WALSWOirP 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
 OF THE 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 Mrs. SARAH P. WALS WORTH. 
 
 Received October, 1894. 
 Accessions No.. ^7// . Class No._ 
 
MORE WORLDS THAN ONE 
 
 THE CREED OF THE PHILOSOPHER 
 AND THE HOPE OF THE CHRISTIAN. 
 
 SIR DAVID BREWSTER, K. H., D. C. L. 
 
 T. R. S., V. P. R. S., EDIN., AND ASSOCIATE OF THE INSTITUTE OF FRANCE, 
 
 Bright star of eve, that send st thy softening ray 
 Through the dim twilight of this nether sky, 
 I hail thy beam like rising of the day, 
 Hast thou a home for me when I shall die ? 
 
 1 Is .Tiere a spot within thy radiant sphere, 
 Where love, and faith, and truth, again may dwell ; 
 Where I may seek the rest I find not here, 
 And clasp the cherished forms I loved so well ?" 
 
 NEW YORK: 
 ROBERT CARTER & BROTHERS, 
 
 No. 285 BROADWAY. 
 1854. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 PEEFACE, v 
 
 INTRODUCTION, 7 
 
 CHAP. I. Religious Aspect of the Question, . . 15 
 
 II. Description of the Solar System, . . 26 
 
 III. The Geological Condition of the Earth, . 43 
 
 IV. Analogy between the Earth and the other 
 
 Planets, 61 
 
 V. The Sun, Moon, Satellites, and Asteriods, . 94 
 VI. The Motion of the Solar System round a 
 
 distant Centre, 116 
 
 VII. Religious Difficulties, 131 
 
 VIII. Single Stars and Binary Systems, , ,162 
 IX. Clusters of Stars and Nebulas, . . .173 
 
 X. General Summary, 1 84 
 
 XI. Reply to Objections drawn from Geology, . 204 
 XII. Objections from the Nature of Nebulae, . 215 
 
 XIII. Objections from the Nature of the Fixed 
 
 Stars and Binary Systems, . . . 225 
 
 XIV. Objections from the Nature of the Planets, 239 
 XV. The Future of the Universe, . . .259 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 Having been requested by the Editor of the 
 North British Review to give an account of a work 
 entitled Of a Plurality of Worlds, an Essay, I under 
 took the task, in the belief that it contained senti 
 ments similar to my own, and that I should have 
 the gratification of illustrating and recommending a 
 doctrine which had long been the creed of the Phi 
 losopher, and the hope of the Christian. I was sur 
 prised, however, to find that, under a title calculated 
 to mislead the public, the author had made an elab 
 orate attack upon opinions consecrated, as I had 
 thought, by Eeason and Revelation; and had, in 
 concluding his argument, not only adopted the Neb 
 ular Theory, so universally condemned as a danger 
 ous speculation, but had taken a view of the condif 
 tion of the Solar System, calculated to disparage the 
 science of Astronomy, and to throw a doubt over 
 the noblest of its truths. 
 
yi PKKFACE. 
 
 Under ordinary circumstances I should have con 
 tented myself with such an analysis and criticism 
 of the work as could be given within the narrow 
 limits of a Review ; but while the boldness of the 
 author s speculations, and the ingenuity with which 
 they were maintained, required a more elaborate 
 examination of them, the new views which present 
 ed themselves to me during the study of the subject, 
 demanded a copious detail of facts which could be 
 given only in a separate Treatise. I have, therefore, 
 devoted the principal part of the volume to a state 
 ment of the arguments in favor of a Plurality of 
 Worlds, and have endeavored, in the subsequent 
 chapters, to answer the various objections urged 
 against it by the author of the Essay, and to exam 
 ine the grounds upon which he has attempted to es 
 tablish the extraordinary doctrine, " that the Earth 
 is really the largest planetary body in the Solar 
 System, its domestic hearth, and the only world 
 in the Universe !" 
 
 ST. LEONARD S COLLEGE, ST. ANDREWS, 
 April 25th, 1854. 
 
MORE WORLDS THAN ONE. 
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 THERE is no subject within the whole range 
 of knowledge so universally interesting as that 
 of a Plurality of Worlds. It commands the 
 sympathies, and appeals to the judgment of men 
 of all nations, of all creeds, and of all times ; and 
 no sooner do we comprehend the few simple 
 facts on which it rests, than the mind rushes 
 instinctively to embrace it. Before the great 
 truths of Astronomy were demonstrated before 
 the dimensions and motions of the planets were 
 ascertained, and the fixed stars placed at incon 
 ceivable distances from the system to which we 
 belong, philosophers and poets descried in the 
 celestial spheres the abode of the blest ; but it 
 was not till the form and size and motions of 
 
8 IJSTTKODUCTION. 
 
 the earth were known, and till the condition 
 of the other planets was found to be the same, 
 that analogy compelled us to believe that these 
 planets must be inhabited like our own. 
 
 Although this opinion was maintained inci 
 dentally by various writers both on astronomy 
 and natural religion, yet M. Fontenelle, Secre 
 tary to the Academy of Sciences in Paris, was 
 the first individual who wrote a work expressly 
 on the subject. It was published in 1686, the 
 year before Sir Isaac Newton gave his immor 
 tal work, the Principia, to the world. It was 
 entitled Conversations on the Plurality of Worlds, 
 and consisted of five chapters with the follow 
 ing titles : 
 
 1. The Earth is a planet which turns round 
 its own axis and also round the sun. 
 
 2. The Moon is a habitable world. 
 
 3. Particulars concerning the world in the 
 Moon, and that the other planets are also in 
 habited. 
 
 4. Particulars of the worlds of Venus, Mer 
 cury, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn. 
 
 5. The Fixed Stars are as many Suns, each 
 of which illuminates a world. 
 
INTRODUCTION. 9 
 
 In another edition of the work published in 
 1719, Fontenelle added a sixth chapter, entitled, 
 
 6. New thoughts which confirm those in the 
 preceding conversations. The latest discoveries 
 which have been made in the heavens. 
 
 This singular work, written by a man of great 
 genius, and with a sufficient knowledge of as 
 tronomy, excited a high degree of interest, both 
 from the nature of the subject and the vivacity 
 and humor with which it is written. The con 
 versations are carried on with the Marchioness 
 
 of G , with whom the author is supposed to 
 
 be residing. The lady is, of course, distinguished 
 by youth, beauty, and talent, and the share 
 which she takes in the dialogue is not less in 
 teresting than the more scientific part assumed 
 by the philosopher. 
 
 The Plurality of Worlds, as the work was 
 called, was read with unexampled avidity, and 
 was speedily circulated through every part of 
 Europe. It was translated into all the lan 
 guages of the Continent, and was honored by 
 annotations from the pen of the celebrated as 
 tronomer La Lande, and of M. Gottsched, one of 
 its German editors. No fewer than three English 
 
10 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 translations of it were published, and one of 
 these, we believe the first, had run through six 
 editions so early as the year 1737. Wherever 
 it was read it was admired, and though one 
 hundred and sixty-seven years have elapsed since 
 its publication, we have not been able to learn 
 that any attempt has been made, during that 
 long period, either to ridicule or controvert the 
 fascinating doctrines which it taught. 
 
 A few years after the publication of Fonte- 
 nelle s work, the celebrated philosopher Chris 
 tian Huygens, the contemporary of Newton, and 
 the discoverer of the ring and the satellites of Sat 
 urn, composed a work on the Plurality of Worlds, 
 under the title of the Theory of the Universe, or 
 Conjectures concerning the Celestial Bodies and 
 their Inhabitants* This interesting treatise, as 
 large as that of Fontenelle, has never been trans 
 lated into English. It was written at the age 
 of sixty-seven, a short time before the author s 
 death, and so great was the interest which he 
 felt in its publication, that he earnestly besought 
 his brother to carry his wishes into effect. He 
 
 * Cosmotheuros sive de Terris Celestibus, earumque ornatu conjec- 
 turae, ad Constantinum Hugenium Fratrem, Gulielmo iii. Magnae Britan- 
 iiia3 Regi a Secretis. Hugenii Opera, torn. ii. pp. 645-722. 
 
INTRODUCTION. 11 
 
 mentions the great pleasure he had derived from 
 the composition of it, and from the communica 
 tion of his views to his friends. About to enter 
 the world of the future, the philosopher who had 
 added new planets to our system, and discovered 
 the most magnificent and incomprehensible of 
 its bodies, looked forward with interest to a 
 solution of the mysteries which it had been the 
 business and the happiness of his life to con 
 template. He was anxious that his fellow* men 
 should derive the same pleasure from viewing 
 the planets as the seat of intellectual life, and 
 he left them his Theory of the Universe a 
 legacy worthy of his name. 
 
 The Oosmotheoros is a work essentially differ 
 ent from that of Fontenelle. It is didactic and 
 dispassionate, deducing by analogical reasoning 
 a variety of views respecting the plants and 
 animals in the planets, and the general nature 
 and condition of their inhabitants. The work 
 is to some extent a popular Treatise on Astron 
 omy, and contains all that was at that time 
 known respecting the primary and secondary 
 planets of the solar system. 
 
 We are not acquainted with any other work 
 
12 MORE WORLDS THAN ONE. 
 
 written expressly on the subject of a Plurality 
 of Worlds, but the doctrine was maintained by 
 almost all the distinguished astronomers and 
 writers who have flourished since the true figure 
 of the earth was determined. Giordano Bruno 
 of Nola,* Kepler and Tycho believed in it ; and 
 Cardinal Cusa and Bruno, before the discovery 
 of binary systems among the stars, believed also 
 that the stars were inhabited. In more modern 
 times Dr. Bentley, Master of Trinity College, 
 Cambridge, in his eighth sermon on the Confu 
 tation of Atheism from the origin and frame of 
 the world, f has maintained the same doctrine, 
 and in our own day we may number among its 
 supporters the distinguished names of Sir Wil 
 liam and Sir John Herschel, Dr. Chalmers, 
 Isaac Taylor, and M. Arago. 
 
 Under these circumstances the scientific world 
 has been greatly surprised at the appearance of 
 a work entitled Of ike Plurality of Worlds, the 
 object of which is to prove that our earth is the 
 only inhabited world in the universe, while its 
 direct tendency is to ridicule and bring into 
 
 * Iti his work entitled Universo c Mondi innumcrabili. 
 t This sermon was written from the information given him by Sir Isaac 
 Newton in his four celebrated letters addressed to Dr. Bentley. 
 
INTRODUCTION. 13 
 
 contempt the grand discoveries in sidereal astron 
 omy by which, the last century has been dis 
 tinguished. Although it is not probable that a 
 work of this kind, however ably it is written, 
 and however ingenious may be the reasoning by 
 which views so novel and extraordinary are 
 defended, will influence opinions long and 
 deeply cherished, we have thought it necessary, 
 in defence of astronomical truth, as well as of 
 the lessons which it teaches, to defend the doc 
 trine of a Plurality of Worlds by the aid of 
 modern discoveries, and to analyze and refute 
 the objections which have been made to it in 
 the very remarkable work to which we have 
 referred. 
 
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CHAPTEE I. 
 
 KELIGIOUS ASPECT OF THE QUESTION. 
 
 BEFOEE Christianity shed its light upon the 
 world, the philosopher who had no other guide 
 but reason, looked beyond the grave for a rest 
 ing-place from his labors, as well as for a solu 
 tion of the mysteries which perplexed him. 
 Minds, too, of an inferior order, destined for 
 immortality, and conscious of their destination, 
 instinctively pried into the future, cherishing 
 visions of another world with all the interests 
 of domestic affection, and with all the curiosity 
 which the study of nature inspires. Interesting 
 as has been the past history of our race, en 
 grossing as must ever be the present, the 
 future, more exciting still, mingles itself with 
 every thought and sentiment, and casts its 
 beams of hope, or its shadows of fear, over the 
 stage both of active and contemplative life. In 
 
16 MORE WORLDS THAN ONE 
 
 youth we scarcely descry it in the distance. To 
 the stripling and the man it appears and dis 
 appears like a variable star, showing in painful 
 succession its spots of light and of shade. In 
 age it looms gigantic to the eye, full of chas 
 tened hope and glorious anticipation ; and at 
 the great transition when the outward eye is 
 dim, the image of the future is the last picture 
 which is effaced from the retina of the mind. 
 
 But however universal has been the antici 
 pation of the future, and however powerful its 
 influence over the mind, Eeason did not venture 
 to give a form and locality to its conceptions ; and 
 the imagination, even with its loosest reins, failed 
 in the attempt. Before the birth of Astronomy, 
 indeed, when our knowledge of space terminat 
 ed with the ocean or the mountain range that 
 bounded our view, the philosopher could but 
 place his elysium in the sky ; and even when 
 revelation had unveiled the house of many man 
 sions, the Christian sage could but place his 
 future home in the new heavens and in the new 
 earth of his creed. Thus vaguely shadowed 
 forth, thus seen as through a glass darkly, the 
 future even of the Christian, though a reality 
 
RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF THE QUESTION. 17 
 
 to his faith, was but a dream to his reason; 
 and in vain did he inquire what this future was 
 to be in its physical relations,- in what region 
 of space it was to be spent, what duties and 
 pursuits were to occupy it, and what intellec 
 tual and spiritual gifts were to be its portion. 
 But when Science taught us the past history of 
 our earth, its form, and size, and motions, when 
 Astronomy surveyed the solar system, and meas 
 ured its planets, and pronounced the earth to 
 be but a tiny sphere, and to have no place of 
 distinction among its gigantic compeers, and 
 when the Telescope established new systems of 
 worlds far beyond the boundaries of our own, 
 the future of the sage claimed a place through 
 out the universe, and inspired him with an 
 interest in worlds, and systems of worlds, in 
 life without limits, as well as in life without 
 end. On eagles wings he soared to the zenith, 
 and sped his way to the horizon of space, with 
 out reaching its ever-retiring bourne ; and in 
 the infinity of worlds, and amid the infinity of 
 life, he descried the home and the companions 
 of the future. 
 
 That these views are in accordance with the 
 2* 
 
18 MORE WORLDS THAN ONE. 
 
 demonstrated truths of astronomy, and deduei- 
 ble from them by analogies which guide us in 
 the ordinary business of life, it will be the ob 
 ject of this Essay to show. But before entering 
 upon the astronomical and geological details 
 which will thus demand our attention, some 
 preliminary observations are necessary to pre 
 pare our minds for the unfettered discussion of 
 a subject which is still surrounded with many 
 prejudices. 
 
 In advocating a plurality of worlds, we are 
 fortunately in a more favored position than 
 the geologist, whose researches into the ancient 
 history of the earth stood in apparent opposi 
 tion to the declarations of Scripture. Neither 
 in the Old nor in the New Testament is there 
 a single expression incompatible with the great 
 truth, that there are other worlds than our own 
 which are the seats of life and intelligence. 
 Many passages of Scripture, on the contrary, 
 are favorable to the doctrine, and there are 
 some, we think, which are inexplicable, without 
 admitting it to be true. The beautiful text,* 
 
 * When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and 
 the stars, which thou hast ordained ; what is man, that thou art mindful 
 of him? and the son of man, that thou visitest him. PSALM viii. 3, 4. 
 
RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF THE QUESTION. 19 
 
 for example, in which the inspired Psalmist 
 expresses his surprise that the Being who fash 
 ioned the heavens, and ordained the moon 
 and the stars, should be mindful of so insignif 
 icant a being as man, is, we think, a positive 
 argument for a plurality of worlds. We cannot 
 concur in the idea of Dr. Chalmers, that a per 
 son wholly ignorant of the science of astronomy, 
 and, consequently, to whom all the stars and 
 planets are but specks of light in the sky, not 
 more important than the ignis fatuus upon a 
 marshy field, could express the surprise and 
 deep emotion of the Hebrew poet. We cannot 
 doubt that inspiration revealed to him the mag 
 nitude, the distances, and the final cause of the 
 glorious spheres which fixed his admiration. 
 Two portion s of creation are here placed in the 
 strongest contrast, Man in his comparative in 
 significance, and the Heavens, the Moon and 
 the Stars in their absolute grandeur. He whom 
 God made a little lower than the angels, whom 
 He crowned with glory and with honor, and 
 for whose redemption He sent His only Son to 
 suffer and to die, could not, in the Psalmist s 
 estimation, be an object of insignificance, and 
 
20 MOKE WOELDS THAN ONE. 
 
 measured, therefore, by his high estimate of man, 
 his idea of the heavens, the moon, and the stars 
 must have been of the most transcendent kind. 
 Had he been ignorant of astronomy, he never 
 could have given utterance to the sentiment in 
 the text. Man, made after God s image, was a 
 nobler creation than twinkling sparks in the 
 sky, or than the larger and more useful lamp 
 of the moon. The Psalmist must, therefore, 
 have written under the impression either that 
 the planets and stars were worlds without life, 
 or worlds inhabited by rational and immortal 
 beings. If he regarded them as unoccupied, we 
 cannot see any reason for surprise that God 
 should be mindful of His noblest work, because 
 innumerable masses of matter existed in the 
 universe, performing, for no intelligible purpose, 
 their solitary rounds. If they were thus made 
 for the benefit and contemplation of man, un 
 seen by any mortal eye but his, then should the 
 Psalmist have expressed his wonder, not at the 
 littleness, but at the greatness of the being for 
 whose use such magnificent worlds had been 
 called into existence. But if the poet viewed 
 these worlds, as he doubtless did, as teeming 
 
\ 
 
 KELIGIOUS ASPECT OF THE QUESTION. 21 
 
 with life, physical and intellectual, as globes 
 which may have required millions of years for 
 their preparation, exhibiting new forms of be 
 ing, new powers of mind, new conditions in 
 the past, and new glories in the future, we 
 can then understand why he marvelled at the 
 care of God for creatures so comparatively in 
 significant as man. 
 
 It is evident, from the text we have been 
 considering, and from other passages of Scrip 
 ture, that the word Heavens, so distinctly sepa 
 rated from the moon and the stars, represents 
 a material creation, the work of God s fingers, 
 and not a celestial place in which spiritual 
 beings may be supposed to dwell ; and we are 
 therefore entitled to attach the same meaning 
 to the term wherever it occurs, unless the con 
 text forbids such an application of it. The 
 writers, both in the Old and New Testament, 
 speak of the heavens as a separate material 
 creation from the earth, and there are passages 
 which seem very clearly to indicate that they 
 are the seat of life. When St. Paul tells us 
 that the worlds were framed by the word of 
 God, and that by our Saviour, the heir of all 
 
22 MORE WORLDS THAN ONE. 
 
 things, He made the worlds, we are not entitled 
 to suppose that he means globes of matter, re 
 volving without inhabitants, or without any 
 preparation for receiving them. He can only 
 mean worlds like our own, that declare to their 
 living occupants the glory of their Maker. 
 When Isaiah speaks of the heavens being spread 
 out as a tent to dwell in* when Job tells us 
 that God, who spread out the heavens, made 
 Arcturus, Orion, and Pleiades, and the cham 
 bers of -the south,f and when Amos speaks of 
 Him who buildeth his stories in the heavens,;]: 
 (His house of many mansions,) they use terms 
 which clearly indicate that the celestial spheres 
 are the seat of life. In the book of Genesis, 
 too, God is said to have finished the heavens 
 and the earth, and all the host ofihem. JSTehe- 
 miah declares that God made the heaven, the 
 heaven of heavens, and all their host, the earth 
 and all things that are therein, and that the 
 host of heaven worship Him.\ The Psalmist 
 speaks of all the host of the heavens as made by 
 the breath of God s mouth,*\\ (the process by 
 
 * Isaiah xlv. 22 . f Job ix. 8, 9. t A os ix. 0. 
 
 Gen. ii. 1. | Neh. ix. G. 1 Psalm xxxiii. G. 
 
EELIGIOUS ASPECT OF THE QUESTION. 23 
 
 which He gave life to Adam ;) and Isaiah fur 
 nishes us with, a striking passage, in which the 
 occupants of the earth and of the heavens are 
 separately described. "I have made the earth, 
 and created man upon it : I, even my hands, 
 have stretched out the heavens, and all their 
 host have I commanded"* But in addition to 
 these obvious references to life and things per 
 taining to life, we find in Isaiah the following 
 remarkable passage, " For thus saith the Lord 
 that created the heavens, God himself that 
 formed the earth and made it ; he hath estab 
 lished it, he created it NOT IN VAIN, he formed 
 it TO BE INHABITED. ^ Here we have a distinct 
 declaration from the inspired prophet, that the 
 earth would have been created IN VAIN if it had 
 not been formed to be inhabited ; and hence we 
 draw the conclusion, that as the Creator cannot 
 be supposed to have made the worlds of our 
 system, and those in the sidereal universe in 
 vain, they must have been formed to be inhab 
 ited. 
 
 These views, as deduced from Scripture, re 
 ceive much support from considerations of a 
 
 * Isaiah xlv. 12. t Isaiah xlv. 18. 
 
24 MORE WORLDS THAN ONE. 
 
 very different nature. Man in his future state 
 of existence is to consist, as at present, of a 
 spiritual nature residing in a corporeal frame. 
 He must live therefore upon a material planet, 
 subject to all the laws of matter, and perform 
 ing functions for which a material body is in 
 dispensable. We must therefore find, for the 
 race of Adam, if not for races that preceded 
 him, a material home upon which he may 
 reside, or from which he may travel by means 
 unknown to us, to other localities in the uni 
 verse. That home, we think, cannot be the 
 new earth upon which we dwell, though it may 
 be the new heavens wherein dwelleth righteous 
 ness. At the present hour the population of 
 the earth is nearly a thousand millions ; and by 
 whatever process we may compute the numbers 
 that have existed before the present generation, 
 and estimate those that are yet to inherit the 
 earth, we shall obtain a population which the 
 habitable parts of our globe could not possibly 
 accommodate. If there is not room then on 
 our globe for the millions of millions of being 
 who have lived and died upon its surface, and 
 who may yet live and die during the period 
 
RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF THE QUESTION. 25 
 
 fixed for its occupation by man, 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 upon planets which 
 have long been in a state of preparation, as our 
 earth was, for the advent of intellectual life. 
 
 The connection thus indicated between the 
 destinies of the human family and the material 
 system to which we belong, arising from the 
 limited extent of the earth s habitable surface, 
 and its unlimited population, is a strong corrob- 
 oration of the views which we have deduced 
 from Scripture. In the world of instinct the 
 superabundance of life is controlled by the law 
 of mutual destruction, which reigns in the earth, 
 the ocean, and the air ; but the swarm of hu 
 man life, increasing in an incalculable ratio, 
 both in the Old and the New World, has not 
 been perceptibly reduced by the scythe of fam 
 ine, of pestilence, or of war; and when we 
 consider the length of time during which this 
 accumulation may proceed, we cannot justly 
 challenge the correctness of the conclusion that 
 this earth is not to be the future residence 
 3 
 
26 MORE WORLDS THAN ONE. 
 
 of the numerous family which it has reared. 
 The connection between this probable truth and 
 the doctrine of a plurality of worlds, will ap 
 pear from the facts and reasonings in the fol 
 lowing chapter. 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 
 DESCRIPTION OF THE SOLAR SYSTEM. 
 
 IN order to appreciate the force of the argu 
 ment for a plurality of worlds, derived from the 
 similarity of our earth to the other planets of 
 the Solar system, we must call the attention of 
 the reader to a popular description of the mag 
 nitudes, distances, and general phenomena of 
 the different bodies that compose it. 
 
 In making this survey, the first and the 
 grandest object which arrests our attention is 
 the glorious SUN, the centre and soul of our 
 system, the lamp that lights it, the fire that 
 heats it, the magnet that guides and controls 
 it, the fountain of color which gives its azure 
 to the sky, its verdure to the fields, its rainbow 
 hues to the gay world of flowers, and the " pur 
 ple light of love " to the marble cheek of youth 
 and beauty. This globe, probably of burning 
 
28 MORE WORLDS THAN ONE. 
 
 gas, enveloping a solid nucleus, is nearly 900,000 
 miles in diameter, above a hundred times the 
 diameter of our globe, and five hundred times 
 larger in bulk than all the planets put together ! 
 It revolves upon its axis in twenty-five days, 
 and throws off its light with the velocity of 
 192,000 miles in a second. Sometimes by 
 the naked eye, but frequently even by small 
 telescopes, large black spots, many thousand 
 miles in diameter, are seen upon its surface, 
 and are evidently openings in the luminous 
 atmosphere, through which we see the opaque 
 solid nucleus, or the real body of the sun. 
 
 Around, and nearest the sun, at a distance 
 of thirty-six millions of miles, revolves the 
 planet MERCURY, with a day of twenty -four 
 hours, and a year of eighty-eight days ; and he 
 receives from the sun nearly seven times as 
 much light and heat as the earth. Through 
 the telescope some astronomers have observed 
 spots on its surface, and mountains several miles 
 in height. 
 
