many other _possibilities_, it
may be the seat of intelligence, perhaps of a transcendent character.
Here the imagination may disport itself as it pleases: yet we shall feel
ourselves compelled—those who can _think_ about the matter—to own, that
our imaginations are, as it were, “cabined, cribbed, confined,” by the
objects and associations to which we are at present restricted; and as
the late eminent Prussian astronomer, Bessel, observed, those who
imagine inhabitants in the moon and planets, “supposed them, in spite of
all their protestations, as like to _men_, as one egg to another.” But
when we proceed further, and insist on likening these supposed
inhabitants to ourselves, intellectually and morally, then it is that
both philosophy and religion concur in rebuking us, and enjoining a
reverent diffidence. We have probably read as much on these subjects as
many of our readers, and that with deep interest and attention; but we
never met with so cogent a demonstration as is contained in this Essay,
of the theological difficulties besetting the popular doctrine of a
plurality of worlds. Had God vouchsafed to tell us that it was so, there
would have been an end of the matter, and with it all difficulty would
have disappeared, to one whose whole life, as the Christian’s ought to
be, is one continued act of faith; but God has thought fit to preserve
an awful silence concerning his dealings with other scenes of physical
existence: while He has as distinctly revealed that of spiritual beings
whose functions are vitally connected with man, as he exists upon the
earth, the subject of a sublime economy, which, we are assured by
Inspiration, that _the angels desire to look into_. The Christian
implicitly believes that there IS a HEAVEN, where the presence of the
adorable Deity constitutes happiness, to the most exalted of His
ministers and servants, perfect and ineffable: happiness in which He has
solemnly assured us that we may hereafter participate: _for since the
beginning of the world, men have not heard, nor perceived by the ear,
neither hath the eye seen, O God, beside Thee, what He hath prepared for
him that waiteth for Him_.[127] This, our Maker has told us; he has not
told us the other, nor anything about it: no, not when He visited the
earth, unless we can dimly see such a significance in the words, “In my
Father’s house (οἰκίᾳ) are many _mansions_ (μοναι): if it were not so, I
would have told you. I go to prepare a place (τόπον) for you.” The word
μονη is used twice in the New Testament, and in the same chapter:[128]
in the verse already quoted, and in the 23d—“If a man love me, he will
keep my words: and my Father will love him, and we will come unto him,
and make our abode (μονὴν) with him.” Here are the three words in the
same verse, οἰκια, μονη, τοπος. In my Father’s house there are μοναὶ
πολλαὶ, many places of _abode_. Heaven is the οικια, our common place,
and it has many subdivisions, room enough for angels, as well as for the
spirits of just men made perfect. It is possibly an allusion to the
temple, God’s earthly house, which had many chambers in it. But who
shall require us to believe that this μονη, was a star, or planet? It
may be so, it may not; there can be no sin in a devout mind conjecturing
on the subject; but the Essayist does not meddle with these solemn
topics: confining himself to the physical reasons for conjecturing, with
more or less probability, that the stars are habitations for human
beings. We take our leave of him with a quotation from his Dialogue,
couched in grave and dignified terms:—
“_U._ But your arguments are merely negative. You prove only that we
do not know the planets to be inhabited.
“_Z._ If, when I have proved that point, men were to cease to talk as
if they knew that the planets _are_ inhabited, I should have produced
a great effect.
“_U._ Your basis is too narrow for so vast a superstructure, as that
all the rest of the universe, besides the earth, is uninhabited.
“_Z._ Perhaps; for my philosophical basis is only the earth—the only
known habitation. But on this same narrow basis, the earth, you build
up a superstructure that other bodies ARE inhabited. What I do is, to
show that each part of your structure is void of tenacity, and cannot
stand.
“It is probable that when we have reduced to their real value all the
presumptions drawn from physical reasoning, for the opinion of planets
and stars being either inhabited, or uninhabited, the face of these
will be perceived to be so small, that _the belief of all thoughtful
persons on this subject will be determined by moral, metaphysical, and
theological consideration_.”[129]
“More Worlds than One” will not, we are constrained to say, in our
opinion, add to the well-earned reputation of Sir David Brewster. It is
a hasty and slight performance, entirely of a popular character; and
disfigured throughout, not only by an overweening confidence and
peremptoriness of assertion, but by tinges of personality and outbursts
of heat that are indeed strange disturbing forces in a philosophical
discussion. Dr Whewell’s Essay is a work requiring, in a worthy answer,
great consideration; and we do not think that “More Worlds than One”
evidences a tithe of such consideration. Nor does Sir David show a
proper respect for his opponent; nor has he taken a proper measure of
his formidable proportions as a logical and scientific disputant, one
who should be answered in a cold and exact spirit; or it were much
better to leave him alone. Sir David must forgive us if we quote a
sentence or two from devout old John Wesley, a man who had several
points of greatness in him:—
“Be not so _positive_, especially with regard to things which are
neither easy, nor necessary to be determined. When I was young, I was
_sure_ of everything. In a few years, having been mistaken a thousand
times, I was not half so sure of most things as before. At present, I
am hardly sure of anything, but what God has revealed to me!... Upon
the whole, an ingenious man may easily flourish on this head. How much
more glorious is it for the great God to have created innumerable
worlds than this little globe only!... Do you ask, then, what is This
Spot to the great God? Why, as much as millions of systems. GREAT and
LITTLE have place with regard to us; but before Him, they vanish
away!”[130]
Fontenelle has much to answer for, if we may judge from what has been
said concerning the extent and nature of the influence he has exercised
on thoughtless minds. That flippant but brilliant trifler, Horace
Walpole, for instance, declared that the reading Fontenelle had made him
a sceptic! He maintained, on the supposition of a plurality of worlds,
the impossibility of any revelation! That the reception of this opinion
was sufficient, with him, to destroy the credibility of all
revelation![131] This ground he has, if this report be true, the honour
of occupying with Thomas Paine.
Let us, however, think and speak and act differently, remembering
fearfully, how often _the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God_.
Is it, indeed, consistent with even mere worldly wisdom, on the ground
of an assumption with regard to inhabited planets, to reject a belief
founded on direct and positive proofs, such as is the belief in the
truths of Natural and Revealed Religion?
“Newton,” says Dr Chalmers, in his discourse on the Modesty of True
Science, “knew the boundary which hemmed him. He knew that he had not
thrown one particle of light on the moral or religious history of
these planetary regions. He had not ascertained what visits of
communication they received from the God who upholds them. But he knew
that the fact of a Real Visit to THIS PLANET had such evidence to rest
upon that it was not to be disposted by any aerial imagination.” Let
this noble and devout spirit be in us: both Faith and Reason assuring
us, that we stand, in Scriptural Truth, safe and immovable, like _a
wise man, which built his house upon a rock_.[132]