 Next to Mercury the planet VENUS revolves 
 at the distance of sixty-eight millions of miles, 
 with a day of nearly twenty-four hours, and a 
 
DESCRIPTION OF THE SOLAR SYSTEM. 29 
 
 year of 224 days. Her diameter is 7,700 miles, 
 a little less than that of the earth. She changes 
 her phases like the moon, exhibits spots on her 
 surface, and, according to Schroeter, has moun 
 tains nearly twenty miles in height. The light 
 and heat which she receives from the sun is 
 about double of that which is received by the 
 earth.* 
 
 The next body of the Solar system is our own 
 EARTH our birthplace, and soon to be our 
 grave. Its distance from the sun is ninety-six 
 millions of miles ; its diameter nearly 8,000 ; its 
 year 365 days, and its day twenty-four hours. 
 The form of the Earth is that of an oblate 
 spheroid, or of a sphere flattened at the poles 
 like an orange. . Its superficies is divided into 
 continents and seas, the continents occupying 
 one-third, and the seas two-thirds of its whole 
 surface. The land, sometimes level and some 
 times undulating, occasionally rises into groups 
 and ranges of mountains, the highest of which 
 
 * From the rare appearance and want of permanence in the spots of 
 Mercury and Venus, Sir John Herschel is of opinion " that we do not see 
 as in the moon the real surface of these planets, but only their atmos 
 phere, much loaded with clouds, and which may serve to mitigate the 
 otherwise intense glare of their sunshine." Outlines of Astronomy, 509. 
 
 3* 
 
30 MOKE WORLDS THAN ONE. 
 
 does not exceed five miles. The Earth is sur 
 rounded with an aerial envelope or atmosphere, 
 which is computed to be about forty -five miles 
 in height, though the region of clouds does not 
 reach much above the summits of the highest 
 mountains. 
 
 The Earth is accompanied by a MOON or 
 satellite, whose distance is 237,000 miles, and 
 diameter 2,160. Her surface is composed of 
 hill and dale, of rocks and mountains nearly 
 two miles high, and of circular cavities, some 
 times five miles in depth, and forty in diameter, 
 which are believed to be the remains of extinct 
 volcanoes. She possesses neither lakes nor seas ; 
 and we cannot discover with the telescope any 
 traces of living beings, or any monuments of 
 their hands, though we hope it will be done 
 with some magnificent telescope which may 
 yet be constructed. Viewing the Earth as the 
 third planet in order from the sun, can we doubt 
 that it is a globe like the rest, poised in ether 
 like them, and, like them, moving round the 
 central luminary? 
 
 Next, beyond the Earth, is the red-colored 
 planet MARS, with a day of about twenty-five 
 hours, and revolving round the sun in 687 days. 
 
DESCRIPTION OF THE SOLAR SYSTEM. 31 
 
 at the distance of one hundred and forty-two 
 millions of miles. His diameter is 4,100 miles, 
 and his surface exhibits spots of different hues, 
 the seas, according to Sir John Herschel, 
 being green, and the land red. The spots which, 
 have been seen on this planet by several astron 
 omers, are not always equally distinct, but 
 when seen " they offer," as Sir John Herschel 
 observes, " the appearance of forms, considerably 
 definite and highly characteristic, brought suc 
 cessively into view by the rotation of the planet, 
 from the assiduous observation of which it has 
 even been found practicable to construct a rude 
 chart of the surface of the planet. The variety 
 in the spots may arise from the planet not being 
 destitute of atmosphere and cloud ; and what 
 adds greatly to the probability of this, is the 
 appearance of brilliant white spots at its poles, 
 which have been conjectured, with some proba 
 bility, to be snow, as they disappear when they 
 have been long exposed to the sun, and are 
 greatest when just emerging from the long night 
 of their polar winter, the snow line then ex 
 tending to about six degrees from the pole."* 
 
 * Outlines of Astronomy, 510. 
 
32 MORE WORLDS THAN ONE. 
 
 Hitherto we have been surveying worlds at a 
 respectful distance from each other, and having 
 days, and nights, and seasons, and aspects, of 
 the same character ; but we now arrive at a 
 region in space where some great catastrophe 
 has doubtless taken place. At the distance of 
 about two hundred and fifty millions of miles 
 from the sun, corresponding to a period of about 
 1,500 days, astronomers long ago predictedthe 
 existence of a large planet, occupying the space 
 between Mars and Jupiter. In the beginning 
 of the present century, one very small planet 
 was discovered in this locality by M. Piazzi ; 
 and after other two had been discovered, one 
 by himself, Dr. Olbers hazarded the opinion 
 that the three planets were fragments of a 
 larger one which had burst ; and this remark 
 able theory has been almost placed beyond a 
 doubt by the discovery, in the same place, of 
 twenty-nine fragments in all, chiefly by M< 
 Gasparis of Naples, and our own countryman, 
 Mr. Hind. 
 
 Beyond this remarkable group is situated the 
 planet JUPITER, a world of huge magnitude, 
 revolving round its axis in ten hours, and round 
 
DESCRIPTION OF THE SOLAR SYSTEM 33 
 
 the sun in 4,333 days, (a little less than twelve 
 years,) at the distance of four hundred and 
 eighty-five millions of miles. His form is that 
 of an oblate spheroid, his equatorial being to his 
 polar diameter as 107 to 100. His diameter is 
 90,000 miles, and he is attended Toy four satel 
 lites, the average size of which is a little greater 
 than that of our moon. His surface exhibits 
 bright spots and dark bands or belts, which, 
 though they have always the same direction, 
 vary in breadth and in position, occasionally 
 running into branches and dark spots. Sir 
 John Herschel is of opinion, that the belts are 
 tracts of corresponding clear sky in the planet s 
 atmosphere, through which the darker body of 
 the planet is seen, and that they are produced 
 by currents like our trade-winds, but having a 
 more steady and decided character. 
 
 Next to Jupiter is the remarkable planet 
 SATURN, accompanied with eight satellites, and 
 surrounded by a ring, separated from his body 
 by an interval of 19,000 miles. The distance 
 of Saturn from the sun is eight hundred and 
 ninety millions of miles, his annual period 
 twenty -nine and a half years, and the length of 
 
34 MORE WORLDS THAN ONE. 
 
 his day ten and a half hours. His diameter is 
 76,000 miles, and the outer diameter of his 
 ring 176,000. According to very recent obser 
 vations, the ring is divided into three separate 
 rings, which, according to the calculations of 
 Mr. Bond, an American astronomer, must be 
 fluid. He is of opinion that the number of 
 rings is continually changing, and that their 
 maximum number, in the normal condition of 
 the mass, does not exceed twenty. According 
 to Mr. Bond, the power which sustains the 
 centre of gravity of the ring is not in the 
 planet itself, but in his satellites ; and the 
 satellites, though constantly disturbing the 
 ring, actually sustain it in the very act of per 
 turbation. 
 
 Mr. Otto Struve and Mr. Bond have lately 
 studied, with the great Munich telescope, at the 
 observatory of Pulkowa, the third ring of Sat 
 urn, which Mr. Lassels and Mr. Bond discov 
 ered to \>Q fluid. They saw distinctly the dark 
 interval between this fluid ring and the two old 
 ones, and even measured its dimensions ; and 
 they perceived at its inner margin an edge feebly 
 illuminated, which they thought might be the 
 
DESCRIPTION OF THE SOLAR SYSTEM. 35 
 
 commencement of a fourth ring. These astron 
 omers are of opinion, that the fluid ring is not 
 of very recent formation, and that it is not sub 
 ject to rapid change ; and they have come to 
 the extraordinary conclusion, that the inner 
 border of the ring has, since the time of Huy- 
 gens, been gradually approaching to the body 
 of Saturn ; and that we may expect sooner or 
 later, perhaps in some dozen of years, to see the 
 rings united with the body of the planet. 
 
 Beyond Saturn, at a distance from the sun 
 of one thousand eight hundred millions of miles, 
 is placed the planet URANUS, discovered by Dr 
 Herschel. Its year, or annual period, is eighty- 
 four years, and the length of its day nine and 
 a half hours. Its diameter is 34,500 miles, 
 and it is attended by eight satellites, six of 
 which were discovered by Dr. Herschel, and 
 the other two, a few years ago, by Mr. Lassels 
 of Liverpool. 
 
 The remotest planet of our system, the planet 
 NEPTUNE, discovered theoretically in 1846 by 
 Adams and Leverrier, and first recognized in 
 the heavens by M. Galle of Berlin, is about 
 42,000 miles in diameter, and performs its an- 
 
36 MORE WORLDS THAN ONE. 
 
 nual revolution in 63,000 days, (about 145 years,) 
 at the distance of nearly three thousand millions 
 of miles from the sun. It is accompanied with 
 one, and probably two, satellites ; and there is 
 reason to believe that it is surrounded with a 
 ring like Saturn. 
 
 Having thus travelled from the centre to the 
 verge of the planetary system, from the efful 
 gent orb of day to that almost Cimmerian twi 
 light where Phoebus could scarcely see to guide 
 his steeds, let us ponder awhile over the star 
 tling yet instructive sights which we have en 
 countered in our course. Adjoining the sun, 
 we find Mercury and Venus, with days and 
 seasons like ours. Upon reaching our own 
 planet, we recognize in it the same general fea 
 tures, but we find it larger in magnitude, and 
 possessing the additional distinction of a satel 
 lite and a race of living beings to rejoice in the 
 pre-eminence. In contrast with Mars, our earth 
 still maintains its superiority both in size and 
 equipments ; but, upon advancing a little far 
 ther into space, our pride is rebuked and our 
 fears evoked, when we reach the part of our 
 system where twenty-nine asteroids, relics of a 
 
DESCRIPTION OF THE SOLAR SYSTEM. 37 
 
 once mighty planet, (or the uncombined portions 
 of what might have been a planet,) are revolv 
 ing in dissevered orbits, and warning the vain 
 astronomer of another world that a similar fate 
 may await his own. Dejected, but not despair 
 ing, we pass onward, and, as if in bright con 
 trast with the confusion and desolation we have 
 witnessed, there bursts upon our sight the splen 
 did orb of Jupiter, proudly enthroned amid his 
 attendant satellites. When compared with so 
 glorious a creation, our own earth dwindles into 
 insignificance. It is no longer the monarch of 
 the planetary throng, and we blush at the rec 
 ollection that sovereigns and pontiffs, and even 
 philosophers, made it the central ball, around 
 which the Sun and Moon and planets, and even 
 the stars, revolved in obsequious subjection. 
 The dignity of being the seat of intellectual and 
 animal life, however, still seems to be our own ; 
 and if our globe does not swell so largely to the 
 eye, or shine so brightly in the night, it has yet 
 been the seat of glorious dynasties, of mighty 
 empires, of heroes that have bled for their 
 country, of martyrs who have died for their 
 faith, and of sages who have unravelled the 
 4 
 
38 MORE WORLDS THAN ONE. 
 
 very universe we are surveying. Pursuing OUT 
 outward course, a new wonder is presented to 
 us in the gorgeous appendages of Saturn, en 
 circled with, a brilliant ring, and with eight 
 moons, for the use, doubtless, of living beings. 
 Advancing onwards, we encounter Uranus, with 
 his eight pledges that he is the seat of life ; and 
 after passing the new planet Neptune, at the 
 frontier of our system, we reach what is the 
 region, and what may be regarded as the home, 
 of comets. 
 
 COMETS, or wandering stars, as they have 
 been called, are those celestial bodies most of 
 which appear occasionally only within the limits 
 of the Solar system. They move in elliptical 
 orbits, in one of the foci of which the sun is 
 placed ; but, unlike the planets, which always 
 move from west to east, the comets revolve in 
 orbits inclined at all possible angles, and move 
 in all possible directions. The movements of 
 the six or seven hundred comets which have 
 been observed, must be chiefly executed within 
 that vast and untenanted region, which lies be 
 tween the nearest known fixed star and the orbit 
 of Neptune, an interval equal to six thousand 
 
DESCRIPTION OF THE SOLAR SYSTEM. 39 
 
 times the distance of that planet from the sun, 
 or twenty -one million million of miles. What 
 is their occupation there, or what it is here, 
 when they are our visitors, we cannot venture to 
 guess. That they do not perform the functions 
 of planets is obvious, from their very nature ; 
 and there is no appearance of their importing 
 anything useful into our system, or of their ex 
 porting anything to another. Judging from 
 the immense portion of their orbits which lies 
 beyond Neptune, it has been imagined that 
 the central body of some other system is placed 
 in the distant focus of each of their orbits, and 
 that in this way all the different systems in the 
 universe are, as it were, united into one by the 
 intercommunication of comets. Some comets 
 have passed near the earth, and others may pass 
 still nearer it ; but even if they should not pro 
 duce those tremendous effects which Laplace has 
 indicated, and if their great rarity and rapid 
 motion should hinder them from acting upon 
 our seas, or changing the axis of our globe, a 
 sweep of their train of gas or of vapor would 
 not be a pleasing salutation to living beings. 
 The greatest distance of the most distant comet 
 
40 MORE WORLDS THAN ONE. 
 
 that has been observed, falls short of the distance 
 of the nearest fixed star by nine million million 
 of miles. Placing ourselves at this distance, 
 how ridiculous appears the idea, so long and 
 devoutly cherished, that the heavens, with all 
 their host, revolved round our little planet ! At 
 that point the earth is not even visible, and the 
 whole starry creation, and our sun itself dwin 
 dled into a star, stand fixed and immovable. 
 
 Till within the last forty years it was the 
 universal belief among astronomers that every 
 comet strayed far beyond the limits of the Solar 
 system, the shortest period of any of those that 
 had been observed being about seventy years, 
 indicating the immense distance which it must 
 have traversed beyond the orbit of Neptune. In 
 1818, however, M. Pons discovered a comet, now 
 called JEncke s Comet, whose period was not 
 above three years and five months, and whose 
 orbit, extending inwards as far as that of Mer 
 cury, did not reach beyond the orbit of Pallas. 
 Other five comets, whose periods are 5j, 54, 6, 
 7|, and 16 years, have been discovered within 
 the limits of our system. Among these bodies, 
 the comet of Biela, discovered in 1826, appeared 
 
DESCRIPTION OF THE SOLAR SYSTEM. 41 
 
 to separate into two distinct comets with parallel 
 tails, which after a certain time resumed its 
 single state. M. Damoiseau having predicted that 
 this comet would pass within 18,000 miles of a 
 point in the earth s orbit, the publication of this 
 fact excited such an alarm in Paris, that M. 
 Arago was summoned from his studies to allay 
 the terror of the community. The fears of the 
 people, however, will not appear unreasonable, 
 when we recollect that Sir John Herschel has 
 stated that the orbit of this comet " so nearly 
 intersects that of the earth, that an actual colli 
 sion is not impossible, and indeed must in all 
 likelihood happen in the lapse of some millions 
 of years !" 
 
 A seventh comet belonging to our system, 
 called LexeWs Comet, which that astronomer 
 discovered in 1770, is supposed to have been 
 lost, as it ought to have appeared thirteen times, 
 and has not been seen since that date. It 
 is supposed to have been rendered invisible in 
 1779 by the action of Jupiter, but in what 
 way astronomers have not been able to de 
 termine. 
 
 The following popular view of the sizes and 
 4* 
 
42 MORE WORLDS THAN ONE. 
 
 distances of the planets which compose the Solar 
 system has been given by Sir John Herschel : 
 
 ~. Diameter of 
 
 orbit in feet. 
 
 The Sun, - - a Globe two feet in diameter, 
 
 Mercury, - a Mustard Seed, - - 164 
 
 Venus, - - a Pea, - 284 
 
 Earth, - - a larger Pea, - - - 430 
 
 Mars, - - a large pin s head, - - 654 
 
 Juno, "] 
 
 Ceres, 1000 
 
 ?Sft 3 [ Grains of Sand, - - to 
 Pallas and f 1 90ft 
 
 the other 25 
 
 Asteroids, 
 
 Jupiter, an Orange, Half a mile. 
 
 Saturn, a Small Orange One mile and a fifth. 
 
 Uranus, a Cherry, A mile and a half. 
 
 Neptune, a Plum, Two miles and a half. 
 
 To which we may add, 
 
 The greatest distance of a Comet, Eight thousand miles. 
 Distance of nearest Fixed Star, Fifteen thousand miles 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 THE GEOLOGICAL CONDITION OF THE EARTH. 
 
 IN the preceding brief description of the 
 Solar system, we see distinctly the relation 
 which our own Earth bears to the other planets, 
 in its position, its form, its magnitude, its satel 
 lite, and its daily and annual motions. But 
 though a comparison of these properties of the 
 earth, which constitute what may be called its 
 astronomical condition, with the analogous prop 
 erties of the other planets, might entitle us to 
 ascribe to them other functions, the function, 
 for example, of supporting inhabitants, which 
 the earth only is known to possess, yet our ar 
 gument will derive new strength, and we shall 
 be prepared to meet recent objections, by tak 
 ing into consideration the geological structure of 
 the earth, and the properties of its atmosphere, 
 and by endeavoring to read its past history in 
 
44 MOEE WORLDS THAN ONE. 
 
 the successive steps by which it has been pre 
 pared as a residence for the human family. 
 
 The earth, as we have seen, when merely ex 
 amined by the eye, consists of land and water. 
 The land is composed of soils of various kinds, 
 and of stones and rocks of different characters. 
 It is formed into extensive plains, into valleys 
 excavated apparently by rivers or water-courses, 
 and into mountain groups and mountain ranges, 
 rising to the height of several miles above the 
 bed of the ocean. In order to obtain a knowl 
 edge of the structure of the earth, geologists 
 have examined with the greatest care its soils 
 and its rocks, wherever they have been laid 
 bare by natural or artificial causes, by the oper 
 ation of the miner, or the road engineer, or by 
 the action of rivers or of the sea ; and they have 
 thus obtained certain general results which 
 give us an approximate idea of the different 
 materials which compose what is called the 
 crust of the earth. In those portions of its sur 
 face which do not rise into mountains, the 
 thickness of the crust thus explored does not 
 exceed ten miles, which is only the 800th part 
 of the earth s diameter, a quantity so small, 
 
GEOLOGICAL CONDITION OF THE EARTH. 45 
 
 that if we represented the earth by a sphere hav 
 ing the same diameter as the cupola of St. 
 Paul s, which is 140 feet, the thickness of the 
 crust would be only about two inches. 
 
 Beneath the crust lies the Nucleus of the 
 earth, or its kernel or its skeleton frame, of the 
 nature and composition of which we are entirely 
 ignorant. We know only, by comparing the 
 average density of the earth, which is about 5 
 times that of water, with the average density of 
 the rocks near its surface, which is about 2 
 times that of water, that the density of the 
 nucleus, if of uniform solidity, must exceed 5f, 
 and must be much greater if it is hollow or 
 contains large cavities. Geology does not pre 
 tend to give us any information respecting the 
 process by which the nucleus of the earth was 
 formed. Some speculative astronomers indeed 
 have presumptuously embarked in such an in 
 quiry ; but there is not a trace of evidence that 
 the solid nucleus of the globe was formed by 
 secondary causes, such as the aggregation of 
 attenuated matter diffused through space ; and 
 the nebular theory, as it has been called, though 
 maintained by a few distinguished names, has, 
 
46 MORE WORLDS THAN ONE. 
 
 x-* 
 
 we think, been overturned by arguments that 
 have never been answered. Sir Isaac Newton, 
 in his four celebrated letters to Dr. Bentley, 
 has demonstrated that the planets of the solar 
 system could not have been thus formed, and 
 put in motion round a central sun. 
 
 But though geologists have not been able to 
 give us any intelligence respecting the earth s 
 nucleus, they have examined the rocks which 
 rest upon it, or the lowest of the series which 
 extend, upwards to the surface of the earth. 
 
 I. The lowest of these rocks are granite, 
 granitic rockSj trap, and porphyry. They are 
 composed chiefly of the simple minerals, Quartz, 
 Feldspar, Mica, and Horribknde. They are 
 consequently crystalline and unstratified, and 
 are believed to be of igneous origin. 
 
 The next series of rocks are what are called 
 the Metamorphic or altered rocks. They consist 
 of gneiss, mica slate, and clay slate, and are 
 more or less stratified. 
 
 The next series of rocks is Basalt, or ancient 
 lava, and what are called Trachytic Eocks. 
 
 To these rocks the name of Primary has 
 
GEOLOGICAL CONDITION OF THE EARTH. 47 
 
 been given, and also the appellation of Azoic, 
 because they contain no traces of plants or ani 
 mals, and are therefore without life, 01 destitute 
 of organic remains. 
 
 Above these formations lie the Secondary 
 and the Tertiary formations. 
 
 II. The Secondary formations have been 
 divided by Professor Ansted into three periods, 
 the Older, the Middle, and the Newer Sec 
 ondary. 
 
 1. The Older Secondary formation he again 
 divides into the Older Palaeozoic period, 
 namely, 1. The Lower Silurian rocks, 
 to which the name ofProtozoic has been 
 given, because they contain the first 
 traces of life; and, 2. The Upper Si 
 lurian rocks, the Middle Palaeozoic pe 
 riod, containing the Devonian or Old 
 Bed Sandstone formation ; and 
 The Newer Palaeozoic period, including, 
 
 1. The Carboniferous formation ; and, 
 
 2. The Magnesian Limestone, or Per 
 mian formation, and above these strata 
 lie 
 
48 MORE WORLDS THAN ONE. 
 
 The Upper New Bed Sandstone or Triassic 
 formation, the last member of the older 
 secondary period. 
 
 2. The Middle secondary formation, con 
 sists of the Lias, Oolite, and Wealden 
 formations ; and, 
 
 3. The Newer secondary period consists of 
 the Cretaceous or chalk formation. 
 
 III. The Tertiary formation consists, reckon 
 ing from below, of, 
 
 1. The older tertiary, or Eocene, viz., Bag- 
 shot sand and London clay. 
 
 2. The middle tertiary, or Miocene, viz., Red 
 and Coralline Rag. 
 
 3. The newer tertiary, or Pliocene, viz., the 
 Till of Clyde and Norwich Crag. 
 
 4. The superficial deposits, or Pleistocene, 
 viz., all diluvial and alluvial deposits of 
 gravel and other materials, sometimes 
 stratified. 
 
 The proportional thicknesses of these different 
 formations have been estimated by Professor 
 
GEOLOGICAL CONDITION OF THE EAKTH. 49 
 
 Phillips as follows, but the numbers can be 
 regarded only as a very rude estimate : 
 
 Tertiary formation, 
 Cretaceous, 
 Oolite and Lias, . 
 New Red Sandstone, 
 Carboniferous, 
 Old Red Sandstone, 
 Primitive Roeks, 
 
 2,000 feet 
 
 1,100 " 
 
 2,500 " 
 
 2,000 " 
 
 10,000 " 
 
 9,000 " 
 
 20,000 " 
 
 Thickness of the Earth s crust, 46,600=9 miles nearly. 
 
 As all the stratified formations which compose 
 the crust of the earth have obviously been de 
 posited in succession, geologists have endeavor^ 
 ed to form some notion of the time occupied in 
 their deposition, or the age of the most ancient 
 of them. By studying the fossil remains found 
 in the different formations, geologists have 
 placed it beyond a doubt, that great changes 
 have taken place during the formation of the 
 crust of the earth. The plants and animals 
 which existed in one period are not found in 
 another, new species were at different times 
 created, and frequent convulsions have taken 
 place, upheaving the beds of the ocean into 
 continents and mountain ranges, and covering 
 the dry land with the waters which were dis- 
 5 
 
50 MORE WORLDS THAN ONE, 
 
 placed. That the deposition of strata of such 
 thickness, and operations of such magnitude, 
 required a long period of time for their accom 
 plishment, has been willingly conceded to the 
 geologist ; but this concession has been found 
 ed on the adoption of a unit of measure which 
 may or may not be correct. It is taken for 
 granted, that many of the stratified rocks were 
 deposited in the sea by the same slow processes 
 which are going on in the present day ; and as 
 the thickness of the deposits now produced is 
 a very small quantity during a long period of 
 time, it is inferred that nine or ten miles of strata 
 must have taken millions of years for their for 
 mation. 
 
 We are not disposed to grudge the geologist 
 even periods so marvellous as this, provided 
 they are considered as merely hypothetical; 
 but when we find, as we shall presently do, 
 that speculative writers employ these assumed 
 periods as positive truths, for establishing other 
 theories which we consider erroneous, and even 
 dangerous, we are compelled to examine more 
 minutely a chronology which has been thus 
 misapplied. 
 
GEOLOGICAL CONDITION OF THE EARTH. 51 
 
 Although, we may admit that our seas and 
 continents have nearly the same locality, and 
 cover nearly the same area as they did at the 
 creation of Adam ; and that the hills have not 
 since that time changed their form or their 
 height ; nor the beds of the ocean become deeper 
 or shallower from the diurnal changes going on 
 around us, yet this does not authorize us to 
 conclude that the world was prepared for man 
 by similar causes operating in a similar manner. 
 The same physical causes may operate quickly 
 or slowly. The dew may fall invisibly on the 
 ground, the gentle shower may descend noise 
 less on the grass, or the watery vapor may rush 
 down in showers and torrents of rain, destroy 
 ing animal and vegetable life. The frozen mois 
 ture may fall in atoms of crystal, which are felt 
 only by the tender skin upon which they light ; 
 or it may come down in flakes of snow, forming 
 beds many feet in thickness ; or it may be preci 
 pitated in destructive hailstones, or in masses of 
 ice which crush everything upon which they fall. 
 
 When the earth was completed as the home 4 
 of the human family, violent changes upon its 
 surface were incompatible with the security of { 
 
52 MOKE WORLDS THAN ONE. 
 
 life, and the progress of civilization. The powers 
 / of the physical world were therefore put under 
 restraint, when man obtained dominion over the 
 earth ; and after the great catastrophe wh ; ch 
 destroyed almost every living thing, the "bow 
 was set in the clouds/ a covenant, between God 
 and man, that the elements should not again be 
 his destroyer. If the Almighty then, since the 
 creation of man, " broke up the fountains of the 
 deep, and opened the windows of the heavens," 
 and thus, by apparently natural causes, covered 
 the whole earth with an ocean that rose above 
 the Himalaya and the Andes, why may He 
 not at different periods, or during the whole 
 course of the earth s formation, have deposited 
 its strata by a rapid precipitation of their atoms 
 from the waters which suspended them ? The 
 period of the earth s formation would, upon this 
 principle, be reduced to little more than the uni 
 ted generations of the different orders of plants 
 and animals which constitute its organic remains. 
 But even the period thus computed from the 
 supposed duration of animal life may be still 
 farther shortened. Plants and animals which, 
 in our day, require a century for their de- 
 
 I 
 
GEOLOGICAL CONDITION OF THE EARTH. 53 
 
 / 
 
 velopment, may in primitive times have shot 
 up in rank luxuriance, and been ready, in a 
 few days, or months, or years, for the great pur 
 pose of exhibiting, by their geological distri 
 bution, the progressive formation of the earth. 
 There are other points, in geological theory, 
 which, though mere inferences from a very 
 limited number of facts, have been employed, as 
 if they were absolutely true, to support erroneous 
 and dangerous theories ; and but for this misap 
 plication of them we should not have called in 
 question opinions in themselves reasonable only 
 when viewed as probable truths. The geological 
 inference to which we allude is, that man did not 
 exist during the period of the earth s formation. 
 No work of human skill no fragment of the 
 skeleton no remains of the integuments of 
 man have been found among the plants and 
 animals which occupy the graves of primaeval 
 times. If it be quite certain, or rather suffi 
 ciently credible, which we think it is, that all 
 the formations with fossil remains were depos 
 ited before the advent of Adam, it is barely 
 possible that pre-adamite races may have inhab 
 ited the earth simultaneously with the animals 
 which characterize its different formations. But 
 
 5* 
 
54 MOEE WOKLDS THAN" ONE. 
 
 though possible, and to a certain extent available, 
 as the basis of an argument against a startling 
 theory, we cannot admit its probability. Man, 
 as now constituted, could not have lived amidst 
 the storms and earthquakes and eruptions of a 
 world in the act of formation. His timid nature 
 would have quailed under the multifarious con 
 vulsions around him. The thunder of a boiling 
 and tempest-driven ocean would have roused 
 him from his couch, as its waters rushed upon 
 him at midnight : Torrents of lava oif^mud 
 would have chased him from his hearth ; and 
 if he escaped the pestilence from animal and 
 vegetable death, the vapor of the subterranean 
 alembics would have suffocated him in the open 
 air. The house of the child of civilization was 
 not ready for his reception. The stones that 
 were to build and roof it, had not quitted their 
 native beds. The coal that was to light and 
 heat it, was either green in the forest, or black 
 ening in the storehouse of the deep. The iron 
 that was to defend him from external violence, 
 lay buried in the ground ; and the rich materials 
 of civilization, the gold, the silver, and the gems, 
 even if they were ready, had not been cast within 
 his reach, from the hollow of the Creator s hand. 
 
GEOLOGICAL CONDITION OF THE EARTH. 55 
 
 But if man could have existed amid catas 
 trophes so tremendous and privations so severe, 
 his presence was not required, for his intellectul 
 powers could have had no suitable employment. 
 Creation was the field on which his industry was 
 to be exercised and his genius unfolded ; and 
 that Divine reason which was to analyze and 
 combine would have sunk into sloth before the 
 elements of matter were let loose from their 
 prison-house, and Nature had cast them in her 
 mould. But though there was no specific time 
 in this vast chronology which we could fix as 
 appropriate for the appearance of man, yet we 
 now perceive that he entered with dignity at its 
 close. When the sea was gathered into one 
 place, and the dry land appeared, a secure foot 
 ing was provided for our race. "When the waters 
 above the firmament were separated from the 
 waters below it, and when the light which ruled 
 the day, and the light which ruled the night, 
 were displayed in the azure sky, man could look 
 upward into the infinite in space, as he looked 
 downward into the infinite in time. When the 
 living creature after his kind appeared in the 
 fields, and the seed-bearing herb covered the 
 
56 MORE WORLDS THAN ONE. 
 
 earth, human genius was enabled to estimate the 
 power, and wisdom, and bounty of its Author, 
 and human labor received and accepted its 
 commission, when it was declared from on high 
 that seed-time and harvest should never cease 
 upon the earth. 
 
 But though we think it probable from these 
 considerations, that intellectual races could not 
 occupy the earth during its formation, yet we 
 know not what disclosures might be made had 
 we the power of examining the whole of the 
 strata which girdle the earth. The dry land 
 upon our globe occupies only one-fourth of its 
 whole superficies all the rest is sea. How much 
 of tlnis fourth part have geologists been able to 
 examine ? and how small seems to be the area 
 of stratification which has been explored ? We 
 venture to say not one-fiftieth part of the whole, 
 and yet upon the results of so partial a survey, 
 there has been founded a startling generaliza 
 tion. The intellectual races, if they did exist, 
 must have lived at a distance from the ferocious 
 animals that may have occupied the seas and 
 the jungles of the ancient world, and conse 
 quently their remains could not have been found 
 
GEOLOGICAL CONDITION OF THE EARTH. 57 
 
 in the ordinary fossiliferous strata. Their dwel 
 ling-place may have been in one or more of the 
 numerous localities of our continents not yet 
 explored, or in those immense regions of the 
 earth which are now covered by the great oceans 
 of the globe ; and till these oceans have quitted 
 their beds, or some great convulsions have up 
 heaved and laid bare the strata above which the 
 races in question may have lived and died, we 
 are not entitled to maintain it as a demonstrated 
 truth, that the ancient earth was under the sole 
 dominion of the brutes that perish. 
 
 But without waiting for the result of catas 
 trophes like these, the future of geology, even 
 if restricted to existing continents and islands, 
 may be pregnant with startling discoveries, and 
 the remains of intellectual races may be found 
 even beneath the primitive Azoic formations 
 of the earth. The astronomers of the pres 
 ent day have penetrated far into the celestial 
 depths, compared with those of the preceding 
 age, descrying in the remotest space glorious 
 creations, and establishing mighty laws. Like 
 them, may not geologists descend deeper into 
 the abyss beneath, and discover in caverns yet 
 
58 MORE WOELDS THAN ONE. 
 
 unexplored the upheaved cemeteries of primoi 
 dial times. The earth has yet to surrender its 
 strongholds of gigantic secrets, and startling 
 revelations are yet to be read on sepulchres of 
 stone. It is not from that distant bourne where 
 . the last ray of starlight trembles on the tele 
 scopic eye that man is to receive the great secret 
 of the world s birth, or of his future destiny. It 
 is from the deep vaults to which primaeval life 
 has been consigned that the history of the dawn 
 of life is to be composed. Geologists have read 
 that chronology back wards, and are decyphering 
 downwards its pale and perishing alphabet. 
 They have reached the embryos of vegetable 
 existence, the probable terminus of the formation 
 which has buried them. But wh6 can tell what 
 sleeps beyond! Another creation may lie be 
 neath more glorious creatures may be entomb 
 ed there. The mortal coils of beings more love 
 ly, 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. 
 
 In order to compare the condition of the 
 earth with that of the moon and the other 
 
GEOLOGICAL CONDITION OF THE EARTH. 59 
 
 planets of the Solar system, we must know 
 something of its atmosphere, of its action in 
 refracting, reflecting, and polarizing light, and 
 of the phenomena which it will exhibit to other 
 planets in its various states, as modified by the 
 aqueous vapor which it contains, whether it- 
 exists in minute vesicles, or in masses of clouds. 
 The light reflected by the atmosphere, when in 
 its purest state, is a rich blue, becoming paler 
 and paler as the aqueous vapor is increased. 
 When the light of the sun reaches the eye, after 
 having been transmitted through great lengths 
 of the earth s atmosphere, it is bright red, pass 
 ing into orange and yellow when the length of 
 its path is diminished. Considering, then, the 
 diversity of climate in any one hemisphere of 
 the globe, it is hardly possible that the earth, 
 as seen from any given point in space, could 
 appear free from clouds. When the sky is blue 
 over large portions of the tropical regions, and 
 smaller portions of the temperate and arctic 
 zones, it is elsewhere covered with fleecy clouds, 
 or throwing down its superabundant vapors in 
 rain, or hail, or snow. The banks of fleecy 
 clouds will reflect a brilliant light to the distant 
 
60 MORE WORLDS THAN ONE. 
 
 eye, while the pure air will exhibit the color 
 of the land, or of the ocean, mixed with its own 
 native tint of blue ; and, in certain positions of 
 the sun, the red beams into which his pure rays 
 have been changed by absorption, will display 
 themselves in certain parts of the terrestrial disc. 
 When the Earth, therefore, is reduced by dis 
 tance to the apparent size of Mars and Jupiter, 
 it will exhibit a tint composed of all those which 
 we have described. 
 
 When the blue light of the sky, and the re 
 flected light of the clouds, are examined by an 
 observer on the surface of the earth, it is found 
 to be polarized, like the light which is reflected 
 from the surfaces of transparent bodies ;* and, 
 therefore, a greater or less portion of the light 
 which reaches the eye of an observer, placed on 
 another planet, must be polarized, and exhibit 
 all the properties of that species of light. We 
 thus obtain a certain test of the existence of 
 water in the other planets of the system, and 
 we are enabled to ascertain the truth of certain 
 speculations respecting their condition, which 
 affect the question of a plurality of worlds. 
 
 * See Johnston s Physical Atlaa. 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 
 ANALOGY BETWEN THE EAKTH AND THE OTHER 
 PLANETS. 
 
 WITH the information contained in the pre 
 ceding chapter, respecting the structure of the 
 earth and its atmosphere, we are now in a con 
 dition to compare it as an inhabited world with 
 the other planets of our system, and to ascer 
 tain, from the analogies which exist between 
 them, to what extent it is probable that they 
 are either inhabited, or in a state of prepara 
 tion, as the earth once was, for the reception of 
 inhabitants. 
 
 In making this comparison, the first point 
 which demands our attention is the position 
 which the earth occupies in the Solar system. 
 In reference to the number of the planets, which 
 is nine, reckoning the asteriods as one, Jupiter 
 is the^i/%, or middle planet, and is otherwise 
 6 
 
62 MOKE WORLDS THAN ONE. 
 
 highly distinguished. Our earth, therefore, is 
 neither the middle planet nor the planet nearest 
 the sun, nor the planet farthest from that lumin 
 ary. In reference to the light and heat which 
 the planets receive from the sun, the Earth has 
 neither the warmest, nor the middle, nor the 
 coldest place. "With respect to the number of 
 moons or satelites, the only uses of which that 
 we know, is to give light to the planet, and pro 
 duce tides in its seas, the Earth has the lowest 
 number, all the planets exterior to it having a 
 larger number. If we compare it with the 
 other planets in reference to their size, their 
 form, their density, the length of their year, 
 the length of their day, the eccentricity of 
 their orbits, we shall find that in all these cases 
 the earth is not in any respect distinguished 
 above the rest. Hence we are entitled to 
 conclude that 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, or 
 has any claim to be peculiarly favored by the 
 Creator. 
 
 In order to show the high probability that 
 the other planets are either inhabited, or in a 
 
THE EAKTH AND THE OTHER PLANETS. 63 
 
 state of preparation for the reception of inhab 
 itants, we shall now proceed to compare the 
 Earth with the planet Jupiter, one of the planets 
 farther from the sun than ours, and then with 
 Venus, one of the planets nearer the sun, these 
 planets representing the two groups into which 
 the system may be divided. 
 
 The diameter of Jupiter being 87,000 miles, 
 and that of the Earth 7,926, the relative size or 
 bulk of the two planets will be proportional to 
 the squares of these numbers. Hence the size 
 or bulk of Jupiter is 1,200 times greater than 
 that of the Earth, and this alone is a proof that 
 it must have been made for some grand and 
 useful purpose. Like the Earth it is flattened 
 at its poles, and it revolves round its axis in 
 9 h 56 m , which is the length of its day. It en 
 joys different climates, and different seasons in 
 its year ; but, what especially demands our at 
 tention, it is illuminated by four moons, capa 
 ble of supplying it with abundance of light 
 during the short absence of the sun. Owing to 
 the small inclination of Jupiter s axis to the 
 plane of its orbit, which is only about three 
 degrees, there is so little change in the temper 
 
64 MORE WORLDS THAN ONE. 
 
 ature of its seasons, that it may be said to enjoy 
 a perpetual spring. The rotation of the Earth 
 about its axis produces currents in its atmos 
 phere parallel to the equator, which have re 
 ceived the name of the trade winds. On the 
 surface of Jupiter astronomers have observed 
 streaks or belts to the number of thirty, some 
 of which extend to a great distance from its 
 equator. Large spots, which change their form, 
 have also been frequently seen upon Jupiter. 
 M. Madler, by whom these observations have 
 been chiefly made, is of opinion, that owing to 
 the length of Jupiter s year, and the small 
 change which takes place in the seasons, the 
 masses of clouds in his atmosphere have their 
 form, position, and arrangement more perma 
 nent than those in the atmosphere of the Earth, 
 and he thinks it probable that the inhabitants 
 in latitudes greater than 40 may never see the 
 firmanent. 
 
 The satellites of Jupiter afford him perpetual 
 moonlight. They suffer eclipses like our moon 
 when they encounter his huge shadow, and they 
 frequently eclipse the sun when they pass be 
 tween him and the planet. These satellites 
 
THE EAETH AND THE OTHER PLANETS. 65 
 
 afford to tlieir primary planet four months of 
 different lengths, one of which is four Jovian 
 days, and the next eight, seventeen, and forty 
 days respectively. 
 
 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 intel 
 lectual life. The Atheist and the Infidel, the 
 Christian and the Mahometan, men of all 
 creeds and nations and tongues, the philoso 
 pher and the unlettered peasant, have all re 
 joiced 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. Why does the sun give it days 
 and nights and years ? Why do its moons throw 
 their silver light upon its continents and its seas? 
 Why do its equatorial breezes blow perpetually 
 over its plains ? unless to supply the wants, and 
 administer to the happiness of living beings. 
 In studying this subject,persons who have only 
 6* 
 
66 MORE WORLDS THAN ONE. 
 
 a superficial knowledge of astronomy, though 
 firmly believing in a plurality of worlds, have 
 felt the force of certain objections, or rather 
 difficulties, which naturally present themselves 
 to the inquirer. The distance of Jupiter from 
 the sun is so great that the light and heat 
 which he receives from that luminary is sup 
 posed to be incapable of sustaining the same 
 animal and vegetable life which exists on the 
 Earth. If we consider the heat upon any planet 
 as arising solely from the direct rays of the sun, 
 the cold upon Jupiter must be very intense, 
 and water could not exist upon its surafce in a 
 fluid state. Its rivers and its seas must be 
 tracks and fields of ice. But the temperature of 
 a planet depends upon other causes,- upon the 
 condition of its atmosphere, and upon the inter 
 nal heat of its mass. The temperature of our 
 own globe decreases as we rise in the atmos 
 phere, and approach the sun, and it increases 
 as we descend into the bowels of the Earth and 
 go farther from, the sun. In the first "of these 
 cases, the increase of heat as we approach the 
 surface of the Earth from a great height in a 
 balloon, or from the summit of a lofty moun 
 
THE EARTH AND THE OTHER PLANETS. 67 
 
 tain, is produced- by its atmosphere; and in 
 Jupiter the atmosphere may be so formed as to 
 compensate to a certain extent the diminution 
 in the direct heat of the sun arising from the 
 great distance of the planet. In the second 
 case, the internal heat of Jupiter may be such 
 as to keep its rivers and seas in a fluid state, 
 and maintain a temperature sufficiently genial 
 to sustain the same animal and vegetable life 
 which exists upon our own globe. 
 
 These arrangements, however, if they are 
 required, and have been adopted, cannot con 
 tribute to increase the feeble light which Jupiter 
 receives from the sun; but in so far as the 
 purposes of vision are concerned, an enlarge 
 ment of the pupil of the eye, and an increased 
 sensibility of the retina, would be amply suffi 
 cient to make the sun s light as brilliant as it 
 is to us. The feeble light reflected from the 
 moons of Jupiter would then be equal to that 
 which we derive from our own, even if we do 
 not adopt the hypothesis, which we shall after 
 wards have occasion to mention, that a brilliant 
 phosphorescent light may be excited in the 
 satellites by the action of the solar rays. 
 
68 MORE WORLDS THAN ONE. 
 
 Another difficulty lias presented itself, though 
 very unnecessarily, in reference to the shortness 
 of the day in Jupiter. A day of ten hours has 
 been supposed insufficient to afford that period 
 of rest which is requisite for the renewal of our 
 physical functions when exhausted with the 
 labors of the day. This objection, however, 
 has no force. Five hours of rest is surely suffi 
 cient for five hours of labour ; and when the 
 inhabitants of the temperate zone of our own 
 globe reside, as many of them have done, for 
 years in the arctic regions, where the length 
 of the days and nights are so unusual, they 
 have been able to perform their functions as 
 well as in their native climates. 
 
 A difficulty, however, of a more serious kind is 
 presented by the great force of gravity upon so 
 gigantic a planet as Jupiter. The stems of 
 plants, the materials of buildings, the human 
 body itself, would, it is imagined, be crushed by 
 their own enormous weight. This apparently 
 formidable objection will be removed by an ac 
 curate calculation of the force of gravity upon 
 Jupiter, or of the relative weight of bodies on 
 its surface. The mass of Jupiter is 1230 times 
 
THE EARTH AND THE OTHEK PLANETS. 69 
 
 greater than that of the Earth, so that if both 
 planets consisted of the same kind of matter, a 
 man weighing 150 pounds on the surface of 
 the Earth would weigh 150x1200, or 180,000 
 pounds at a distance from Jupiter s centre equal 
 to the Earth s radius. But as Jupiter s radius 
 is eleven times greater than that of the Earth, 
 the weight of bodies on his surface will be dim 
 inished in the ratio of the square of his radius, 
 that is, in the ratio of 11x11, or 121 to 1. 
 Consequently, if we divide 180,000 pounds by 
 121, we shall have 1487 pounds as the weight 
 of a man of 150 pounds on the surface of 
 Jupiter, that is less than ten times his weight 
 on the earth. But the matter of Jupiter is 
 much lighter than the matter of our Earth, in 
 the ratio of 24 to 100, the numbers which re 
 present the densities of the two planets, so that 
 if we diminish 1487 pounds in the ratio of 24 
 to 400, or divide it by 417, we shall have 312 
 pounds as the weight of a man on Jupiter, who 
 weighs on the Earth only 150 pounds, that is, 
 only double his weight a difference which ac 
 tually exists between many individuals on our 
 own planet. A man, therefore constituted like 
 
70 MOKE WORLDS THAN ONE. 
 
 ourselves, could exist without inconvenience 
 upon Jupiter ; and plants, and trees, and build 
 ings, such as occur in our own Earth, could 
 grow and stand secure in so far as the force of 
 gravity is concerned. 
 
 In removing difficulties, and answering ob 
 jections such as these, we have conceded too 
 much to the limited conceptions of the persons 
 who have felt the one and adduced the other. 
 To assume that the inhabitants of the planets 
 must necessarily be either men or anything 
 resembling them, is to have a low opinion of 
 that infinite skill which has produced such a 
 variety in the form and structure and functions 
 of vegetable and animal life. In the various 
 races of man which occupy our globe, there is 
 not the same variety which is exhibited in the 
 brutes that perish. Although the noble Anglo- 
 Saxon stands in striking contrast with the 
 Negro, and the lofty Patagonian with the dim 
 inutive Esquimaux, yet in their general form 
 and structure, they are essentially the same in 
 their physical and in their mental powers. But 
 when we look into the world of instinct, and 
 survey the infinitely varied forms which people 
 
THE EAKTH AtfD THE OTfiER PLANETS. 71 
 
 the earth, the ocean, and the air; when we 
 range with the naturalist s eye from the elephant 
 to the worm from the leviathan to the infu* 
 soria and from the eagle to the ephemeron, 
 what beauty of form what diversity of function 
 what variety of purpose is exhibited to our 
 view ! In all these forms of being, reason might 
 have been given in place of instinct, and ani 
 mals the most hostile to man, and the most 
 alien to his habits, might have been his friend 
 and his auxiliary, in place of his enemy and his 
 prey. If we carry our scrutiny deeper into 
 nature, and survey the infinity of regions of life 
 which the microscope discloses, and if we con 
 sider what other breathing worlds lie far beyond 
 even its reach, we may then comprehend the 
 variety of intellectual life with which our own 
 planets and those of other systems may be 
 peopled. Is it necessary that an immortal soul 
 should be hung upon a skeleton of bone, or im 
 prisoned in a cage of cartilage and of skin ? 
 Must it see with two eyes, and hear with two 
 ears, and touch with ten fingers, and rest on a 
 duality of lirnbs ? May it not reside in a Poly 
 phemus with one eyeball, or in an Argus with 
 
72 MOKE WORLDS THAN ONE. 
 
 a hundred? May it not reign in the giant 
 forms of the Titans, and direct the hundred 
 hands of Briareus ? But setting aside the un 
 gainly creations of mythology, how many prob 
 able forms are there of beauty, and activity, 
 and strength, which even the painter, the 
 sculptor, and the poet could assign to the phy 
 sical casket in which the diamond spirit may 
 be enclosed ; how many possible forms are there, 
 beyond their invention, which eye hath not seen, 
 nor the heart of man conceived ? 
 
 But no less varied may be the functions which 
 the citizens of the spheres have to discharge, 
 no less diversified their modes of life, and 
 no less singular the localities in which they 
 dwell. If this little world demands such duties 
 from its occupants, and yields such varied pleas 
 ures in their discharge : If the obligations of 
 power, of wealth, of talent, and of charity to 
 humanize our race, to unite them in one brother 
 hood of sympathy and love, and unfold to them 
 the wonderful provisions for their benefit which 
 have been made in the structure and prepara 
 tion of their planetary home : If these duties, 
 so varied and numerous here, have required 
 
THE EARTH AND THE OTHER PLANETS. 73 
 
 thousands of years to ripen their fruit of gold, 
 what inconceivable and countless functions may 
 we not assign to that plurality of intellectual 
 communities, which have been settled, or are 
 about to settle, in the celestial spheres ? What 
 deeds of heroism, moral, and perchance physi 
 cal ! What enterprises of philanthropy, what 
 achievements of genius must be required in 
 empires so extensive, and in worlds so grand ! 
 On a planet more magnificent than ours, may 
 there not be a type of reason of which the intel 
 lect of Newton is the lowest degree ? May there 
 not be a telescope more penetrating, and a mi 
 croscope more powerful than ours ? processes 
 of induction more subtle, of analysis more 
 searching, and of combination more profound ? 
 May not the problem of three bodies be solved 
 there, the enigma of the luminiferous ether 
 unriddled, and the transcendentalisms of mind 
 embalmed in the definitions and axioms and 
 theorems of geometry ? Chemistry may there 
 have new elements, new gases, new acids, new 
 alkalies, new earths and new metals; geo 
 logy, new rocks, new classes of cataclysms, and 
 new periods of change ; and zoology, miner- 
 7 
 
74 MOKE WORLDS THAN ONE. 
 
 alogy and botany, new orders and species, new 
 forms of life, and new types of organization, 
 all demanding higher powers of reason, and 
 leading to a warmer appreciation, and a higher 
 knowledge of the ways and works of God. But 
 whatever be the intellectual occupation of the 
 inhabitants of the planets, who can doubt that 
 it will be one of their objects to study and de 
 velop the material laws which are in operation 
 around them, above them, beneath them, and 
 beyond them in the skies ? 
 
 Under what suns, in what climates, and in 
 what habitations, these planetary races are to 
 live and move, may be conjectured from the 
 place which they occupy in the system, and 
 from the phenomena which they exhibit when 
 examined by the telescope. It may not be in 
 cities exposed to the extremes of heat and cold, 
 nor in houses made with hands, nor in the 
 busy market-place, nor in the noisy Forum, 
 nor in the solemn temple, nor in the ark which 
 rests upon the ocean, that these feats of power 
 and reason are to be performed. The being of 
 another mould may have his home in subter 
 raneous cities warmed by central fires, or in 
 
THE EARTH AND THE OTHER PLANETS. 75 
 
 crystal caves cooled by ocean tides, or lie 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, 
 Amid our bald and meagre conceptions of the 
 conditions of planetary life, we may gather some 
 ideas from the existences around us. In the cities 
 and dwellings and occupations of the world of 
 instinct in our own planet, rude though they 
 be, we may trace the lineaments of the cities 
 and dwellings and occupations of reason in 
 another. 
 
 In continuing the argument for a plurality 
 of worlds, it would be an unnecessary waste of 
 time to enter into the same details respecting the 
 analogy between the Earth and the other three 
 superior planets of the system, as we have done 
 with respect to Jupiter. In some, the analogies 
 are more stringent than in others, but in all of 
 them they are sufficiently numerous and power 
 ful to command the assent of the unprejudiced 
 mind. 
 
 In all the three planets, superior to Jupiter, 
 namely, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune, the di 
 rect light and heat of the sun is greatly less 
 
76 MORE WORLDS THAN ONE. 
 
 than that which falls upon Jupiter, being in 
 versely proportional to the squares of their dis 
 tances from the centre of their radiations ; but 
 we have already seen, that in so far as vision 
 and local temperature are concerned, the light 
 of the sun may be as brilliant, and the temper 
 ature of the seasons as genial as they are 
 upon our own Earth. An increased degree of 
 sensibility in the nervous membrane of the 
 eye, with an enlarged pupil, may give to light, 
 geometrically feeble, a sufficient energy of sen 
 sation, while a different condition of their at 
 mospheres, and a more ardent focus of internal 
 heat, may maintain an agreeable temperature 
 upon their surface. 
 
 The planet Saturn, encompassed with the 
 extraordinary appendage of a ring, fitted to 
 illuminate extensive portions of his surface, and 
 encircled with eight moons to light him in the 
 sun s absence, and revolving round him in 
 months varying from the length of one day up 
 to eighty days, has always been an object of 
 peculiar interest to the astronomer, and of won 
 der to the ordinary student of nature. The 
 plane of the ring, which we have described in 
 
THE EARTH AND THE OTHER PLANETS. 77 
 
 the preceding chapter, is parallel to the equator, 
 and has inequalities like mountains on its sur 
 face. The eight satellites of Saturn are placed 
 at distances varying from 98,000 miles, the dis 
 tance of the nearest from the planet, to nearly 
 two millions of miles ; and as the first five sat 
 ellites are nearer Saturn than our moon is to 
 the earth, they will exhibit larger discs of light 
 to the planet ; and if, what is very probable, they 
 are greatly larger than our moon, the firmament 
 must exhibit a brilliant picture bespangled with 
 large discs of light with a variety of phases, and 
 spanned with the brilliant arches of the planet s 
 ring. As the nearest of these moons, which is 
 called Mimas, performs its revolution in twenty- 
 two hours and a half, its phases must change 
 from the slenderest crescent to the state of half 
 moon in the course of five hours, and as its disc 
 (if it has the same real size as our moon) must 
 appear two and a half times larger, the boundary 
 between the light and dark hemisphere will be 
 seen actually advancing upon the body of the 
 satellite. For the same reason, the motion of 
 this satellite among the stars will be more per- 
 
 septible than the movement of our stars and 
 7* 
 
78 MORE WORLDS THAN ONE. 
 
 planets from their rising to their setting, pro 
 duced by the diurnal motion of the Earth.* 
 
 In respect to the force of gravity upon the 
 surface of Saturn, the analogy between it and 
 the earth is stronger than in the case of Jupiter. 
 The density of Saturn is to that of the Earth as 
 24 to 100, or a little more than four times less, 
 so that since the earth is 5J times denser than 
 water, the density of Saturn will be Ifths that 
 of water. In like manner it may be shown that 
 Uranus and Neptune have nearly the same 
 density as water, and if we make the same esti 
 mation of the force of gravity upon the three 
 superior planets, we shall find that in Saturn 
 the force of gravity is a little greater than in the 
 
 * The appearance of the system of rings from the surface of Saturn, and 
 of the phenomena which they produce in eclipsing occasionally and tem 
 porarily the sun, the eight satellites, and other celestial bodies, was for the 
 first time accurately described by Dr. Lardner in a memoir published in 
 the twenty-second volume of the Transactions of the Astronomical Society 
 for 1853. Dr. Lardner has " there demonstrated that the infinite skill of 
 the great Architect of the Universe has not permitted that this stupendous 
 annular appendage, the use of which still remains undiscovered, should be 
 the cause of such darkness and desolation to the inhabitants of the planet, 
 and such an aggravation of the rigors of their fifteen years winter, as it 
 has been inferred to be from the reasonings of the eminent astronomers 
 already named, (Bode, Herschel, and Madler,) as well as many others, 
 who have either adopted their conclusions, or arrived at like inferences 
 by other arguments." " In short," Dr. Lardner adds, " the ring has no 
 such character as would deprive the planet of any essential condition oj 
 habitability." Museum of Science and Jlrt, vol. i. p. 59. 
 
THE EARTH AND THE OTHER PLANETS. 79 
 
 Earth, and in Uranus and Neptune a little less, 
 so that human beings like ourselves would ex 
 perience no inconvenience from the greater or 
 less force of gravity on these planets, and plants 
 and trees, and architectural structures, of the 
 same character with our own, would have the 
 same strength and permanence. 
 
 In consequense of the rotation of Saturn upon 
 his axis in about 10 J hours, belts and streaks are 
 seen upon his surface, produced doubtless, like 
 those in Jupiter, by equatorial currents like our 
 trade winds. Variable masses of cloud diversify 
 his surface, sometimes changing their place, and 
 sometimes continuing so long in one position, 
 that they reappear at one side of the planet s 
 disc in the same place which they occupied five 
 hours before when they disappeared on the 
 other side of it. 
 
 In the two remote planets, Uranus and Nep 
 tune, the principal point of analogy with our 
 Earth is, that they are lighted with moons, 
 Uranus with six satellites, and Neptune with 
 one or perhaps two, though we have no doubt 
 that, like the other distant planets, he will be 
 found to possess a greater number. The power 
 
80 MOEE WORLDS THAN ONE 
 
 of our best telescopes lias not enabled astrono 
 mers to discover belts and clouds upon these 
 two planets, and thus determine their daily 
 motion. The oblate form of their discs, too, 
 remains to be discovered ; but notwithstanding 
 the absence of these points of analogy, the very 
 existence of such large globes of matter revolv 
 ing round the sun, and lighted up with moons, 
 cannot fail to satisfy the unprejudiced and in 
 quiring mind that they must have been created 
 for some grand purpose worthy of their Maker. 
 In the present state of our knowledge, it is im 
 possible to conceive any other purpose but that 
 of being the residence of animal and intellec 
 tual life. 
 
 There is one consideration in reference to the 
 two remote planets, Uranus and Neptune, which 
 some of our readers may regard as adding to 
 the probability of their being worlds like our 
 own. Some writers, or rather one, for we know 
 of only one, have asserted that " however desti 
 tute planets, moons, and rings may be of inhab 
 itants, they are at least vast scenes of God s 
 presence, and of the activity with which He 
 carries into effect everywhere the laws of na- 
 
EARTH AND THE OTHER PLANETS. 81 
 
 ture, and that the glory of creation arises from 
 its being not only the product, but the constant 
 field of God s activity and thought, wisdom and 
 power."* We shall not venture to ascertain how 
 much more of God s glory is seen in the mere 
 material structure of Saturn and his ring, and of 
 Jupiter and his satellites, than it is in the minut 
 est insect that lives but for an hour ; nor shall 
 we compare gigantic masses of self-luminous or 
 illuminated matter with the smaller organisms 
 which are daily presented to us. We shall 
 admit that the vulgar eye even is delighted 
 with the sight of planets made gorgeous by 
 the telescope, that astronomers are entranced 
 by the study of their movements and their per 
 turbations, and that the useful art of navigation 
 may derive some advantage from the eclipses 
 of Jupiter s satellites. The poet may rejoice in 
 " the soft and tender beauty of the moon," and 
 in the inspirations of the morning and the even 
 ing star. But where is the grandeur, where 
 the utility, where the beauty, where the 
 poetry of the two almost invisible stars which 
 usurp the celestial names of Uranus and Nep- 
 
 * Of the Plurality of Worlds : an Essay, p. 254. 
 
82 MORE WORLDS THAN ONE. 
 
 tune, and which, have been seen by non . *** A 
 very few even of the cultivators of astronomy ? 
 The grand discoveries of Kepler, Newton, and 
 Laplace, were made before these planets were 
 known. They contribute nothing to the arts 
 of terrestrial life : they neither light the lover 
 to his mistress, nor mark by their silver ray the 
 happy hours which are consecrated to friendship 
 and to love. They are doubtless the abodes of 
 life and intelligence the colossal temples where 
 their Creator is recognized and worshipped 
 the remotest watch-towers of our system from 
 which His works may be better studied, and His 
 glories more easily descried. 
 
 From Jupiter and the planets beyond him, 
 we now proceed to the examination of Mars, 
 Venus, and Mercury, and here we shall find 
 analogies more or less numerous and striking 
 with those of our own Earth. In this group of 
 planets no moon or satellite has yet been discov 
 ered, and it is probable that none exists. An 
 atmosphere of great height, and of a peculiar 
 constitution, might in all of them supply the 
 place of a moon. The density of Mars and 
 Venus is very nearly the same as that of the 
 
THE EAKTH AND THE OTHER PLANETS. 83 
 
 Earth, the former being 0*95, and that of the 
 latter O92, while the density of Mercury is a 
 little greater, being 1*12. As the diameter of 
 Venus is nearly equal to that of the Earth, the 
 force of gravity will be almost exactly the same ; 
 and in Mars and Mercury, whose diameters are 
 only about one half that of the Earth, the weight 
 of bodies are equally about one half of what 
 they would be if placed upon our own globe. 
 In Mars, Venus, and Mercury, the length of 
 the day is almost exactly twenty -four hours, the 
 same as that of the Earth,* and in many other 
 points the analogy with our globe is very strik 
 ing. Continents and oceans, and green savan 
 nas, have been observed upon Mars, and the 
 snow of his polar regions has been seen to dis 
 appear with the heat of summer. In Venus 
 and Mercury their surface is variegated with 
 mountain chains of great elevation, and but for 
 the brilliancy of their discs, and the clouds which 
 envelop them, the telescope would have discover 
 ed to us more minute details upon their surface. 
 
 * The mean of the length of the day in these four planets, is within less 
 than a minute of twenty-four hours. The days of Mercury, Venus, the 
 Earth, and Mars, are respectively 24 h 5 m ; 23 h 21 m ; 24 1 * 7 m , and 24& 7 m 
 the mean of which is 24 1 * 45". 
 
84 MORE WORLDS THAN ONE. 
 
 The planets of this inferior group are sur- 
 rounded with atmosphere like our Earth. We 
 actually see the clouds floating in the atmos 
 phere of Mars. Venus and Mercury are sur 
 rounded with the same medium essential to 
 life, and in Venus astronomers have even ob 
 served the morning and the evening twilight. 
 These atmospheres are doubtless the means of 
 tempering the great heat which Venus and 
 Mercury receive from the sun ; and the same 
 purpose may be answered by the absence of 
 that internal heat which exists in the Earth, 
 and which may be used to increase the tem 
 perature of the remoter planets. The intense 
 light which Venus and Mercury receive from 
 the sun may be adduced as an objection to the 
 existence, upon these planets, of inhabitants like 
 ourselves ; but this objection is at once removed 
 by the consideration that this intense light may 
 be completely moderated either by a very small 
 pupil, or by a diminished sensibility of the 
 retina, or by a combination of both. 
 
 Such are the numerous analogies which 
 
 ~ subsist between our Earth and Mars, Venus 
 
 and Mercury. They afford, as a popular writer 
 
THE EARTH AND THE OTHER PLANETS. 85 
 
 observes, " The highest degree of probability, 
 not to say moral certainty, to the conclusion, 
 that these three planets which, with the Earth, 
 revolve nearest to the Sun, are, like the Earth, 
 appropriated by the omnipotent Creator and 
 Euler of the universe to races very closely 
 resembling, if not absolutely identical with 
 those with which the Earth is peopled."* After 
 concluding his examination of the four exterior 
 planets, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune, 
 the same able and candid writer concludes his 
 elaborate chapter in these words : 
 
 " We have thus presented the reader with a 
 brief and rapid sketch of the circumstances 
 attending the two chief groups of globes which 
 compose the solar system, and have explained 
 the discoveries and striking analogies, which 
 taken together amount to a demonstration, that 
 in the economy of the material universe these 
 globes must subserve the same purposes as the 
 Earth, and must be the dwellings of tribes of 
 organized creatures having a corresponding 
 analogy to those which inhabit the Earth. 
 
 " The differences of organization and char- 
 
 * Dr. Lardner s Museum of Science and Art, vol. i. p. 23. 
 
86 MORE WORLDS THAN ONE. 
 
 acter which would be suggested as probable or 
 necessary by the different distances of the 
 several planets from the common source of 
 light and heat, and the consequent differences 
 of intensity of these physical agencies upon 
 them, by the different weights of bodies on 
 their surfaces, owing to the different intensities 
 of their attractions on such bodies, by the 
 different intervals which mark the alternation 
 of light and darkness, are not more than are 
 seen to prevail among the organized tribes, 
 animal and vegetable, which inhabit different 
 regions of the earth. The animals and plants 
 of the tropical zones differ in general from those 
 of the temperate and the polar zones, and even 
 in the same zone we find different tribes of 
 organized creatures flourish at different eleva 
 tions above the level of the sea. There is no 
 thing more wonderful than this in the varieties 
 of organization suggested by the various phys 
 ical conditions by which the planets are af 
 fected."* 
 
 To this opinion of a mathematician and a 
 natural philosopher, who has studied more than 
 
 * Dr. Lardner s Museum of Science and Art, vol. i. p. 63. 
 
THE EARTH AND THE OTHER PLANETS. 87 
 
 any preceding writer the analogies between the 
 Earth and the other planets, we may add that 
 of the most distinguished naturalist and anato 
 mist of the present day, who speaks in an 
 authoritative tone as representing the cultiva 
 tors of that department of science which he 
 has enriched with such important discoveries. 
 "We have been accustomed," says Professor 
 Owen,* "to regard the vertebrate animals as 
 being characterized by the limitation of their 
 limbs to two pairs, and it is true that no more 
 diverging appendages are developed for station, 
 locomotion, and manipulation. But the rudi 
 ments of many more pairs are present in many 
 species. And though they may never be devel 
 oped as such in this planet, it is quite conceivable 
 that certain of them may be so developed, if the 
 vertebrate type should be that on which any of 
 the inhabitants of other planets of our system are 
 organized. 
 
 " The conceivable modifications of the verte 
 brate archetype are very far from being ex 
 hausted by any of the forms that now inhabit 
 the Earth, or that are known to have existed 
 here at any period. 
 
 * On the Nature of Limbs. London, 1849, pp. 83, 84 
 
88 MORE WORLDS THAN ONE. 
 
 " The naturalist and anatomist, in digesting 
 the knowledge which the astronomer has been 
 able to furnish regarding the planets and the 
 mechanism of the satellites for illuminating 
 the night season of the distant orbs that revolve 
 round one common sun, can hardly avoid specu 
 lating on the organic mechanism that may exist 
 to profit by such sources of light, and which 
 MUST EXIST if the only conceivable purpose 
 of these beneficent arrangements is to be ful 
 filled. But the laws of light, as of gravitation, 
 being the same in Jupiter as here, the eyes of 
 such creatures as may disport in the soft re 
 flected beams of its moons will probably be or 
 ganized on the same dioptric principles as those 
 of the animals of a like grade of organization 
 on this earth. And the inference as to the 
 possibility of the vertebrate type being the basis 
 of the organization of some of the inhabitants of 
 other planets, will not appear so hazardous 
 when it is remembered that the orbits or pro 
 tective cavities of the eyes of the vertebrata 
 of this planet are constructed of modified ver 
 tebrae. Our thoughts are free to soar as far as 
 any legitmate analogy may seem to guide 
 them rightly on the boundless ocean of un- 
 
THE EARTH AND THE OTHER PLANETS. 89 
 
 known truth. And if censure be merited for 
 here indulging, even for a moment, in pure 
 speculation, it may perhaps be disarmed by the 
 reflection that the discovery of the vertebrate 
 archetype could riot fail to suggest to the anato 
 mist many possible modifications of it beyond 
 those that we know to have been realized in 
 this little orb of ours. 11 
 
 In referring to the doctrine of Plato respect 
 ing ideal archetypes, as thus revived by Pro 
 fessor Owen, the author of the Essay on a 
 Plurality of Worlds pays the following just 
 compliment to this eminent anatomist : " If a 
 mere metaphysician," says he, " were to attempt 
 to revive this mode of expressing the doctrine, 
 probably his speculations would be disregarded, 
 or treated as a pedantic resuscitation of obsolete 
 Platonic dreams, but the adoption of such lan 
 guage must needs be received in a very different 
 manner when it proceeds from a great discoverer 
 in the field of natural knowledge : when it is, 
 as it were, forced upon him as the obvious and 
 appropriate expression of the result of the most 
 profound and comprehensive researches into 
 the frame of the whole animal creation. The 
 8* 
 
90 MORE WORLDS THAN ONE. 
 
 recent works of Mr. Owen, and especially one 
 work On the Nature of Lirnbs, are full of the 
 most energetic and striking passages, inculcat 
 ing the doctrine which we have been endeav 
 oring to maintain. We may take the liberty 
 of enriching our pages with one passage bearing 
 upon the present part of the subject. 
 
 " l If the world were made by an antecedent 
 mind or understanding, that is, by a Deity, then 
 there must needs be an Idea and Exemplar of 
 the whole world before it was made, and conse 
 quently, actual knowledge both in the order of 
 Time and Nature before Things. But conceiving 
 of knowledge as it was got by their own finite 
 minds, and ignorant of any evidence of an ideal 
 archetype for the world or any part of it, they 
 (the Democritic philosophers who denied a Di 
 vine Creative Mind) affirmed that there was none, 
 and concluded that there could be no knowledge 
 or mind before the world was, as its cause. " 
 
 Before we read this passage in Professor 
 Owen s work On Limbs, from which our essayist 
 does not quote it,* for reasons which may be 
 
 * The quotation may be from Professor Owen s other works referred 
 to by the essayist ; to his work, for example, On the Archetype of the 
 Vertebrate Skeleton. 
 
THE EARTH AND THE OTHER PLANETS. 91 
 
 conjectured, we never doubted that the accom 
 plished professor did not believe in a plurality 
 of worlds. Upon turning, however, to the 
 volume itself, we found the beautiful passage 
 which we have quoted in direct support of this 
 great doctrine, which we may truly say, in the 
 words of the essayist, "proceeds from a great 
 discoverer in the field of natural knowledge, 
 and which was forced upon him (Professor 
 Owen) as the obvious and appropriate express 
 ion of the result of the most profound and 
 comprehensive researches into the frame of the 
 whole animal creation" 
 
 But not only has the essayist dealt thus 
 unfairly with his readers, he has treated Pro 
 fessor Owen in the same manner, by ascribing 
 to him the first half of the preceding quotation, 
 which the Professor quotes from "the learned 
 Cudworth" in his own words, and which Cud- 
 worth gives as the opinion of "the Democritic 
 Atheists!" 
 
 The observations of Professor Owen on ideal 
 archetypes throw a real light on the subject of 
 a plurality of worlds. If there be an ideal ex 
 emplar or archetype o vertebrate animals, and 
 
92 MOEE WORLDS THAN ONE. 
 
 if the conceivable modifications of that arche 
 type are far from being exhausted either in the 
 animal forms which now inhabit the earth, or 
 in the fossil remains of its primeval tenants, it 
 is no idle speculation to suppose that the modi 
 fications may be developed in the vertebrate 
 animals of other planets. We have a reason 
 therefore, besides those of analogy and con- 
 gruity, to believe in the existence of beings 
 both intellectual and animal in the other 
 regions of space. And as there must be an 
 exemplar of intellectual as well as of physical 
 man, may we not equally expect in the upper 
 spheres modifications of mind which have not 
 been exhibited in the terrestrial races ? If the 
 rudimentary wing of man be expanded into the 
 soaring pinion of the eagle, may not those 
 mental powers which are only rudimentary 
 here, and which fail in grasping the infinite 
 and the eternal, expand themselves in another 
 planet, and approximate to that divine intelli 
 gence of which they are here but a feeble 
 emanation ? 
 
 Under the influence of such views, may we 
 not conceive also the archetype of a world, 
 
THE EARTH AND THE OTHEE PLANETS. 93 
 
 the rudiments of which, imperfectly developed 
 in our own globe, may have all its modifica 
 tions exhausted in the planetary and sidereal 
 domains ? The uniformity in the general design 
 of the bodies of animals, which Sir Isaac New 
 ton compares with that " wonderful uniformity 
 of the planetary system, which is the effect of 
 choice," being thus compatible with an almost 
 infinite diversity of parts, there may be the 
 same numerous deviations from the archetype 
 in the planetary world. " It may be allowed," 
 says Sir Isaac Newton, "that God is able to 
 create particles of matter of several sizes and 
 figures, and in several proportions to space, 
 and perhaps of different densities and forces, 
 and thereby to vary the laws of Nature, and 
 make worlds of several sorts in several parts of 
 the universe"* If all the structures of created 
 things are 
 
 " Parts and proportions of a wondrous whole," 
 
 the whole is the sidereal universe, and those 
 parts and proportions are the inhabited planets, 
 satellites, and suns of which it is composed. 
 
 * Optics, edit. 1721, pp. 378, 379. 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 
 THE SUN, THE MOON, AND OTHER SATELLITES, 
 AND THE ASTEROIDS. 
 
 So strong has been the belief that the Sun 
 cannot be a habitable world, that a scientific 
 gentleman* was pronounced by his medical at 
 tendant to be insane, because he had sent a 
 paper to the Royal Society, in which he main 
 tained " that the light of the sun proceeds from 
 a dense and universal aurora which may afford 
 ample light lo the inhabitants of the surface^ 
 beneath, and yet be at such a distance aloft, as- 
 not to annoy them;" that " vegetation may 
 obtain there as well as with us," that " there 
 may be water and dry land there, hills and 
 dales, rain, and fair weather," and that " as the: 
 
 * This gentleman was a Dr. Elliott, who was tried at the Old Bailey for 
 shooting Miss Boydell. His medical attendant was Dr. Simmons, througb 
 whom he sent the paper for the Royal Society, and who referred the Couit 
 to the passage we have given as a proof of insanity. See Edinburgh Eiv- 
 cyclopadia, Art. Astronomy, vol. ii. p. 616, or Oentlemaii s Magazine fern 
 1787, p. 636. 
 
THE SUN AND THE SATELLITES. 95 
 
 light and the seasons must be eternal," the 
 " sun may easily be conceived to be by far the 
 most blissful habitation of the whole system." 
 In less than ten years after this apparently ex 
 travagant notion was considered a proof of in 
 sanity, it was maintained by Sir William Her- 
 schel as a rational and probable opinion, which 
 might be deduced from his own observations 
 on the structure of the sun. 
 
 It is by no means necessary that those who 
 believe in a plurality of worlds within the limits 
 of our own system, should adopt the opinion 
 that the sun which lights it, and the many satel 
 lites which light the primary planets, should be 
 inhabited worlds. They form an entirely differ 
 ent class of bodies, and the arguments employed 
 to show that they may be inhabited are of a 
 different nature from those analogies which so 
 strongly apply to the primary planets. The 
 Sun has a great function to perform in control 
 ling the movements of the whole system. It 
 is the fixed mainspring of the great planetary 
 chronometers, without which they would stop, 
 and rush into destructive collision. It is the 
 lamp which yields them the light without which 
 
96 MORE WORLDS THAN ONE. 
 
 life would perish. It is the furnace which sup* 
 plies the fuel without which every organic struc 
 ture would be destroyed. Created for such no 
 ble purposes, we are led by no analogy to as 
 sign it to an additional function. The very 
 same remark may be applied to our moon, and 
 to all the satellites of the system. They are 
 the domestic lamps which light the primary 
 planets in the absence of the sun, and all of 
 them, as well as our own, may exercise the 
 other office of producing the tides of their oceans. 
 It is quite otherwise with the primary planets : 
 They have no conceivable function to perform 
 but that of supporting inhabitants, unless we 
 give them the additional one, which they are 
 all fit for performing, and which they perform 
 so well, of becoming large lamps to their satel 
 lites ; and if we invest them with this function, 
 we obtain an argument in favor of the satel 
 lites themselves being inhabited. 
 
 We are willing therefore to admit, that anal 
 ogy would fail us, were we to attempt by its 
 processes to people the sun and the satellites 
 with inhabitants. But analogy is not our only 
 guide in such inquiries. The creations of the 
 
THE SUN AND THE SATELLITES. 97 
 
 material world, whether they be of colossal or 
 atomic magnitude, may have various and ap 
 parently contradictory purposes to perform ; 
 and when we find that other purposes, not cog 
 nizable b}?" our senses, or not demonstrable by 
 our reason, may be promoted by such objects, 
 we cannot resist the admission that such addi 
 tional objects may have been contemplated in 
 their creation. The great masses of ironstone 
 in our earth, while they are a necessary part 
 of its framework, and are intended mainly to 
 supply man with the tools of civilization, may 
 have the tertiary or the secondary purpose of 
 giving life to the needle of the compass, or of 
 contributing to those great electrical and mag- 
 netical arrangements which exist on our globe. 
 While the sun then and the satellites are pri 
 marily intended for the great purposes which 
 they so obviously subserve, it is not unreason 
 able to suppose that they may also be the seats 
 of life and intelligence. 
 
 After a skilful examination of the solar spots, 
 Sir William Herschel has made it highly prob 
 able, if not certain, that the light of the sun 
 issues from an outer stratum of self-luminous 
 9 
 
98 MORE WORLDS THAN ONE. 
 
 or phosphoric clouds, beneath which there is a 
 second stratum of clouds of inferior brightness, 
 which is intended to protect the solid and opaque 
 body of the sun from the intense brilliancy and 
 heat of the luminous clouds. In measuring, 
 photometrically, the light of these three differ 
 ent structures, he found that the light reflected 
 outwards by the clouds of the inferior stratum, 
 was equal to 469 rays out of a 1000, or less than 
 one-half of the light of the outer stratum, and 
 that the light reflected by the opaque body of 
 the sun below was only seven rays out of a 1000. 
 Hence he concluded that the outer stratum of 
 self-luminous or phosphoric clouds was the re 
 gion of that light and heat which are transmitted 
 to the remotest part of the system ; while the 
 inferior stratum, which is obviously of a different 
 character from the other, is intended to protect 
 the inhabitants of the sun from the blaze of the 
 stupendous furnace which encloses them. In 
 confirmation of these views, the faint illumina 
 tion, the seven rays out of a thousand, is a 
 proof that the light of the outer stratum, and 
 consequently its heat, must be extremely small 
 on the dark body of the luminary which we see 
 
THE SUN AND THE SATELLITES. 99 
 
 through what are called the solar spots, which 
 are now universally admitted to be openings in 
 the luminous stratum, and not opaque scoriae 
 floating on its surface. 
 
 It is curious to observe how the conjectures 
 in one science are sometimes converted into 
 truths by the discoveries in another. Sir Wil 
 liam Herschel, as we have seen, has stated it as 
 the result of many observations, that the light 
 of the sun does not proceed, as was almost uni 
 versally believed, from a solid or liquid mass in 
 a state of incandescence, or white heat, and the 
 fact has been demonstrated by means of a beau 
 tiful optical discovery of M. Arago : When a 
 solid mass becomes luminous by being raised to 
 a red or white heat, the rays which emanate 
 from it in every direction do not proceed only 
 from its outer superflces. They are radiated 
 like those of heat from an infinite number of 
 material points below the surface, and extend 
 ing to a certain small depth. The rays which 
 traverse this thin luminous film, have been 
 found by M. Arago to be polarized, whereas, 
 had they proceeded from an envelope of flame, 
 they would not have exhibited this remarkable 
 
100 MOKE WOKLDS THAN ONE. 
 
 property. Now, M. Arago has also discovered 
 that the rays which, issue obliquely from the 
 sun s surface are not polarized, and hence he- is 
 authorized to draw the conclusion confirming 
 Sir W. Herschel s opinion, that the light of the 
 sun issues from a gaseous envelope of flame, or 
 self-luminous matter. 
 
 With this important result before us, we 
 approach the question of the habitability of the 
 sun, with the certain knowledge that the sun 
 is not a red-hot globe, but that its nucleus is a 
 solid opaque mass receiving very little light and 
 heat from its luminous atmosphere. Sir Wil 
 liam commences his argument by inquiring into 
 the probability of the moon being inhabited. 
 
 "The moon," he says, " is a secondary planet, 
 of a considerable size, the surface of which is 
 diversified like that of the earth, by mountains 
 and valleys. Its situation with respect to the 
 sun is much like that of the earth, and, by a 
 rotation upon its axis, it enjoys an agreeable 
 variety of seasons, and of day and night. To 
 the moon our globe will appear to be a very 
 capital satellite, undergoing the same regular 
 changes of illumination as the moon does to 
 
THE SUN AND THE SATELLITES, 101 
 
 the earth. The sun, the planets, and the starry 
 constellations of the heavens, will rise and set 
 there as they do here, and heavy bodies will fall 
 on the moon as they do on the earth. There 
 seems only to be wanting, in order to complete 
 the analogy, that it should be inhabited like 
 the .earth. 
 
 " To this it may be objected, that we per- ^ 
 ceive no large seas in the moon ; that its atmos- J 
 phere (the existence of which has been doubted 
 by many) is extremely rare, and unfit for the 
 purposes of animal life ; that its climates, its 
 seasons, and the length of its days, totally differ 
 from ours ; that without dense clouds (which 
 the moon has not) there can be no rain per 
 haps no rivers, no lakes. In short, that not 
 withstanding the similarity which has been 
 pointed out, there seems to be a decided differ 
 ence in the two planets we have compared. 
 
 " My answer to this will be, that that very 
 difference which is now objected will rather 
 strengthen the force of my argument than lessen 
 its value : We find even upon our globe, that 
 there is the most striking difference in the situa 
 tion of the creatures that live upon it. While 
 
102 MOKE WORLDS THAN ONE. 
 
 man walks upon the ground, the birds fly in 
 the air, and fishes swim in water, we can cer 
 tainly not object to the convenience afforded by 
 the moon, if those that are to inhabit its regions 
 are fitted to their conditions as well as we on 
 this globe are to ours. An absolute or total 
 sameness seems rather to denote imperfections 
 such as nature never exposes to our view ; and 
 on this account, I believe the analogies that have 
 been mentioned sufficient to establish the high pro 
 bability of the mooTbS being inhabited like the 
 earth" 
 
 Sir William Herschel proceeds to put the 
 argument in another shape. He supposes that 
 the inhabitants of the moon, and the other 
 satellites, if they do exist, are of opinion that 
 the earth and the other primary planets are of 
 no other use but as lamps, and " attractive 
 centres to direct their revolution round the 
 sun ;" and then he asks, "if we ought not to 
 condemn their ignorance as proceeding from 
 want of attention and proper reflection?" 
 
 From these considerations Sir William thinks 
 that the inhabitants of the planets ought to be 
 wiser than we have supposed those of their sa- 
 
THE SUN AND THE SATELLITES. 103 
 
 tellites to be. " From experience," he adds, 
 " we can affirm, that the performance of the 
 most salutary offices to inferior planets is not 
 inconsistent with the dignity of superior pur 
 poses ; and in consequence of such analogical 
 reasonings, assisted by telescopic views which 
 plainly favor the same opinion, we need not 
 hesitate to admit that the sun is richly stored 
 with inhabitants" 
 
 From the phenomena of variable stars which 
 Sir William supposes to arise from their having 
 spots, and revolving about an axis, he considers 
 it as hardly admitting of a doubt that the fixed 
 stars are suns ; and he comes to the conclusion, 
 that "if stars are suns, and suns inhabitable, 
 we see at once what an extensive field of anima 
 tion opens itself to our view." "It is true," he 
 adds, " that analogy may induce us to conclude, 
 that since stars appear to be suns, and suns, 
 according to the common opinion, are bodies 
 that serve to enlighten, warm, and sustain a 
 system of planets, we may have an idea of num 
 berless globes that serve for the habitation of 
 living creatures. But if these suns themselves 
 are primary planets, we may see some thousands 
 
104 MORE WORLDS THAISi ONE. 
 
 of them with our own eyes, and millions by the 
 help of telescopes ; when, at the same time, the 
 same analogical reasoning still remains in full 
 force, with regard to the planets which these suns 
 may support.*" 
 
 The opinion of so distinguished an astrono 
 mer, and so excellent a man as Sir William 
 Herschel, cannot fail to have much weight on a 
 subject like this ; but though we are desirous of 
 strengthening rather than of controverting his 
 arguments, there are yet some difficulties to be 
 removed, and some additional analogies to be 
 adduced, before the mind can admit the startling 
 proposition, that the sun, moon, and all the sat 
 ellites, are inhabited spheres. We may reject 
 this opinion, and yet believe implicitly in a 
 plurality of worlds. 
 
 In giving an account of these views of Sir 
 William Herschel, Dr. Thomas Youngf has re 
 marked that "no clouds, however dense, could 
 impede the transmission of the sun s heat to the 
 parts below ;" and that " if every other circum 
 stance permitted human beings to reside upon 
 
 * Philosophical Transactions, 1795, pp. 65-69; and 1801, p. 29 
 f Elements of Natural Philosophy, vol. i. pp. 501, 502. 
 
THE SUN AND THE SATELLITES. 105 
 
 it, their own weight would present an insuper 
 able difficulty, since it would become nearly 
 thirty times as great as upon the surface of the 
 earth, a man of moderate dimensions weighing 
 above two tons" The first of these difficulties 
 has certainly no weight If the heat of the 
 sun s rays is proportional to its light, which it 
 must be if it is a flame, the darkness of the sun s 
 nucleus becomes a measure of its coolness. Even 
 a human being might live and breathe upon the 
 solid nucleus under the heat which is indicated 
 by seven rays out of a thousand. The second 
 objection is equally inapplicable, because Sir 
 William has never asserted, and never did be 
 lieve, that the children of the sun were to be 
 human beings, but, on the contrary, creatures 
 " fitted to their condition as well as we on this 
 globe are to ours." 
 
 It has been stated as an objection to the prob 
 ability of the sun s being inhabited, that the 
 whole firmament would be hid by the double at 
 mosphere with which he is surrounded, and that 
 the solar inhabitants would be excluded from 
 all knowledge of the planets which he guides, 
 and of the sidereal universe of which he is a 
 
106 MORK WORLDS TITAN ONE. 
 
 part. This, however, is not strictly true. The 
 planets and stars would be seen distinctly 
 through the numerous openings in the solar 
 atmosphere, and as the sun s surface is compar 
 atively near to these openings, large portions 
 of the heavens would be thus exposed to view. 
 In many parts of our own globe weeks pass away 
 without our seeing the sun or the stars, and it 
 cannot be doubted that the inhabitants of the 
 sun might study astronomy through the casual 
 openings in the luminous cupola which encloses 
 them. 
 
 The probability of the sun being inhabited is 
 doubtless greatly increased by the simple consid 
 eration of its enormous size. Admitting, with 
 Sir William Herschel, that the sun may have a 
 temperature adapted even for human constitu 
 tions, it is difficult to believe that a globe of such 
 magnificence, 88,000 miles in diameter, and 
 upwards of one hundred times the size of our 
 earth, should occupy so distinguished a place 
 without intelligent beings to study and admire 
 the grand arrangements which exist around 
 them ; and it would be still more difficult to be 
 lieve, if it is inhabited, that a domain so exten- 
 
THE SUN AND THE SATELLITES. 107 
 
 sive ; so blessed with, perpetual light, is not occu 
 pied by the highest orders of intelligence. In 
 the material world with which we are connected, 
 life everywhere meets our eye. It is virtually 
 almost a property of matter, and therefore to 
 conceive huge masses of matter, that are warmed 
 and heated, destitute of life, is to do violence to 
 our strongest convictions. Those who believe 
 life to be the result of second causes, must be 
 lieve in its universal diffusion ; and those who 
 have the conviction, that into every living thing 
 the Almighty must breathe its breath, will find 
 it difficult to believe that the life which swarms 
 around him on the earth, the ocean, and the 
 air, of his own planet, has been denied to the 
 other bodies of the system. Universal life upon 
 universal matter is an idea to which the mind 
 instinctively clings. Kingdoms without kings 
 and subjects continents without cities cities 
 without citizens- houses without families 
 ships without crews, and railway trains without 
 passengers, are contingencies as probable as so 
 lar systems without planets, or planets without 
 inhabitants. 
 
 To the arguments so well stated by Sir Wil- 
 
108 MORE WORLDS THAN ONE. 
 
 liam Herschel in favor of his opinion that the 
 moon is inhabited, some important considera 
 tions may be added. The moon certainly has 
 neither clouds nor seas ; but this is no reason 
 why she may not have an atmosphere, and a 
 precipitation of moisture upon her surface, suffi 
 cient for the support of vegetable life. The 
 moon may have streams or even rivers that lose 
 themselves, as some of our own do, either in the 
 dry ground, or in subterranean cavities. There 
 may be springs too, and wells sufficient for the 
 use of man ; and yet the evaporation from the 
 water thus diffused may be insufficient for the 
 formation of clouds, and consequently for the 
 production of rain. The air may be charged 
 to such a small extent with aqueous vapor, that 
 it descends only in gentle dew, to be absorbed 
 by vegetation, and again returned to the atmos 
 phere. Even in our own planet there are re 
 gions of some extent where rain never falls,* 
 and where the aqueous vapor in the atmosphere 
 descends only in refreshing dew. 
 
 Although Sir John Herschel has stated that 
 
 * See Johnston s Physical Atlas. 
 
THE SUN AND THE SATELLITES. 109 
 
 there are no decisive indications of an atmos 
 phere in the moon, yet he has given the follow 
 ing very ingenious theory of the climate of the 
 moon, which implies the^existence of an atmos 
 phere, and even of running water : " The cli 
 mate of the, moon must be very extraordinary ; 
 the alternations being that of "unmitigated and 
 burning sunshine fiercer than an equatorial 
 noon, continued for a whole fortnight, and the 
 keenest severity of frost, far exceeding that of 
 our polar winters, for an equal time. Such a 
 disposition of things must produce a constant 
 transfer of whatever moisture may exist on its 
 surface, from the point beneath the sun to that 
 opposite, by distillation in vacuo, after the man 
 ner of the little instrument called a cryophorus. 
 The consequence must be absolute aridity be 
 low the vertical sun, constant accretion of hoar 
 frost in the opposite region, and perhaps a nar 
 row zone of running water at the borders of the 
 enlightened hemisphere. It is possible, then, 
 that evaporation on the one hand, and conden 
 sation on the other, may, to a certain extent, 
 preserve an equilibrium of temperature, and 
 mitigate the extreme severity of both climates ; 
 10 
 
110 MORE WORLDS THAN ONE. 
 
 but tins process, which, would imply the con 
 tinual generation and destruction of an atmos 
 phere of aqueous vapor, must, in conformity 
 with what has been said above of a lunar at 
 mosphere, be confined within very narrow 
 limits." 
 
 In some of the principal craters, Sir John 
 Herschel tells us " that there are decisive marks 
 of volcanic stratification, arising from success 
 ive deposits of ejected matter, and evident in 
 dications of lava currents ;" and he admits that 
 "there are large regions perfectly level, and 
 apparently of a decided alluvial character" 
 conditions of the moon s surface, which demon 
 strate that there has been an atmosphere to 
 promote combustion, and water to produce an 
 alluvion. We do not understand how modern 
 writers on astronomy have overlooked so com 
 pletely the many arguments for the existence 
 of an atmosphere in the moon, which have been 
 almost universally admitted. Facts observed a 
 century ago by astronomers distinguished for 
 their accuracy, are not less important because 
 they have not been observed by their successors. 
 Volcanoes may have been seen in the moon in 
 
THE SUN AND THE SATELLITES. Ill 
 
 the 18th century, though they have not been 
 observed in the 19th ; and a decided indication 
 of atmospheric action to-day, will not be dis 
 proved by its invisibility to-morrow. 
 
 That volcanoes or burning regions have been 
 observed in the dark portion of the moon s 
 disc, cannot be doubted. In 1772, Beccaria, 
 and in 1778, Ulloa, observed a bright white spot 
 on the moon s disc. The spot observed by Ulloa 
 and other three observers, resembled an opening 
 in the moon ; but Beccaria was of opinion that 
 this spot, as well as the one seen by himself, was 
 the flame of a burning mountain. Various other 
 persons have seen phenomena of the same kind ; 
 but all doubt upon this subject was removed 
 when so accurate an observer as Sir William 
 Herschel announced the discovery of volcanoes 
 in the moon. On the 4th May, 1783, he per 
 ceived a luminous spot in the obscure part of 
 the moon, and two mountains which were formed 
 from the 4tth to the 13th of May ! On the 19th 
 April, 1787, he perceived " three volcanoes in 
 different places of the dark part of the moon. 
 Two of them were already nearly extinct, or 
 otherwise in a state going to break out, which 
 
112 MORE WORLDS THAN ONE.- 
 
 perhaps may be decided next lunation. The 
 third shows an actual eruption of fire, or lumin 
 ous matter. On the day following the volcano 
 was burning with greater violence than the 
 night before, and he found it equal to twice 
 the size of the second satellite of Jupiter, and 
 consequently, above three miles in diameter. 
 Sir "William observed that the eruption resem 
 bled a piece of burning charcoal. The exist 
 ence of recent volcanoes may therefore be 
 considered as a proof that the moon has an 
 atmosphere. 
 
 Although Sir John Herschel broadly asserts, 
 that in the occultations of stars and planets by 
 the moon, there is no appearance whatever of 
 an atmosphere ; yet we have many facts which 
 stand in direct opposition to this statement. 
 Cassini assures us, that he frequently observed 
 the circular figure of Jupiter, Saturn, and the 
 fixed stars changed into an elliptical one, when 
 they approached either the dark or the illumin 
 ated limb of the moon. Mr. Dunn saw Saturn 
 and his ring emerge from the moon s limb like 
 a comet ; and M. Schroeter of Lilienthal, with 
 fine telescopes, observed " several obscurations 
 
THE SUN AND THE SATELLITES. 113 
 
 and returning serenity, eruptions, and other 
 changes in the lunar atmosphere. The same 
 astronomer discovered the twilight of the moon 
 at the extremity of its cusps, and he found by 
 measurement, that the inferior or more dense 
 part of the moon s atmosphere was not above 
 1,500 feet, or the third of a mile high, while 
 the height of the atmosphere where it could 
 affect the brightness of a fixed star, is not above 
 6,742 feet, or not much more than a mile. 
 Hence we see the reason why changes are only 
 occasionally produced upon stars occulted by 
 the moon. Her atmosphere is greatly lower than 
 her mountains. "When the stars, therefore, en 
 ter, or emerge from, behind mountains higher 
 than her atmosphere, they are not affected by 
 refraction ; and when behind mountains or level 
 plains lower than her atmosphere, they are af 
 fected by the refraction of the superincumbent 
 air. 
 
 It is evident, therefore, from all these facts, 
 that in her volcanoes, active and extinct, in her 
 twilight, and in her action upon immerging 
 and emerging stars, the moon exhibits such 
 proofs of an atmosphere, that we have a new 
 10* 
 
114 MOKE WOULD S THAN ONE. 
 
 ground from analogy for believing that she 
 either has inhabitants, or is in a state of prepa 
 ration for receiving them. 
 
 Had the moon been destined to be merely a 
 lamp to our earth, there was no occasion to 
 variegate its surface with lofty mountains and 
 valleys and extinct volcanoes, and cover it with 
 large patches of matter, that reflect different 
 quantities of light, and give its surface the ap 
 pearance of continents and seas. It would have 
 been a better lamp had it been a smooth sphere 
 of lime or of chalk. The existence of extinct 
 volcanoes, the upheaval of lofty mountains, are 
 proofs of a progression in its physical history 
 of a preparation, perhaps long ago made, for 
 the reception of inhabitants. That it is not 
 now preparing may be inferred from the ab 
 sence of every appearance of change, since its 
 surface has been studied by astronomers. 
 
 If it is probable, then, that the moon is in 
 habited, the same degree of probability may be 
 extended to all the other satellites of the system. 
 Their great distance from the earth prevents us 
 from examining their surface ; but even without 
 any indication of mountains and valleys, or of 
 
THE SUN" AND THE SATELLITES. 115 
 
 any forces that have disturbed or are still dis 
 turbing their surface, analogy compels us to 
 conclude, that like all other material spheres, 
 they must have been created for the double 
 purpose of giving light to their primary plan 
 ets, and a home to animal and intellectual life. 
 
CHAPTER VI. 
 
 THE MOTION OF THE SOLAR SYSTEM ROUND A 
 DISTANT CENTRE. 
 
 HAD our Sun, with all the planets and comets 
 which he controls, been absolutely fixed in 
 space, our system could have had no connection 
 with the other systems of the universe. The 
 immense void which separates it from the stars, 
 would have been regarded as the barrier which 
 confined it. Astronomers, however, have not 
 only placed it beyond a doubt that the Solar 
 system is advancing in absolute space, but have 
 determined the direction in which it moves, 
 and within certain limits the velocity of its 
 motion. This great cosmical truth, the grand 
 est in astronomy, will furnish us with a new 
 argument for a plurality of worlds. 
 
 The first astronomer who suggested the idea 
 of such a motion, was the celebrated Dr. Halley,* 
 
 * Phil. Trans., 1718, No. 355, i, v. vi. 
 
MOTION OF THE SOLAR SYSTEM. 117 
 
 who was led to it by comparing the places of 
 Sirius, Arcturus, and Aldebaran, as determined 
 by the observations of Hipparchus and Flam- 
 steed. The French astronomers, Cassini and Le 
 Monnier, noticed the same fact ; but it is to 
 Tobias Mayer* of Gottingen that we are in 
 debted for a more complete examination of the 
 subject. By comparing the places of eighty 
 fixed stars, as determined by Eoemer in 1706, 
 with their places as observed by Lacaille in 
 1750, and himself in 1756, he found that the 
 greater number of them had a proper motion, 
 that is, a motion that could not be explained 
 by any cause connected with the motion of our 
 earth in its orbit, or upon its axis. In order to 
 explain this motion, he suggested that it might 
 arise from a progressive motion of the sun to 
 one quarter of the heavens, in consequence of 
 which the stars to which he was approaching 
 would appear to recede from each other, while 
 those in the opposite region from which he was 
 moving would appear to approach one another ; 
 and he illustrated this idea by supposing a per 
 son walking in a field surrounded by trees, in 
 
 * Opera Inedita, 1775. De Motufixarum propno, pp. 77-81. 
 
118 MOKE WORLDS THAN ONE. 
 
 which case the trees to which he approached 
 would appear to separate, or their distance to 
 increase, while those which he left behind would 
 appear to approach to one another, or their dis 
 tance to diminish, the trees on his right and 
 left hand preserving the same apparent distance 
 from each other. This was the true cause of 
 the proper motion of the stars, but owing to 
 the imperfection of astronomical instruments in 
 the time of Eoemer, and even in Mayer s time, 
 the observed proper motions did not correspond 
 with his explanation of it ; and he quitted the 
 subject with the remark, that many centuries 
 must elapse before the true cause of this mo 
 tion can be explained. 
 
 Astronomy, however, was advancing more 
 rapidly than its most ardent votaries imagined, 
 and, before a single century elapsed, the motion 
 of the solar system in space, as the cause of the 
 proper motion of the stars, became a great 
 truth, which commanded the assent and admir 
 ation of every cultivator of astronomy. 
 
 Although Dr. Wilson* of Glasgow had point 
 ed out, on theoretical principles, the probability 
 
 * Thoughts on General Gravitation, 1777. 
 
MOTION OF THE SOLAR SYSTEM. 119 
 
 of a progressive motion of the Sun, and Lam 
 bert* and La Landef had deduced it from the 
 idea, that the same mechanical impulse which 
 gave the sun its rotatory motion upon its axis, 
 would displace its centre, and give it a motion 
 of translation, yet it was not till Sir William 
 Herschel,^ in 1783, analysed the accurate ob 
 servations of Dr. Maskelyne on thirty -five fixed 
 stars, that a decided step was made in the in 
 vestigation. He found that, in 1790, the solar 
 system was advancing to the star A in the con 
 stellation Hercules, or to a point in the heavens 
 whose right ascension is 260 34/, and north 
 declination 26 17 . By similar calculations, 
 M. Prevost found the right ascension of the 
 same point to be 230, with north declination 
 25 D ; and M. Klugel| made it 260, with north 
 declination 27,< a result almost the same as 
 that of Sir William Herschel. 
 
 It would be inconsistent with the nature of 
 an Essay like this to enter into more minute 
 details upon this subject. We shall, there- 
 
 * Systeme du Monde, pp. 152-158 ; and Lettres Cosmologiques, 1761, 
 ). 126, t Mem. A cad. Par. 1776, p. 513. 
 
 % Phil. Trans., 1783, p. 247 ; 1805, pp. 233-256. 
 S Mem. Acad. Berlin, 1781. | Berlin Ephemeris, 1789. 
 
120 MOKE WORLDS THAN ONE. 
 
 fore, give a tabular view of the results which 
 have been obtained from places of the fixed 
 stars, taken with the more accurate instruments 
 of the present day, at the principal Observa 
 tories in Europe, and by the accomplished 
 astronomers that direct them : 
 
 EIGHT ASCENSION AND DECLINATION OF THE POINT TO WHICH 
 THE SOLAR SYSTEM is ADVANCING. 
 
 Observers, 
 
 Argelander I. 
 
 Rio;ht Probable 
 Ascension. Error. 
 
 256 25 -l 12 21"3 
 
 North Probable 
 Declination. Error. 
 
 38 37 -2 9 21 -4 
 
 No. 
 of Stan 
 used, 
 21 
 
 Argelander II. 
 
 255 9 -7 8 34 -0 
 
 38 34 -3 5 55 -6 
 
 50 
 
 Argelander III. 
 
 261 10"7 3 48 -9 
 
 3058 -1 23J -4 
 
 319 
 
 Lundahl IV. 
 
 252 24 -4 5 25 -3 
 
 14 2G -1 4 29 -3 
 
 147 
 
 Otto Strove V. 
 
 261 23"! 4 49"9 
 
 37 35 -7 4 ll -8 
 
 392 
 
 Mean result VI. 259 9 -4 2 57 -5 34 3G -5 3 24 -5 
 
 The signs + and in this table indicate 
 that the probable error may extend on each 
 side of the tabular number, by the quantities 
 before which they are placed. 
 
 As the stars from which the preceding de 
 ductions have been made were those which are 
 visible in the Observatories of Europe, it became 
 interesting to determine the point to which 
 the Solar system was moving, from the propel 
 motion of the stars that are visible in the 
 Southern hemisphere. This investigation has 
 
MOTION OF THE SOLAR SYSTEM. 121 
 
 been lately made by our distinguished coun* 
 try -man, Mr. Thomas Galloway,*" by means of 
 eighty-one stars that were observed by Lacaille 
 in 1751 and 1752, compared with those observ 
 ed by Mr. Johnson at St. Helena in 1829-1833, 
 and by our countryman, Mr. Henderson, at the 
 Cape, in 1830-1831. The result of this inquiry 
 is, that the point of space to which our Sun is 
 approaching is situated in 
 
 Observer. R. Ascension. N. Declination, Prob. Error. 
 
 Galloway, VII. 260 O -G 43l"4 34 23 -4 5 17 -2 
 
 General Mean, VIII. 259 35"0 3 44 -4 34 30 -0 4 20 -8 
 
 Hence it appears, that the result obtained 
 from the southern stars agrees with that from 
 the northern ones, within 25 of right ascension, 
 and 7 of declination, a coincidence so extraor 
 dinary as to amount to a demonstration of the 
 great physical truth which it indicates. 
 
 But astronomers have not been satisfied with 
 merely determining the direction to which the 
 Sun, with all his planets, is advancing in space : 
 They have calculated, within certain limits of 
 error, the velocity with which they move I 
 Assuming the parallax of stars of the first 
 
 Phil. Trans., 1847. 
 
122 MORE WORLDS THAN ONE. 
 
 magnitude to be O *209, as determined by his 
 father, M. Otto Struve finds that the angular 
 value of the annual motion of the Solar system, 
 if seen at right angles from the distance of such 
 a star, is 0"*3392, with a probable error of 
 Q"-03623 ; and taking the radius of the Earth s 
 
 orbit as unity, we have ^|j| or 1-623, with a 
 
 probable error of O229, as the annual motion 
 of the Sun in space, reckoned in radii of the 
 Earth s orbit. That is, taking 95 millions of 
 miles as the mean radius of the earth s orbit, 
 we have 95 X 1*623 154185 millions of 
 miles, and consequently 
 
 English Miles. 
 
 The velocity of the Solar system 154,185,000 in the year. 
 
 Do. do. 
 
 Do. do. 
 
 Do. do. 
 
 Do. do. 
 
 422,424 in a day. 
 17,601 in an hour. 
 293 in a minute. 
 57 in a second. 
 
 "Here, then," says-M. Struve, senior, " we 
 have the splendid result of the united studies 
 of MM. Argelander, O. Struve, and Peters, 
 grounded on observations made at the three 
 Observatories of Dorpat, Abo, and Pulkova, and 
 which is expressed in the following thesis : 
 * The motion of the Solar system in space is 
 
MOTION OF THE SOLAR SYSTEM. 123 
 
 directed to a point of the celestial vault, situated, 
 on the right line which joins the two stars a 
 and p Herculis, at a quarter of the apparent 
 distance between these stars from n Herculis. 
 The velocity of this motion is such, that the 
 Sun, with all the bodies which depend upon 
 him, advances annually in the above direction 
 1*623 times the radius of the Earth s orbit, or 
 33,550,000 geographical miles. The possible 
 error of this last number amounts to 1,733,000 
 geographical miles, or a seventh of the whole 
 value. We may thus wager 400,000 to 1 that 
 the Sun has a proper progressive motion, and 
 1 to 1 that it is comprised between the limits 
 of 38 and 29 millions of geographical miles. "* 
 As there is no such thing in the heavens as 
 a rectilineal motion, it is evident that the Sun, 
 with all his planets and comets, is in rapid 
 .motion round an invisible body.f To that 
 now dark and mysterious centre, from which 
 no ray however feeble shines, we may, in an 
 other age, point our telescopes, detecting, per 
 chance, the great luminary which controls our 
 
 * Etudes d Astronomie Stellaire, p. 108. 
 
 t Professor Madler, without any very weighty reasons, makes the star 
 Alcyone, the brightest of the Pleiades, the centre of the Sun s orbit. 
 
124 MORE WORLDS THAN ONE. 
 
 system, and bends its path into that vast orbit 
 which man, in the whole cycle of his race, may 
 never be allowed to round. If the buried 
 relics of primeval life have taught us how brief 
 has been our tenure of this terrestrial paradise, 
 compared with its occupancy by the brutes that 
 perish, the grand sidereal truth which we have 
 been expounding impresses upon us the no less 
 humbling lesson, that from the birth of man to 
 the extinction of his race, the system to which 
 he belongs will have described but an infinites 
 imal arc in that grand cosmical orbit in which 
 it is destined to revolve. If reason ever falters 
 beneath the weight of its conceptions, it is 
 under this overwhelming idea of time and of 
 space. One round, doubtless of this immea 
 surable path will the Sun be destined to 
 describe. How long a journey has it been in 
 the past ! How brief in the present ! How 
 endless in the future ! 
 
 We have thus endeavored to give our 
 readers an accurate idea of the nature and 
 grandeur of this great cosmical movement, not 
 merely because it will supply us with a new 
 argument for a plurality of worlds, but because 
 
MOTION OP THE SOLAR SYSTEM. 125 
 
 the author of the Essay already quoted, who 
 denies this great doctrine, has completely mis 
 represented the great truth of the motion of 
 the Solar system. Foreseeing its influence on 
 the mind as an argument for more worlds than 
 one, he has shunned the description of it even 
 as a theory, and represented it to his readers as> 
 among " the conjectures of astronomers," and 
 as founded upon " minute inquiries and bold 
 conjectures," which he need not notice, as they 
 "have no bearing on his subject."* 
 
 That the sidereal phenomena thus stigmatized 
 are not conjectures but truths, admitted ly every 
 astronomer, our readers have seen. That they 
 have a bearing on the doctrine of a plurality 
 of worlds we shall endeavor to show. The 
 argument for a plurality of worlds may have 
 two forms. It may embrace a new point of 
 analogy between the inhabited Earth and any 
 of the planets, primary or secondary; and since 
 our Solar system is a system containing inhab 
 itants, even if the Earth is the only planet that 
 contains them, any point of analogy between 
 that system and any other system of stars in 
 
 * Of a Plurality of Worlds, pp. 157, 158. 
 11* 
 
126 MORE WORLDS THAN ONE. 
 
 which, there is a distinct movement of one star 
 round another, becomes an argument for the 
 existence of inhabitants, or of an inhabited 
 planet in the other. It may have also a second 
 form, namely, that which is called a reductio 
 ad absurdum, that is, an argument in which it 
 is shown that the opposite opinion is an absurd 
 ity. The strictest truths in geometry have 
 been considered as demonstrated by this species 
 of argument, and it is still more applicable in 
 the present case, where mathematical certainty 
 cannot be reached, because there may be dif 
 ferent degrees of absurdity, and we may have 
 an argumentum ad absurdiorem, and an argu- 
 raentum ad dbsurdissimum. 
 
 To illustrate this, let us suppose that, at a 
 certain period in the history of astronomy, the 
 Earth was believed to be the only planet that 
 moved round the Sun. The astronomer of that 
 day must have thought it strange that a sun 
 88,000 miles in diameter should be employed 
 to light and to heat a planet only 8,000 miles 
 in diameter, as a smaller sun nearer the Earth 
 would have been sufficient for the purpose. 
 When Venus was discovered and found to be a 
 
MOTION OF THE SOLAR SYSTEM. 127 
 
 planet of the same size as the Earth, with moun 
 tains and valleys, days and nights, and years 
 analogous to our own, astronomers could not 
 fail to think it probable that she was inhabited 
 like the Earth ; and the absurdity of believing 
 that she had no inhabitants, when no other 
 rational purpose could be assigned for her crea 
 tion, became an argument of a certain amount 
 that she was like the Earth, the seat of animal 
 and vegetable life. When Jupiter was dis 
 covered, and was found to be so gigantic a 
 planet that it required four moons to give him 
 light, the argument from analogy that he was 
 inhabited became stronger, from the fact of his 
 having moons, and the argument for a plurality 
 of worlds became stronger also, because the 
 analogy was extended to two planets. In like 
 manner, every discovery of a new planet, either 
 with new points of analogy, or with those pre 
 viously existing in other planets, became an 
 additional argument from analogy ; and when 
 the system was completed with Saturn, Uranus, 
 Neptune, and their numerous satellites, and 
 when astronomers had discovered the existence 
 of atmospheres, and clouds, and arctic snows, 
 
128 MORE WORLDS THAN ONE. 
 
 and trade winds in Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, and 
 Venus, the argument from analogy attained a 
 degree of force which it had not in the time of 
 Fontenelle ; and the absurdity of the opposite 
 opinion that planets should have moons and no 
 inhabitants, atmospheres with no creatures to 
 breathe in them, and currents of air without life 
 to be fanned, became a formidable argument 
 which few minds, if any, could resist. 
 
 Considering then the Solar system as station 
 ary in space, and unconnected with any other 
 system, the argument for the existence of inhab 
 itants on its planets, has a certain fixed value 
 compounded of the argument from analogy, and 
 the degree of absurdity which attaches to the 
 idea of the planets being lumps of moving mat 
 ter shone upon, and shining in vain. But when 
 we have proved that this Solar system is revolv 
 ing round some distant centre in an orbit of 
 such inconceivable dimensions that millions of 
 years might be required to perform one single 
 round : When we consider that this distant 
 centre must be a sun, with attendant planets 
 like our own, revolving in like manner round 
 our sun, or round their common centre of grav- 
 
MOTION OF THE SOLAR SYSTEM. 129 
 
 ity, the mind rejects, almost with indignation, 
 the ignoble sentiment that man is the only 
 being that performs this immeasurable journey, 
 and that Jupiter, and Saturn, and Uranus, and 
 Neptune, with their bright array of regal train- 
 bearers, are but colossal blocks of lifeless clay 
 encumbering the Earth as a drag, and mocking 
 the creative majesty of heaven. 
 
 It is hardly necessary to illustrate these views 
 by more familiar similitudes. The architect of 
 a solar system stationary in space, and with but 
 one of its smallest planets inhabited, may in 
 some degree be likened to a sovereign, who, in 
 sending a military colony to cultivate and de 
 fend an island in the Pacific, engaged twenty- 
 five soldiers, one of whom was a light infantry 
 man, who did all the honors and duties of the 
 island, while the other twenty-four were tall 
 and powerful grenadiers, who enjoyed them 
 selves day and night upon merry-go-rounds, 
 heated by genial fires, and lighted by brilliant 
 chandeliers of gas, but performing no useful 
 work, and doing no honor to their king. The 
 Creator of the same solar system launched into 
 an orbit of immeasurable circuit, and wheeling 
 
130 MORE WORLDS THAN ONE. 
 
 through, ether with the velocity of fifty-seven 
 miles in a second, may have some resemblance 
 to a mighty autocrat, who should establish a 
 railway round the coasts of Europe and Asia, 
 and place upon it an enormous train of first- 
 class carriages, impelled year after year by tre 
 mendous steam power, while there w as but a 
 philosopher and a culprit in a humble van, at 
 tended by hundreds of unoccupied carriages 
 and empty trucks ! 
 
 Since every fixed star, considered as the 
 centre of a system, must have planets upon 
 which to shine, we are furnished with a new 
 argument from analogy, from the fact of our 
 Solar system revolving round a similar system 
 of planets, for as there is at least one inhabited 
 planet in the one system, there must for the 
 same reason be one inhabited planet in the 
 other, and consequently, there must be more 
 inhabited worlds than one as many indeed as 
 there are systems in the universe. This argu 
 ment will be better understood when we have 
 treated, in a future chapter, of binary systems 
 of stars, to which the Newtonian law of gravity 
 has been found applicable. 
 
CHAPTER vn. 
 
 EELIGIOUS DIFFICULTIES. 
 
 IT is as injurious to the interests of religion, 
 as it is degrading to those of science, when the 
 votaries of either place them in a state of mu 
 tual antagonism. A mere inference or a theory 
 in science, however probable, must ever give 
 way to a truth revealed ; but a scientific truth 
 must be maintained, however contradictory it 
 may appear to the most cherished doctrines of 
 religion. In freely discussing the subject of a 
 plurality of worlds, there can be no collision 
 between Eeason and Eevelation. Christians, 
 timid and ill-formed, have, at different per 
 iods, refused to accept of certain results of 
 science, which, instead of being adverse to their 
 faith, have been its best auxiliaries ; and infidel 
 writers, taking advantage of this weakness, 
 have vainly arrayed the discoveries and infer- 
 
182 MORE WORLDS THAN ONE. 
 
 ences of astronomy against the fundamental 
 doctrines of Scripture. This unseemly con 
 troversy, which once raged respecting the mo 
 tion of the Earth and the stability of the Sun, 
 and more recently in reference to the doctrines 
 and theories of geology, terminated, as it always 
 must do, in favor of science. Truths physical 
 have an origin as divine as truths religious, 
 In the time of Galileo they triumphed over the 
 casuistry and secular power of the Church ; and 
 in our own day the incontrovertible truths of 
 primeval life have won as noble a victory over 
 the errors of a speculative theology, and a false 
 interpretation of the word of God. Science 
 ever has been, and ever must be the safeguard 
 of religion. The grandeur of her truths may 
 transcend our failing reason, but those who 
 cherish and lean upon truths equally grand, 
 but certainly more incomprehensible, ought to 
 see in the marvels of the material world the 
 best defence and illustration of the mysteries 
 of their faith. 
 
 In referring to the planets of our own system, 
 and to those which surround the fixed stars as 
 suns, Dr. Bentley justly remarks, " that if any 
 
RELIGIOUS DIFFICULTIES. 133 
 
 person will indulge himself in this speculation, 
 he need not quarrel with revealed religion upon 
 such an account. The Holy Scriptures do not 
 forbid him to suppose as great a multitude of 
 systems, and as much inhabited as he pleases. 
 "Pis true there is no mention in Moses s narra 
 tive of the creation of any people in other 
 planets. But it plainly appears that the sacred 
 historian doth only treat of the origin of ter 
 restrial animals : he hath given us no account 
 of God s creating the angels ; and yet the same 
 author in the ensuing parts of the Pentateuch, 
 makes not infrequent mention of the angels of 
 God. Neither need we be solicitous about the 
 conditions of those planetary people, nor raise 
 frivolous disputes how far they may participate 
 in Adam s fall or in the benefits of Christ s in 
 carnation. As if because they are supposed to 
 be Rational they must needs be concluded to 
 be Men" He then goes on to show that there 
 maybe " minds of superior or meaner capacities 
 than human united to a human body," and 
 " minds of human capacities united to a differ 
 ent body" "so that we ought 
 
 not upon any account to conclude that if there 
 
134 MOKE WORLDS THAN ONE. 
 
 be rational inhabitants in the Moon or Mars, or 
 any unknown planets of other systems, they 
 must therefore have human natures, or be in 
 volved in the circumstances of our world."* 
 
 The doctrine of a plurality of worlds, of 
 the occupation of the planets and stars by 
 animal and intellectual life, has been stated as 
 " a popular argument against Christianity not 
 much dwelt upon in books, but it it is believed, 
 a good deal insinuated in conversation, and 
 having no small influence on the amateurs of a 
 superficial philosophy. ! Although we have 
 felt that such a difficulty might be made an 
 objection to Christianity, we have neither met 
 with it in books nor in conversation ; but as it 
 has been so prominently brought into view by 
 Dr. Chalmers, and also by the author of the 
 Essay Of a Plurality of Worlds, it is necessary 
 to ascertain its value, whether it be urged by 
 the infidel against the truths of Scripture, or by 
 the Christian against the inferences of science. 
 
 "Is it likely," as Dr. Chalmers puts it, " says 
 the infidel, that God would send His eternal 
 
 * On the Confutation of Atheism, &c., 1693, pp. 6-8. 
 f Chalmers s Discourses, &c. Discourse I. 
 
RELIGIOUS DIFFICULTIES. 135 
 
 Son to die for the puny occupiers of so insig 
 nificant a province in the mighty field of His 
 creation ? Are we the befitting objects of so 
 great and so signal an interposition ? Does not 
 the largeness of that field which Astronomy 
 lays open to the view of modern science, throw 
 a suspicion over the truth of gospel history ? 
 and how shall we reconcile the greatness of 
 that wonderful movement which was made in 
 heaven for the redemption of fallen man, with 
 the comparative meanness and obscurity of our 
 species ?" 
 
 In meeting this astronomical objection, Dr. 
 Chalmers states that it consists of an assertion, 
 which he denies, that Christianity was estab 
 lished for the exclusive benefit of our minute 
 and solitary world, and of an inference or argu 
 ment, that God would not lavish " such a quan 
 tity of attention on so insignificant a field." 
 In denying the assertion, and maintaining that 
 the inhabitants of other worlds may not have 
 required a Saviour, Dr. Chalmers has obviously 
 cut the knot of the difficulty rather than untied 
 it. The assertion of the infidel, and the asser 
 tion of the divine, mutually destroy each other. 
 
136 MOBPJ WORLDS THAN ONE. 
 
 The assertion of the infidel, not his inference, 
 has been maintained very generally by Christ 
 ians themselves, and is indeed a difficulty 
 which perplexes them. The assertion of the 
 divine, on the contrary, is one which very few 
 Christians will admit, and one which is opposed 
 to the very system of analogy, which guides us 
 in proving a plurality of worlds. If we argue 
 that Jupiter, a planet with moons, must be in 
 habited because the earth which has a moon is 
 inhabited, is not the infidel or the Christian en 
 titled to say, that since the inhabitants of the 
 Earth have sinned and required a Saviour, the 
 inhabitants of Jupiter must also have sinned, 
 and required a Saviour? To maintain the con 
 trary opinion is not only against analogy, but it 
 is a hazardous position for a divine to take when 
 he maintains it to be probable that there are 
 intellectual creatures occupying a world of mat 
 ter, and subject to material laws, and yet ex 
 empt from sin, and consequently from suffering 
 and death. A proposition so extraordinary 
 we cannot venture to affirm. If it be true, the 
 difficulty of the sceptic and the Christian is at 
 once removed, because there can be no need of 
 
RELIGIOUS DIFFICULTIES. 137 
 
 a Saviour ; and we are driven to the extrava 
 gant conclusion, that the inhabitants of all the 
 planets but our own are sinless and immortal 
 beings that never broke the Divine law, and are 
 enjoying that perfect felicity which is reserved 
 only for a few of the less favored occupants of 
 the Earth. Thus chained to a planet the lowest 
 and most unfortunate in the universe, the phi 
 losopher, 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 uni 
 verse, and the special object of God s paternal 
 care. 
 
 We must not, however, permit our readers to 
 come to such a painful conclusion. Men of 
 lofty minds and of undoubted piety have re 
 garded the existence of moral evil as a part 
 a necessary part, we think, of the general 
 scheme of the universe, and consequently as 
 affecting all its rational inhabitants the race 
 of Adam on our own globe, and the races, per 
 chance, more glorious than our own in the 
 planets around us, and in the remotest system in 
 12* 
 
138 MORE WORLDS THAN ONE. 
 
 space. When on the eve of learning the truth 
 of his opinion, the illustrious Huygens did not 
 hesitate to affirm, that it would be absurd to 
 suppose that all things were made otherwise 
 than God willed, and knew would happen ; and 
 that if we had lived in continual peace, and 
 with an abundant supply of all the good things 
 of this life, there would have been neither art 
 nor science, and the human race would soon 
 have lived like the brutes that perish. And 
 with these views he comes to the conclusion, 
 that the inhabitants of the other planets must 
 be endowed with the same vices and virtues as 
 man, because without such vices and virtues 
 they would be far more degraded than the oc 
 cupants of the Earth. 
 
 One of the most profound thinkers and ele 
 gant writers of the present day* has viewed this 
 subject from a loftier eminence. " From the 
 revealed record," he says, " we learn that the 
 dynasty of man in the mixed state and character, 
 is not the final one, but that there is to be yet 
 another creation, or more properly re-creation, 
 known theologically as the resurrection, which 
 
 Mr. Hugh Miller, Footprints of the Creator, pp. 301-H03. 
 
RELIGIOUS DIFFICULTIES. 139 
 
 shall be connected in its physical components by 
 bonds of mysterious paternity, with the dynasty 
 which now reigns, and be bound to it mentally 
 by the chain of identity, conscious and actual ; 
 but which in all that constitutes superiority, 
 shall be as vastly its superior as the dynasty of 
 responsible man is superior to even the lowest 
 of the preliminary dynasties. We are farther 
 taught, that at the commencement of this last 
 of the dynasties, there will be a re-creation, of 
 not only elevated, but also of degraded beings 
 a recreation of the lost. We are taught yet 
 farther, that though the present dynasty be that 
 of a lapsed race, which at their first introduction 
 were placed on higher ground than that on which 
 they now stand, and sank by their own act, it 
 was yet part of the original design, from the 
 beginning of all things, that they should occupy 
 the existing platform ; and that redemption is 
 thus no after- thought, rendered necessarj^ by the 
 fall, but, on the contrary, part of a general 
 scheme, for which provision has been made from 
 the beginning ; so that the divine man, through 
 whom the work of restoration has been effected, 
 was in reality, in reference to the purposes of 
 
140 MORE WORLDS THAN ONE. 
 
 the Eternal, what He is designated in the re- 
 markable text, l The Lamb slain from the foun 
 dations of the world? Slain from the founda 
 tions of the world ! Gould the assertors of the 
 stony science ask for language more express ? 
 By piecing the two records together that re 
 vealed in Scripture, and that revealed in the 
 rocks records which, however widely geolo 
 gists may mistake the one, or commentators 
 misunderstand the other, have emanated from 
 the same great author, we learn that in slow 
 and solemn majesty has period succeeded period, 
 each in succession ushering in a higher and yet 
 higher scene of existence that fish, reptiles, 
 mammiferous quadrupeds, have reigned in turn, 
 that responsible man, made in the image 
 of God, and with dominion over all creatures, 
 ultimately entered into a world ripened for his 
 reception ; but further, that this passing scene, 
 in which he forms the prominent figure, is not 
 the final one in the long series, but merely the 
 last of the preliminary scenes ; and that that 
 period to which the bygone ages, incalculable in 
 amount, with all their well-proportioned grada 
 tions of being, form the imposing vestibule, shall 
 
RELIGIOUS DIFFICULTIES. 141 
 
 have perfection for its occupant, and eternity 
 for its duration. I know not how it may appear 
 to others ; but for my own part, I cannot avoid 
 thinking that there would be a lack of propor 
 tion in the series of being, were the period of 
 perfect and glorified humanity abruptly con 
 nected, without the introduction of an intermediate 
 creation of responsible imperfection, with that of 
 the dying, irresponsible brute. That scene of 
 things in which God became man, and suffered, 
 seems, as it no doubt is, a necessary link in the 
 chain." 
 
 At this startling result, our author finds him 
 self on the confines of a mystery which man has 
 "vainly aspired to comprehend." "I have," 
 says he, " no new reading of the enigma to offer. 
 I know not why it is that moral evil exists in 
 the universe of the All- wise and the All-power 
 ful ; nor through what occult law of Deity it is 
 that perfection should come through suffer 
 ing. " In the darkness of this mystery the best 
 and the brightest spirits are involved ; and our 
 inability to fathom its depth we willingly ac 
 knowledge. But there are difficulties, which 
 though we cannot solve them for others, we 
 
142 MORE WORLDS THAN ONE. 
 
 may solve for ourselves. An inferior intellect 
 may disencumber itself of an incubus, which a 
 superior one may be doomed forever to bear. 
 And as the physician, when he cannot achieve 
 a cure, considers himself fortunate when he 
 finds an anodyne, so the Spectre of Moral Evil 
 may haunt the philosopher when the peasant 
 has succeeded in exorcising it. 
 
 To exhibit the Divine attributes, and to dis 
 play the Divine glory to an intellectual and 
 immortal race, must have been the purpose for 
 which a material universe was created. In his 
 physical frame Man is necessarily subject to 
 physical laws. The law of gravity "cannot 
 cease as he goes by;" and finite in his nature, 
 and fallible in his reason, he can but feebly de 
 fend himself against the ferocity of animal life, 
 the power of the elements, or the poison that 
 may mingle in his cup. His high reason does 
 not, in many emergencies, compensate for his 
 inferior instinct. He is therefore helplessly ex 
 posed to suffering and death. The instincts of 
 self-preservation and of parental affection give 
 a magnitude and interest to whatever affects the 
 safety and happiness of himself and his offspring. 
 
RELIGIOUS DIFFICULTIES. 143 
 
 He is thus placed in antagonism to his fellow- 
 sufferers, and in the collision of interests and 
 feelings, laws human and Divine are broken. 
 Nor is this result less conformable to what we 
 have regarded as the object and end of creation. 
 In order to glorify God by a knowledge of His 
 attributes, these attributes must be fully dis 
 played. The power, and wisdom, and goodness 
 of the Creator, are exhibited to us every day and 
 every hour ; they are proclaimed in the heav 
 ens ; they are stamped on the earth ; life, 
 and the enjoyments of life, display them even to 
 the dumb, the deaf, and the blind. But in what 
 region are we to descry the attributes of mercy, 
 of justice, and of truth ? In the abodes of 
 happiness and peace, the idea of Mercy can 
 neither have an object nor a name. Justice can 
 be understood only among the unjust, and 
 Truth only among the untruthful. The moral 
 attributes of the most High can be comprehended 
 and emblazoned only among the cruel, the dis 
 honest and the false. His power, wisdom, and 
 goodness, can be exhibited only in a material 
 world, governed by the laws of matter ; and man 
 in his material nature must be subject to their 
 
144 MORE WOKLDS THAN ONE. 
 
 operation and control. Though thus controlled 
 and thus suffering, we feel that all is good and 
 wise, and under this feeble gleam of reason there 
 is light enough to show us if we are disposed 
 to have it shown that the Spectre of Moral 
 Evil has been conjured up by ourselves : 
 
 All discord, harmony not understood : 
 All partial evil, universal good POPE. 
 
 If we reject, then, the idea that the inhabit 
 ants of the planets do not require a Saviour, 
 and maintain the more rational opinion, that 
 they stand in the same moral relation to their 
 Maker as the inhabitants of the Earth, we must 
 seek for another solution of the difficulty which 
 has embarrassed both the infidel and the Chris 
 tian. How can we believe, says the timid 
 Christian, that there can 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 anxieties. 
 
 When, at the commencement of our era, the 
 great sacrifice was made at Jerusalem, it wag 
 
RELIGIOUS DIFFICULTIES. 145 
 
 by the crucifixion of a man, or an angel, or a 
 God. If our faith be that of the Arian or the 
 Socinian, the sceptical and the religious diffi 
 culty is at once removed : a man or an angel 
 may be again provided as a ransom for the 
 inhabitants of the planets. But if we believe, 
 with the Christian Church, that the Son of God 
 was required for the expiation of sin, the dif 
 ficulty presents itself in its most formidable 
 shape. 
 
 When our Saviour died, the influence of His 
 death extended backwards, in the past, to mill 
 ions who never heard His name, and forwards, 
 in the future, to millions who will never hear it. 
 Though it radiated but from the Holy City, it 
 reached to the remotest lands, and affected 
 every living race in the old and the new world. 
 Distance in time and distance in place did not 
 diminish its healing virtue. 
 
 " Though curious to compute, 
 " Archangels failed to cast the mighty sum." 
 
 " Ungrasped by minds create," it was a force 
 
 which did not vary with any function of the 
 
 distance. All-powerful over the thief on the 
 
 cross, in contact with its divine source, it was in 
 
 13 
 
146 MORE WORLDS THAN ONE. 
 
 succeeding ages equally powerful over the Eed 
 Indian of the west, and the wild Arab of the 
 east. Their heavenly Father, by some process of 
 mercy which we understand not, communicated 
 to them its saving power. Emanating from the 
 middle planet of the system, why may it not 
 have extended to them all to the planetary 
 races in the past, when " the day of their re 
 demption had drawn nigh ;" and to the planet 
 ary races in the future, when " their fulness of 
 time shall come" ? 
 
 " When stars and suns are dust beneath his throne, 
 A thousand worlds so bought were bought too dear " 
 
 But to bring our argument more within the 
 reach of an ordinary understanding, let us 
 suppose that our globe at the beginning of the 
 Christian era had been broken in two, as the 
 comet of Biela is supposed to have been in 1846, 
 and that its two halves, the old world and the 
 new, travelled together like a double star, or 
 diverged into widely -separated orbits. Would 
 not both its fragments have shared in the 
 beneficence of the cross, the old world as 
 liberally as the new, the penitent on the 
 
RELIGIOUS DIFFICULTIES 147 
 
 shores of the Mississippi, as richly as the 
 pilgrim on the banks of the Jordan. If the 
 rays, then, "of the Sun of righteousness, with 
 healing on His wings," could have shot across 
 the void between our European and American 
 worlds thus physically dissevered, may not all 
 the planets, the worlds made by our Saviour 
 himself, formed out of the same material 
 element, and basking under the same benefi 
 cent sun, be equal participators in His heavenly 
 gift? 
 
 Should this view of the subject prove unsat 
 isfactory to the anxious inquirer, we may 
 suggest for his consideration another sentiment, 
 even though we ourselves may not admit it into 
 our creed. If one man can expiate the crime 
 of another by a punishment short of death, he 
 may perform the same generous deed for a 
 thousand. Should such a noble martyr consent 
 even to give his life for his friend, by suffering 
 a death from which science could revive him, 
 he might expiate the crimes of thousands of 
 his race. May not the Divine nature, which 
 can neither suffer nor die, and which in our 
 planet, once only, clothed itself in humanity, 
 
148 MORE WORLDS THAN ONE. 
 
 resume elsewhere a physical form, and expiate 
 the guilt of unnumbered worlds ? 
 
 In his zeal to overthrow the objection of the 
 infidel, Dr. Chalmers has, we think, subjected 
 it to a species of unnecessary torture. When 
 the infidel thinks it unlikely "that God would 
 send His eternal Son to die for the puny occu 
 pants of so insignificant a province of His 
 creation," he does not mean that God cannot 
 and does not take care " of the insignificant 
 province" of the earth, because He has so many 
 other nobler planetary kingdoms to govern. 
 He means only that the mission of God s own 
 eternal Son was too great a gift to the earth, 
 and therefore one not likely to be given. The 
 objection, indeed, which Dr. Chalmers puts into 
 the mouth of the infidel is, in truth, an objection 
 felt by the Christian ; and the acute author of 
 the Essay Of a Plurality of Worlds, seeing this 
 mistake, actually treats it "not as an objection 
 urged by an opponent of religion, but rather 
 as a difficulty felt by a friend of religion." He 
 considers it as a difficulty bearing on natural 
 religion, and in this aspect he accepts of it as a 
 difficulty, discusses its importance, and regards 
 
RELIGIOUS DIFFICULTIES. 149 
 
 Dr. Chalmer s reply to it as "well fitted to 
 remove the scruples to which it is especially 
 addressed." The difficulty is thus put by the 
 anonymous author we have referred to : 
 
 " Among the thoughts which it was stated 
 naturally arose in men s minds when the tele 
 scope revealed to them an innumerable multi 
 tude of worlds besides the one we inhabit was 
 this; that the Governor of the Universe, who 
 has so many worlds under His management, 
 cannot be conceived as bestowing upon this 
 earth, and its various tribes of inhabitants, 
 that care which, till then, natural religion had 
 taught men that He does employ to secure to 
 man the possession and use of his faculties of 
 mind and body, and to all animals the requi 
 sites of animal existence and animal enjoyment. 
 And upon this Chalmers remarks, that just 
 about the time when science gave rise to the 
 suggestion, of this difficulty, she also gave 
 occasion to a remarkable reply to it. Just 
 about the same time that the invention of the 
 telescope showed that there were innumerable 
 worlds which might have inhabitants requiring 
 the Creator s care as much as the tribes of this 
 
150 MORE WORLDS THAN ONE. 
 
 earth do, the invention of the microscope 
 showed that there were in this world innumer 
 able tribes of animals which had been all along 
 enjoying the benefit of the Creator s care as 
 much as those kinds with which man had been 
 familiar from the beginning. The telescope 
 suggested that there might be dwellers in 
 Jupiter or in Saturn, of great size and unknown 
 structure, who must share with us the preserv 
 ing care of God. The microscope showed that 
 there had been close to us, inhabiting minute 
 crevices and crannies, peopling the leaves of 
 plants and the bodies of other animals, animal 
 cules of a minuteness hitherto unguessed, and 
 of a structure hitherto unknown, who had been 
 always sharers with us in God s preserving care. 
 The telescope brought into view worlds as 
 numerous as the drops of water which make up 
 the ocean ; the microscope brought into view 
 a world in every drop of water. Infinity in 
 one direction was balanced by infinity in the 
 other. The doubts which man might feel as 
 to what God would do, were balanced by cer 
 tainties which they discovered as to what He 
 had always been doing. His care and good- 
 
RELIGIOUS DIFFICULTIES. 151 
 
 ness could not be supposed to be exhausted by 
 the hitherto known population of the Earth, 
 for it was proved they had hitherto been con 
 fined to that population. The discovery of 
 new worlds at vast distances from us was 
 accompanied by the discovery of new worlds 
 close to us, even in the very substances with 
 which we were best acquainted, and was thus 
 rendered ineffective to disturb the belief of those 
 who had regarded the world as having God for its 
 Governor." 
 
 The difficulties, or " scruples," so distinctly 
 stated in the preceding extract, whether we 
 view them as an objection urged by an oppo 
 nent of religion, as Dr. Chalmers does, or as a 
 difficulty felt by the Christian, have, in our 
 opinion, no existence ; and, if they had, we con 
 sider the discoveries of the microscope as having 
 no tendency whatever to remove them. It is a 
 singular doctrine to maintain, that " the truths 
 of natural religion " were ever exposed to danger 
 by the discoveries of the telescope, or that astro 
 nomical truth ever excited the " doubts or diffi 
 culties," stated by our author, either in the minds 
 of Theists or Christians of the most ordinary 
 
162 MORE WORLDS THAN ONE. 
 
 capacity. We have never read any works con 
 taining such doubts, nor listened to any conver 
 sations in which they were the subject of dis 
 cussion. Amid the destructive convulsions of 
 the physical world, even pious minds may have 
 for an instant questioned the superintending 
 providence of God. In the midst of famine, or 
 pestilence, or war, they may have stood horror- 
 struck at the scene. In the triumphs of fraud, 
 oppression, and injustice, over honesty, and 
 liberty, and law, Faith may have wavered, and 
 Hope despaired ; but in no condition, either of 
 the physical or the moral world, does the mind 
 question the POWER of its Maker. The omnip 
 otence of the Creator, and the exertion of it in 
 every corner of space, His care over the falling 
 sparrow, and His guidance of the gigantic planet, 
 are the earliest of our acquired truths, and the 
 very first that observation and experience con 
 firm. When Eeason gives wisdom to our per 
 ceptions, omnipotence is the grand truth which 
 they inculcate. Whatever the eye sees, or the 
 ear hears, or the fingers touch, every motion 
 of our body, every function it performs, every 
 structure in its fabric, impresses on the mind, 
 
RELIGIOUS DIFFICULTIES. 153 
 
 and fixes in the heart the conviction, that the 
 Creator is all-powerful as well as all- wise. Om 
 nipotence, in short, is the only attribute of God 
 which is universally appreciated, which scepti 
 cism never unsettles, and which we believe as 
 firmly when under the influence of our corrupt 
 passions, as when we are looking devoutly to 
 heaven. All the other attributes of God are 
 inferences. His omnipresence, His omniscience, 
 His justice, mercy, and truth, are the deductions 
 of reason, and, however true and demonstrable, 
 they exercise little influence over the mind ; 
 but the attribute of omnipotence predominates 
 over them all, and no mind responsive to its 
 power will ever be disturbed by the ideas which 
 it suggests of infinity of time, infinity of space, 
 and infinity of life. 
 
 Is it conceivable that a Theist or a Christian 
 of the smallest mental capacity could suppose 
 that there are degrees of omnipotence, and imag 
 ine that the Almighty might be prevented, by 
 the many worlds under His management, from 
 taking care of the Earth and its inhabitants ? 
 If that Being who has made the living world 
 which we see, can make millions of worlds, the 
 
154 MORE WORLDS THAN ONE. 
 
 same power which takes such care of its in 
 habitants that not a hair of their head can fall 
 to the ground without His knowledge, can 
 equally embrace in his capacious affections, 
 and clasp in " the everlasting arms," all the 
 families of the universe. 
 
 But even if we admit that such imperfect 
 notions of omnipotence have been entertained, 
 we deny that the discoveries of the microscope 
 have the slightest tendency to correct them. 
 Without alleging, as we might well do, that 
 minds cherishing such notions of the Deity are 
 incapable of appreciating the great truths, that 
 there are "new worlds close to us;" that there 
 is "a world in every drop of water;" and that 
 " these worlds are as numerous as the drops 
 in the ocean," we maintain that minds of the 
 highest cast view the microscopic w r orlds as 
 creations of an entirely different order from 
 those disclosed by the telescope, and that such 
 minds can never reason from animalcular to 
 intellectual life. We admit, that the very same 
 care which is required to preserve even an atom 
 of invisible life, is necessary to maintain the 
 gigantic forms of the elephant or the mammoth; 
 
RELIGIOUS DIFFICULTIES. 155 
 
 but ordinary minds, and those who think that 
 their Maker may have too much to do, cannot 
 comprehend, and therefore cannot receive, the 
 doctrine that God takes care of mites and mos 
 quitoes, and the other denizens of the microcosm 
 at their feet, of animalcules which they swal 
 low in myriads at every act of deglutition, 
 which they suffocate in millions by every breath 
 they draw, and which, at every step, they 
 trample relentlessly under their feet. 
 
 The religious difficulty has been presented in 
 another form by the author of the Essay Of a 
 Plurality of Worlds, but in a form so unintelli 
 gible to us, that we feel the greatest difficulty 
 in comprehending it. Considering Man as an 
 intellectual, moral, and religious creature, and 
 having a progressive history in the development 
 of these different conditions or privileges, as our 
 author calls them, he sees a great difficulty in 
 supposing that intellectual and responsible crea 
 tures analogous to man, can have a place in any 
 of the other planets of our system. Viewing, 
 he says, " the mode of existence of human spe 
 cies upon the earth as being a progressive exist 
 ence, even in the intellectual powers and their 
 
156 MORE WORLDS THAN ONE. 
 
 results, necessarily fastens down our thoughts 
 and our speculations to the earth, and makes us 
 feel how visionary and gratuitous it is to assume 
 any similar kind of existence in any region 
 occupied by other beings than men;" and he 
 elsewhere asserts " that if we will people other 
 planets with creatures intelligent as man is in 
 telligent, we must not only give to them the 
 intelligence, but the intellectual history of the 
 human species" This assertion is supported by 
 another assertion, "that the Earth and its hu- 
 man inhabitants are, as far as we yet know, in 
 an especial manner the subject of God s care 
 and government ;" and from these and other as 
 sertions, in reference to man being under the 
 moral government of God, and to the Earth 
 being the theatre of the scheme of redemption, 
 he comes to the incomprehensible conclusion, 
 that maris nature and place is unique, and in 
 capable of repetition in the scheme of the uni 
 verse ! 
 
 In order to test the accuracy of these asser 
 tions, and to discover what bearing they have 
 upon the doctrine of a plurality of worlds, we 
 must ascertain what has been, and what now is, 
 
RELIGIOUS DIFFICULTIES. 157 
 
 the progressive history of man, as an intellec 
 tual, moral, and religious creature ; and in what 
 age, and in what regions of the globe it has 
 presented, or does now present, that unity of 
 character and position which is incapable of 
 repetition in the scheme of the universe. 
 
 The history of the human species is the his 
 tory of a variety of races in every stage of civili 
 zation and barbarism, and the great majority of 
 which have neither an intellectual, nor a moral, 
 nor a religious progressive history. Progression 
 has not been the character of the history of man. 
 Without alluding to his primeval fall from his 
 high estate, we have only to cast our eyes over 
 the globe, and look at the intellectual, moral, 
 and religious catastrophes which it presents to 
 us, at ages of light and darkness, at alterna 
 tions of progress and decline, at the highest 
 civilization sinking into the lowest barbarism. 
 Mark those eastern lands, now involved in dark 
 ness, from which the beams of knowledge first 
 radiated on mankind. Study the extinction of 
 morality in many regions of the earth where its 
 great lessons were first taught by our Saviour 
 and His apostles ; and above all, mark the total 
 14 
 
158 MOKE WORLDS THAN ONE. 
 
 suppression of the Christian faith in European 
 communities, where it has been displaced by a 
 religion whose doctrines were preached by con 
 quest, and whose decalogue was dictated by the 
 sword. 
 
 May we not ask, then, which of these ever- 
 changing conditions of humanity is that unique 
 condition which cannot be repeated in the 
 scheme of the universe? If it is the intellec 
 tual, moral, and religious race which is typified 
 by Newton, and Shakspeare, and Milton, why 
 may it not be the lowest in the scale of existence 
 in some glorious planet, where the understand 
 ing, and the affections, and the imagination are 
 to rise into higher forms of science, of poetry, 
 and of philanthropy ? Why may not the red 
 Indian, the black negro, and the white slave, be 
 the condition of intelligence in another sphere, 
 to be elevated to a nobler type of reason, and 
 to a happier and a holier lot ? And 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 ? 
 
RELIGIOUS DIFFICULTIES. 159 
 
 It is strange, and hardly credible, that the 
 writer whose opinion we are considering, should 
 think it necessary that the planets, if inhabited, 
 should be occupied by anything like man. 
 Huygens, and Bentley, and Isaac Taylor, and 
 Sir H. Davy, and Chalmers, have taken a dif 
 ferent and a sounder view of the subject. The 
 diversity in the races of man, the immense and 
 beautiful variety of forms and natures in the 
 world of instinct, and the countless beauties 
 and differences in the structures and properties 
 of vegetable and mineral bodies, whether of the 
 ancient or the present earth, all concur in satis 
 fying us that there will be the same diversity 
 in the occupants and in the productions of the 
 planetary regions. Why may not the intelli 
 gence of the spheres be ordained for the study 
 of regions and objects, unstudied and unknown 
 on earth ? Why may not labor 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 ? 
 
160 MORE WORLDS THAN ONE. 
 
 But whatever races be in the celestial spheres, 
 we feel sure that there must be one, among 
 whom there are no man-eaters no parent slay- 
 ers no widow burners no infant killers no 
 heroes with red hands no sovereigns with 
 bloody hearts and no statesmen who, by leav 
 ing the people untaught, educate them for the 
 scaffold In the decalogue of that community 
 will stand pre-eminent, in letters of burnished 
 gold, the highest of all social obligations, 
 
 THOU SHALT NOT KILL, 
 
 neither for territory, for fame, for lucre, nor 
 for crime, neither for food, nor for raiment, 
 nor for pleasure. The lovely forms of life, and 
 sensation, and instinct, so delicately fashioned 
 by the master hand, shall no longer be destroy- 
 ed and trodden under foot, but be objects of 
 unceasing love and admiration, the study of 
 the philosopher, the theme of the poet, and the 
 auxiliaries and companions of man. 
 
 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 
 
RELIGIOUS DIFFICULTIES. 161 
 
 to remonstrate with the sceptic, but we venture 
 to doubt the soundness of that philosopher s 
 judgment, who thinks that the truths of natu 
 ral 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. 
 
CHAPTEK VIII. 
 
 STABS AND BINAEY SYSTEMS. 
 
 IF we suppose ourselves placed successively 
 on Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Nep 
 tune, the Sun will successively appear smaller 
 and smaller, and at Neptune it will still have 
 a round and distinctly defined disc. At greater 
 distances beyond our system the disc of the 
 Sun would be seen only through a telescope, 
 and all the planets, except Jupiter and Saturn, 
 will have disappeared. At a greater distance 
 still, they will vanish in succession, and before 
 we cross the immense void which lies between 
 our system and the nearest system of the stars, 
 our Sun will be seen as a single star twinkling 
 in the sky. All his planets, primary and sec 
 ondary, and all his comets, will have disappear 
 ed in the distance. 
 
 Hence we are led to believe that the fixed 
 
SINGLE STAES AND BINARY SYSTEMS. 163 
 
 stars are the suns of other systems, whose plan 
 ets are invisible from their distance. As no 
 change of place has been observed in single 
 fixed stars, excepting that which is common to 
 them all, and arises from the motion of our 
 system, we are entitled to consider these single 
 stars as the centres of systems like our own ; 
 to suppose them without planets, and to be 
 merely globes of light and heat, would be con 
 trary to analogy as well as to reason. We 
 know that there is one star in the universe sur 
 rounded by planets, and one of these planets 
 inhabited ; and when we see another single star 
 equal, if not greater in brilliancy, we are enti 
 tled to regard it as the centre of a sj^stem, and 
 that system with at least one inhabited planet, 
 This conclusion is rendered more probable by 
 estimates which have been made of the com 
 parative brightness and probable magnitude of 
 some of the single fixed stars."* 
 
 * With the view of showing that analogy does not lead us to believe that 
 stars, considered as suns, are not surrounded with planets, the author of 
 the Essay Of a Plurality of Worlds, has, in a note, quoted in the follow 
 ing manner, a passage from Humboldt, as confirming his opinion : 
 
 " Humboldt," says he, "regards the force of analogy as tending in the 
 opposite direction. After all, he asks (Cosmos III. 373,) 4 is the as 
 sumption of satellites to the fixed stars so absolutely necessary ? If we 
 were to begin from the outer planets, Jupiter, &c., analogy might seem 
 
164 MORE WORLDS THAN ONE. 
 
 These estimates have been obtained from 
 measures of the brightness and distance of a 
 small number of stars. The distance of a star is 
 obtained from what is called its Parallax,- 
 namely, its change of place in the heavens 
 when seen from the two most distant points of 
 the earth s orbit, or, what is the same thing, 
 the angle subtended at the star by lines drawn 
 from it to the two most distant points of the 
 earth s orbit, which are separated by a length 
 of 190 millions of miles. The following are 
 almost the only correct measures of parallax 
 which have been obtained by the fine instru 
 ments, and the accurate observations of modern 
 astronomers. 
 
 to require that all planets have satellites. But yet this is not true, for 
 Mars, Venus, and Mercury, have no satellites,to which we may further add 
 the twenty-three planetoids. In this case there is a much greater number 
 of bodies which have not satellites than which have them." P. 102, note. 
 There is certainly some singular confusion of ideas either in Humboldt 
 or his commentator, or in both. Nobody ever maintained that the stars 
 have satellites. They are supposed only to have planets, and if any person 
 should maintain that these primary planets have satellites, the observa 
 tion of Humboldt would be quite applicable, because analogy tells us 
 that it is as likely that they have no satellites as that they have them, or 
 rather, as in the Solar system,that some may have satellites,and others not. 
 The author of the Essay, however, means by satellites not moons, but 
 primary planets, and he has certainly made an extraordinary blunder when 
 he infers that there may be no planets round the star suns, because there 
 are planets without satellites. If there had not been in the Solar system 
 a single satellite, analogy could never have led us to conclude that there 
 were no primary planets round the stars. 
 
SINGLE STARS AND BINARY SYSTEMS. 165 
 
 a Centauri, . . O ^OIS Henderson and Maclean. 
 
 61 Cygni, . . 0" 374 Besel. 
 
 a Lyras, . . 0""207 Peters. 
 
 Sirius, . . 0" 230 Henderson. 
 
 Arcturus, . . 0" 127 Peters. 
 
 Pole Star, . . 0"-lU6 Peters. 
 
 Capella, . . 0"-046 Peters. 
 
 The star a Centauri, which is the nearest to 
 our system, has been found to be about two- 
 and-a-half times brighter than our Sun, and 
 the star Sirius, the brightest in the heavens, 
 has been found to be four times brighter than 
 a Centauri ; but the distance of Sirius is four 
 times greater than that of a Centauri, and 
 therefore the intrinsic brightness of Sirius is 
 sixty -three times greater than that of our Sun. 
 A luminary like this, so resplendent in its 
 brightness, and so gigantic, doubtless, in its 
 magnitude, was surely not planted in space to 
 shed its light and its heat upon nothing. The 
 star Capella, too, a star of the first magnitude, 
 is twenty times more remote than a Centauri, 
 and must, like Sirius, be a sun of enormous 
 size. Can we doubt, then, that every single 
 star, shining by its own native light, is the 
 centre of a planetary system like our own, 
 
166 MORE WORLDS THAN ONE. 
 
 the lamp that lights, the stove that heats, and 
 the power that guides in their orbits inhabited 
 worlds like our own ? 
 
 A great number of the fixed stars, some of 
 which are of the first magnitude, like Castor, 
 have been found, by the fine telescopes of 
 modern times, to be double, and, from observa 
 tions made at different dates, one of the stars 
 has been found to revolve round the other, 
 and to form what is called a Binary System ; 
 that is, a system in which one sun with its 
 system of planets revolves round another sun 
 with its system of planets, or rather round the 
 centre of gravity of both. The two suns of 
 course are only seen, owing to the great dis 
 tance of their respective systems from us ; but 
 no person can believe that two suns could be 
 placed in the heavens for no other purpose than 
 to revolve round their common centre of gravity. 
 
 The orbits of no fewer than thirteen double 
 stars, or binary systems, first discovered by Sir 
 "William Herschel, have been calculated by Sir 
 John Herschel, Savary, Madler, Captain Smyth, 
 Hind, Encke, and Jacob, and there can be no 
 doubt that the Newtonian law of gravity 
 
SINGLE STARS AND BINARY SYSTEMS. 167 
 
 extends to those bodies. The periods of these 
 systems extend from 31| years, which is that 
 of Herculis, to 737 years, which is that of 
 a Coronce B, both of which were calculated by 
 Madler ; but the most interesting is y Virginis, 
 whose revolution, as computed by Sir John 
 Herschel, is 182 years. This system is a very 
 interesting one. The two stars which compose 
 it are nearly equal, and, according to Struve, 
 slightly variable, the two being sometimes equal 
 in brightness, and sometimes unequal. Dr. 
 Bradley had observed, in 1718, the apparent di 
 rection of the line joining the two stars. In 
 1780, Sir William Herschel observed the distance 
 of the two stars to be 5 " 7, which regularly di 
 minished till 1836, when the two appeared per 
 fectly round, like a star single when seen by the 
 finest telescopes. After 1836 the stars separated, 
 and their distance is now more than 2". The 
 change in their angular motion, that is, in the 
 direction of the line joining them, has been 
 equally remarkable, and was as follows : 
 
 In 1783, 
 1830, 
 1834, 
 1835, 
 1836, 
 
 5 
 
 20 
 40 
 70* 
 
 per annum. 
 
168 MORE WOELDS THAN ONE. 
 
 The star of the shortest period, namely, 
 Herculis, has performed two revolutions since 
 it was first discovered, and the small star has 
 been twice completely eclipsed by the large one. 
 Other three double stars n Coronce, Cancri, 
 and Ursce Majoris, have performed more 
 than one complete revolution in their orbits, 
 and there can be no doubt that these motions 
 are the result of centripetal forces varying 
 inversely as the square of the distance. " We 
 have the same evidence, indeed/ says Sir John 
 Herschel, " of their motions about each other 
 that we have of those of Uranus and Neptune 
 about the Sun ; and the correspondence of their 
 calculated and observed places in such very 
 elongated ellipses must be admitted to carry 
 with it proof of the prevalence of the New 
 tonian law of gravity in their systems, of the 
 very same nature and agency as that of the 
 calculated and observed places of comets round 
 the central body of our own." 
 
 In reference to systems like these, the argu 
 ment in favor of their being surrounded with 
 inhabited planets, is stronger than in the case 
 of single systems. "We have in this case a 
 
SINGLE STABS AND BINARY SYSTEMS. 169 
 
 decided visible movement of one of the stars 
 round the other : We have also elliptical orbits 
 described by the same law of force which 
 guides our own Earth and the other planets 
 in the Solar system ; and though, upon the 
 same principles which led us to agree with Sir 
 William Ilerschel in thinking that our own 
 Sun may be inhabited, we may believe the two 
 suns of binary systems to be inhabited, yet it is 
 more reasonable and consistent with analogy 
 to believe that each of them is accompanied, as 
 Sir John Herschel remarks, " with its train of 
 planets and their satellites, closely shrouded 
 from our view by the splendor of their respect 
 ive suns, and crowded into a space bearing 
 hardly a greater proportion to the enormous 
 interval which separates them than the dis 
 tances of the satellites of our planets from their 
 primaries bear to their distances from the Sun 
 himself. A less distinctly characterized sub 
 ordination would be incompatible with the 
 stability of their systems, and with the plan 
 etary nature of their orbits. Unless closely 
 nestled under the protecting wing of their 
 immediate superior, the sweep of their other 
 
170 MORE WORLDS THAN ONE. 
 
 sun, in its perihelion passage round their own ? 
 might carry them off, or whirl them into 
 orbits utterly incompatible with the conditions 
 necessary for the existence of their inhabit 
 ants."* 
 
 From the motion of our own system round a 
 distant centre, it is highly probable that our 
 sun is one of a binary system, although its 
 partner has not been discovered. If Madler s 
 speculation is correct, our sun and the star 
 Alcyone form a binary system, and therefore 
 since our sun is attended with planets, and one 
 of these inhabited, we are entitled by analogy 
 to conclude that all other binary systems have 
 planets at least round one of their suns, and 
 that one of these planets is the seat of vegetable 
 and animal life. 
 
 The number of double stars is very great, 
 and also of multiple stars, and groups and 
 clusters ; but ages must elapse before astrono 
 mers can determine the relation in which the 
 stars that compose each system or group are 
 related to one another. In the meantime we 
 are compelled to draw the conclusion, that 
 
 * Outlines of Astronomy, 846. 
 
SINGLE STAKS AND BINARY SYSTEMS. 171 
 
 wherever there is a sun, a gigantic sphere, shin 
 ing by its own light, and either fixed or move- 
 able in space, there must be a planetary system, 
 and wherever there is a planetary system, there 
 must be life and intelligence. 
 
 The number of fixed stars, though greater 
 than the atoms of sand on the sea shore, forms 
 no argument to the instructed mind against 
 their being occupied by living beings. "When 
 the philosopher, with his microscope, discovered 
 that the polieschiefer of Bohemia, and chalk 
 and solid marble, consisted almost wholly of 
 the remains of animal life, the world stood 
 aghast at the intelligence: They were still 
 more astonished at the statement that many 
 thousands of millions of such infusorial animals 
 could be counted in a cubic inch of their life 
 less remains ; but their faith was more severely 
 taxed when they learned that whole strata and 
 hills were formed of these fossil skeletons.* In 
 like manner we are at first startled with the 
 deduction that the planets of our own system 
 
 * Ehrenberg found that one cubic inch of the Bilin polieschiefer slate 
 contains 41,000 millions of these microscopic infusorial animals, called 
 Galionella distans, and that a cubic inch of the same material contains 
 above one billion 750,000 millions of distinct individuals of Galionella 
 fcrruginea. 
 
172 MOKE WORLDS THAN ONE. 
 
 are the seats of intellectual life. We marvel 
 still more at the announcement that the systems 
 of the stars are planetary, and inhabited like 
 our own ; and our faltering reason utterly fails 
 us when called upon to believe that even the 
 nebulce must be surrendered to life and reason. 
 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. 
 
CHAPTER IX. 
 
 CLUSTERS OF STAKS AND NEBULA. 
 
 AMONG tlie bodies of the sidereal universe, 
 astronomers have from the earliest ages recog 
 nized the existence of clusters of stars and of 
 nebulae. The Milky Way indicates by its name 
 that it is of a nebular character ; but a nebula, 
 properly so called, is a limited space of light, of 
 various forms and various degrees of brightness 
 in its different parts. Sir William Herschel 
 was the first astronomer who observed this class 
 of phenomena systematically, and who divided 
 the bodies which compose it into six classes,* 
 namely, 
 
 1. Clusters of Stars, in which each star is 
 distinctly seen. 
 
 2. Resolvable Nebulce, or such as excite a 
 
 * We omit the other three classes of planetary nebulae, stellar nebulae, 
 and nebular stars, as unconnected with our subject. 
 
 15* 
 
174 MORE WORLDS THAN ONE. 
 
 suspicion that they consist of stars, and which 
 a higher magnifying power may be expected to 
 lesolve into separate stars. 
 
 3. Nebulce, properly so called, in which there 
 is no appearance whatever of stars. 
 
 It is very obvious that the language used in 
 the above classification, is intended to support 
 the theory that there is such a thing in the 
 sidereal space as real nebulous matter, or star 
 dust, as it has been almost jocularly called, con 
 tradistinguished from a nebulous mass of iden 
 tically the same appearance which the telescope 
 has resolved into separate stars. The phrases 
 which we have put in italics are certainly 
 incorrect, because any appearance, or any ex 
 pectation of a nebula not being resolvable, 
 is proved to have been erroneous the moment 
 it is resolved. The classification of nebulae, 
 therefore, should have been, 1. Nebulae that 
 the telescope had resolved; and, 2. Nebulae 
 that the telescope had not resolved. 
 
 Sir William Herschel believed in the exist 
 ence of purely nebulous matter, or star dust, 
 and what has been called the theory of side 
 real aggregation; and since his time it has 
 
CLUSTERS OF STARS AND NEBULuE. 175 
 
 been made the basis of wild and extravagant 
 speculations equally incompatible with physical 
 and revealed truth. It is, therefore, of some 
 importance that we should succeed in convinc 
 ing the reader that the existence of nebulae not 
 yet resolved, is no proof of the existence of star 
 dust, and that we are entitled to conclude that 
 such nebulae are clusters of stars, that each 
 star is the sun of a planetary system, and each 
 planet the residence of life and reason. Bach 
 nebula, in short, corresponds with our hill of 
 microscopic infusorial animals, each system 
 with a cubic inch of its materials, and each 
 planet with a cubic line. If we have seen with 
 our own eyes in the microscope the individual 
 animal only the ten thousandth part of an inch 
 in size, and if we have seen the hill which is 
 an accumulation of them, need we wonder at 
 nebulae being stars, at stars being suns, and 
 planets being inhabited ? 
 
 As it is now an astronomical fact that nebulae, 
 which Sir William Herschel, with his finest 
 telescopes, could not resolve, and which had 710 
 appearance whatever of being res- liable, have 
 been resolved into distinct stars jy the magni- 
 
176 MOKE WORLDS THAN ONE. 
 
 ficent reflectors of Lord Kosse, we are enabled 
 without any hypothetical statements to place 
 the question of the existence of star dust or 
 purely nebulous matter, in its proper aspect ; 
 that is, we can assign a satisfactory reason to 
 the reader for considering every nebula in the 
 heavens as a cluster of stars which is likely to 
 be resolved by telescopes superior to those of 
 Lord Eosse. 
 
 For this purpose, let us suppose seven clusters 
 of stars placed at seven different distances in 
 space, and all of which were regarded as nebulae 
 before the invention of the telescope. When 
 Galileo applied his little telescope to nebulae 
 No. 1, or the nearest of the seven, he observed 
 it to consist of separate stars so distinct that 
 be could count them, and he concluded from 
 their having no parallax, and being at an 
 enormous distance, that each was a gigantic 
 sun. Galileo tries in vain to resolve No. 2, 
 which is at a greater distance, and therefore 
 though he thought that a better telescope would 
 resolve it and all the other five, they still re 
 mained as nebulae in the heavens. Sir Isaac 
 Newton, however, nearly a century later, applies 
 
CLUSTERS OF STARS AND NEBULAE. 177 
 
 his little reflecting telescope to No. 2, and suc 
 ceeded in resolving it, while he fails in re 
 solving five, but he believes, on better evidence 
 than Galileo, that the other five nebulae are 
 clusters of stars. Hadley, with his fine Grego 
 rian reflector, easily resolves No. 3; James 
 Short, in like manner, resolves No. 4 ; Sir Wil 
 liam Herschel, No. 5 ; and Lord Eosse, No. 6. 
 All these astronomers, after the observation of 
 Galileo, believed that all the seven nebulae were 
 clusters of stars, each of them with increasing 
 evidence ; and Lord Rosse, that No. 7 was a 
 cluster on stronger evidence than the rest. Lord 
 Rosse, however, fails in resolving No. 7 with 
 his largest instrument, but he does not scruple 
 to express his conviction, nay, he cannot help 
 being convinced, that, with a telescope, even a 
 little larger than his own, but certainly with 
 one twice its size, which may be the work of 
 another century, the seventh nebula will also 
 be resolved. The same reasoning which we 
 have used for seven nebulae is applicable to 
 seventy or seven hundred, or even seven thou 
 sand ; and the conclusion is inevitable, though 
 the evidence of demonstration is wanting, that 
 all nebulae are clusters of stars. 
 
178 MORE WORLDS THAN ONE. 
 
 There is another point of view from which 
 we may regard this subject. Purely nebulous 
 matter, such as that which composes comets 
 tails, and still more that which, in the form of 
 the zodiacal light, is, without reason, called the 
 sun s atmosphere, must consist of the minutest 
 particles, so minute that they do not retard 
 Venus or Mercury while they pass through the 
 so-called atmosphere of the sun, which is alleged 
 to extend beyond their orbits. Now, if No. 6 
 was considered a nebula before it was resolved, 
 it must have been regarded as consisting of 
 minute particles of star dust, whereas, the mo 
 ment it was resolved, it consisted of separate 
 suns, each of which was probably greater than 
 our own. Is it possible that self-luminous star 
 dust, at such an infinite distance from us in 
 space, and so rare as to be like a non-resisting 
 medium, could send to our system a light as 
 intense as that which is emitted by the same 
 nebula considered as a cluster of suns ! If the 
 resolved nebula No. 6, and the unresolved neb 
 ula No. 7, have the same appearance and the 
 same intensity of light, is it not certain that the 
 latter must have the same constitution as the 
 former, that is, must consist of stars ? 
 
CLUSTERS OF STARS AND NEBULAE. 179 
 
 There is another aspect of this question, 
 which, as it has not yet been the subject of dis 
 cussion, may deserve the attention of astrono 
 mers. It is not only quite possible, but we 
 think it is almost certain, that in the distant 
 sidereal spaces there may be nebulae, which, 
 though really clusters of stars, never can be re 
 solved. Our hypothetical nebula, for example, 
 No. 7, may not only resist the telescopes of ages 
 to come, but may be incapable of resolution by 
 telescopes of infinite power and infinite perfec 
 tion. Unless when a star is in the zenith, the 
 rays by which we see it are bent and dispersed 
 by the refraction of the atmosphere, and as our 
 atmosphere is not a homogeneous medium, a star 
 may be so infinitely minute from its distance, 
 that though its light makes its way undisturbed 
 in its journey of a thousand years, it may be so 
 treated in its passage through our atmosphere 
 that an image of it cannot be formed in the 
 focus of a telescope, considered as absolutely 
 perfect. An increase of magnify ing power would 
 only increase the effect produced by the atmos 
 phere. In the case of a single star thus acted 
 upon, it would be invisible from the diffusion 
 
180 MORE WORLDS THAN ONE. 
 
 of its light, while in the case of clusters the 
 cluster would continue to appear a nebula, the 
 diffused light of each star being mingled with 
 that of its neighbors. 
 
 The interesting discovery made by Lord 
 Eosse of what is called spiral nebulas, where the 
 nebulous matter may be considered as having 
 been thrown off by some singular cause from 
 the centre of the nebulae, may be regarded as 
 hostile to the opinion that such nebula3 are 
 composed of separate stars. An appearance 
 which might be caused by motion, is certainly 
 no ground for believing that motion caused it. 
 Various forms have been observed in nebula. 
 They are globular and oval, with all degrees of 
 ellipticity, from a circle to a straight line ; and 
 Sir John Herschel remarks it .as "a fact, con 
 nected in some very intimate manner with the 
 dynamical condition of their subsistence," that 
 they are more difficult of resolution than globu 
 lar nebulas. Now these linear nebulas, which 
 Sir John Herschel thinks are flat ellipsoids seen 
 edgewise, though they may, by speculators in 
 star dust, be regarded as spheres thrown into 
 their ellipsoidal state by a very rapid rotation 
 
CLUSTERS OF STARS AND NEBULJE. 181 
 
 round their lesser axis, yet have no such origin, 
 because they have been resolved into stars. In 
 like manner the nebulao called annular, which 
 have the form of rings, might be regarded by the 
 same persons as produced from a still more rapid 
 rotation, which we know from the beautiful 
 experiments of M. Plateau, will convert a sphere 
 into a ring ; but that this is not their origin is 
 proved by their consisting of stars. The beauti 
 ful nebula, for example, between /9 and / Lyr(K 9 
 has the appearance of a a flat oval solid ring." 
 " The axes of the ellipse," according to Sir 
 John Herschell, " are to each other in the pro 
 portion of about 4 to 5, and the opening occupies 
 about half, or rather more than half the diameter. 
 The central vacuity is not quite dark, but is 
 filled in with faint nebulae like a gauze stretched 
 over a hoop. The principal telescopes of Lord 
 Rosse resolve this object into excessively minute 
 stars, and show filaments of stars adhering to 
 its edges." "When this nebula was unresolved, 
 and had the character of a ring nebula, which 
 might be produced by the rapid motion of a 
 nebular sphere round its axis, the star dust phi 
 losopher would ha ye considered its form as a 
 16 
 
182 MORE WORLDS THAN ONE. 
 
 proof that it could not consist of stars ; but now 
 that it has been resolved, we are entitled to con 
 clude that in nebulae, such as the spiral ones, 
 where there is the appearance of motion, the 
 spirals are not purely nebulous matter thrown 
 off from the nucleus like water twirled from a 
 mop, or by any spiral movement whatever. 
 
 As the appearance of motion, therefore, in 
 particular nebulae, is no proof that they consist 
 of purely nebulous matter composed of invisible 
 particles, we are entitled to draw the conclusion 
 that this large class of celestial bodies are clus 
 ters of stars at an immense distance from our 
 own system, that each of the stars of which 
 they are composed is the sun or centre of a 
 system of planets, and that these planets are 
 inhabited, or if we follow a strict analogy, that 
 at least one planet in each of these numberless 
 systems, is like our earth, the seat of vegetable, 
 animal, and intellectual life. 
 
 Before we quit the subject of nebulae, and 
 purely nebulous matter, we- must notice two 
 points connected with the optical appearance of 
 nebulas, which we think are strong arguments 
 in favor of their being resolvable into stars. If 
 
CLUSTERS OF STARS AND NEBULA. 183 
 
 a nebula consisted of phosphorescent or self-lu- 
 niinous atoms of nebulous matter, its light would 
 be immensely inferior in brightness to that of 
 the same nebula composed of suns which are pro 
 vided with a luminous atmosphere for the very 
 purpose of discharging a brilliant light. "When 
 we see, therefore, two nebulas of the very same 
 brightness, and find by the telescope that one of 
 them only is resolvable into stars, we can scarcely 
 doubt that the other is similarly composed. We 
 cannot conceive that a nebula of phosphorescent 
 stars could be visible at such enormous distances 
 from our system. When a planetary nebula is 
 equally bright in every part of its disc, like that 
 which is.a little to the south of ft Ursce Majoris, 
 and which resembles a flat disc, " presented to 
 us in a plane precisely perpendicular to the visual 
 ray," it is impossible to regard it as nebulous 
 matter in a state of aggregation. In like man 
 ner, all those nebulae, which have strange and 
 irregular shapes, indicate the absence of any 
 force of aggregation, and authorize us to regard 
 them as clusters of stars. 
 
CHAPTER X. 
 
 GENERAL SUMMARY. 
 
 THE arguments for a plurality of worlds, con 
 tained in the preceding chapters, are so various, 
 and have such different degrees of force, that 
 different views of the subject will be taken by 
 persons who thoroughly believe in the general 
 doctrine. We can easily conceive why some 
 persons may believe that all the planets which 
 have satellites are inhabited, while tliey deny 
 the inhabitability of those that have none, and 
 also of the Sun and the satellites themselves. 
 There are individuals, too, though we doubt 
 their faith in sidereal astronomy, who readily 
 believe that the whole of our planetary system 
 is the seat of life, while they are startled by the 
 statement that every star in the heavens, and 
 every point in a nebula which the most power 
 ful telescope has not separated from its neigh- 
 
GENERAL SUMMARY. 185 
 
 bor, is a sun surrounded by inhabited planets 
 like our own ; and that immortal beings are 
 swarming through universal space more numer 
 ous than drops of water in the ocean, or the 
 grains of sand upon its shores. But if these 
 persons really believe in the distances and mag 
 nitudes of the stars, and of the laws which 
 govern the binary systems of double stars, they 
 must find it equally, if not more difficult to 
 comprehend, why innumerable suns and worlds 
 fill the immensity of the universe, revolving 
 round one another, and discharging their light 
 and heat into space, without a plant to spring 
 under their influence, without an animal to re 
 joice in their genial beams, and without the eye 
 of reason to lift itself devoutly to its Creator. 
 In peopling such worlds with life and intelli 
 gence, we assign the cause of their existence; 
 and when the mind is once alive to this great 
 truth, it cannot fail to realize the grand combi 
 nation of infinity of life with infinity of matter. 
 
 In support of these views, we have already 
 
 alluded to the almost incredible fact, that there 
 
 are in our own globe hills and strata miles in 
 
 length, composed of the fossil remains of micro- 
 
 16* 
 
186 MORE WORLDS THAN ONE. 
 
 scopic insects ; and we need scarcely remind the 
 least informed of our readers, that theair which 
 they breathe, the water which they drink, the 
 food which they eat, the earth on which they 
 tread, the ocean which encircles them, and the 
 atmosphere above their heads, are swarming 
 with universal life. "Wherever we have seen 
 matter we have seen life. Life was not made 
 for matter, but matter for life ; and in what 
 ever spot we see its atoms, whether at our 
 feet, or in the planets, or in the remotest star, 
 we may be sure that life is there life to enjoy 
 the light and heat of God s bounty to study 
 His works, to recognize His glory, and to bless 
 His name. 
 
 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 inhab 
 itants ; and hence we are led to the extraor 
 dinary result, that for millions of years there 
 was not an intelligent creature in the vast do- 
 
GENERAL SUMMARY. 187 
 
 minions of the universal King ; and that before 
 the formation of the protozoic strata, there was 
 neither a planet 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 heat 
 ing nothing, waters quenching nothing, 
 clouds screening nothing, breezes fanning no 
 thing, and everything around, mountain and 
 valley, hill and dale, earth and ocean, all mean 
 ing 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 
 freight] ess holds, as if all the railways on its 
 
188 MORE WORLDS THAN ONE. 
 
 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 teeming with 
 inorganic beauty, and in full mechanical activ 
 ity, performing their appointed motions with 
 such miraculous precision, that their days and 
 their years never err a second of time in hun 
 dreds of centuries, the difficulty of believing 
 them to be without life is, if possible, immeas 
 urably increased. To conceive any one mate 
 rial 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 
 
GENERAL SUMMARY. 189 
 
 preparation to receive them, seems to us one of 
 those notions which could be harbored only in 
 an ill-educated and ill-regulated mind, a mind 
 without faith and without hope: But to con 
 ceive a whole universe of moving and revolving 
 worlds in such a category, indicates, in our ap 
 prehension, a mind dead to feeling and shorn 
 of reason. 
 
 But we have been mistaken in thinking that 
 the "universe was dead : it was but unborn, the 
 perfect chrysalis from which the living butterfly 
 was to spring. Protozoic forms arose at the 
 Divine command, the infant plant, the simple 
 mollusc, the nobler fish, the still nobler quad 
 ruped, successively appeared, and Man,the image 
 of his Maker, and the work of His hand, was 
 invested with the sovereignty of the globe. 
 The Earth, therefore, was made for man, mat 
 ter for life; and wherever another earth is 
 seen, we are forced to the conviction that it 
 was made like ours for the use of an intellectual 
 race. % 
 
 Although, we have repeatedly alluded, in the 
 preceding pages, to the absurdity of supposing 
 suns and planets to be made without any con- 
 
190 MOKE WORLDS THAN ONE. 
 
 ceivable object, yet the argument may be pre 
 sented in a more general form. In all the 
 works which are the result of human skill, the 
 great object is to produce a given effect by the 
 smallest expenditure of labor and of materials. 
 The genius of the artist is less strikingly shown 
 in producing a new effect, than in producing 
 one well known, with economy of time, of work, 
 and of material. Everything that is not neces 
 sary to the final effect of a process, or of a ma 
 chine, is labor in vain, a species of work in 
 which man never willingly indulges. Even 
 where labor is not hallowed by the sweat of 
 the brow, where it does not earn bread, or is 
 not exhausted in the great structures of civiliz 
 ation, it is never labor in vain. Every act of 
 the mind, and every motion of the hand which 
 it guides, is a step in the great march of social 
 progress, however frivolous its work may seem, 
 and however useless its immediate result. The 
 toy for the child, the telescope for the sage, the 
 locomotive for the railway, the steam-ship for the 
 ocean, are equally, though in different degrees, 
 the result of useful occupation. In the world 
 of instinct there is the same economy of skill 
 
GENEKAL SUMMARY. 191 
 
 and labor, the spider and the bee, the ant 
 and the beaver, are spendthrifts neither of time 
 nor of toil ; and in all the works of the Divine 
 artist around us,- in all the laws of matter and 
 of motion, in the frame of man and of ani 
 mals, of plants and of inorganic nature, the 
 economy of power is universally displayed. No 
 thing is made in vain nothing by a complex 
 process which can be made by a simple one; 
 and it has often been remarked by the most 
 diligent students of the living world, that the 
 infinite wisdom of the Creator is more strikingly 
 displayed in the economy than in the manifes 
 tation of power. 
 
 With such truths before us, is it possible to 
 believe that, with the exception of our little 
 planet, all the other planets of the system, all 
 the hundreds of comets, all the systems of the 
 universe, are to our reason made in vain? It 
 is doubtless possible that the almighty Archi 
 tect 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 ; but as the question we are 
 discussing is one in^ which we can appeal only 
 
192 MOKE WOKLDS THAN ONE. 
 
 to human reason, and as human reason in its 
 highest form cannot discover these other objects, 
 we the inhabitants of one of the least of these 
 spheres, which has for immeasurable periods of 
 time been preparing for the residence of man, 
 must believe, under the guidance of that 
 reason, that they were destined certainly, like 
 our Earth, for an intellectual race, and destined 
 probably for a previous and lengthened occu 
 pation by plants and animals, in order that their 
 inhabitants may study on the tombstones of the 
 past those miraculous processes of growth and 
 decay, of destruction and renovation, by which 
 there has been provided for them so noble an 
 inheritance. 
 
 In the celebrated sermon On the Origin and 
 Frame of the World, to which we have already 
 referred, Dr. Bentley has taken a view of this 
 part of the question which, though slightly 
 different from ours, leads him to the same 
 conclusion. Considering "that the soul of one 
 virtuous and religious man is of greater worth 
 and excellency than the Sun and his planets, 
 and all the stars in the world," Dr. Bentley 
 expresses his willingness to believe, that " their 
 
GENERAL SUMMARY. 193 
 
 usefulness to man might be the sole end of 
 their creation, if it could be proved that they 
 were as beneficial to" us as the Polar Star was 
 formerly for navigation, or as the Moon is for 
 producing the tides, and lighting us in winter 
 nights. " But," he adds, "we dare not under 
 take to show what advantage is brought to us 
 by those innumerable stars in the galaxy and 
 other parts of the firmament, not discernible 
 by naked eyes, and yet each many thousand 
 times bigger than the whole body of the Earth. 
 If you say, they beget in us a great idea and 
 veneration of the mighty Author and Governor 
 of such stupendous bodies, and excite and 
 elevate our minds to His adoration and praise ; 
 you say very truly and well. But would it not 
 raise in us a higher apprehension of the infinite 
 majesty and boundless beneficence of God, to 
 suppose that these remote and vast bodies were 
 formed not merely upon our account to be 
 peeped at through an optic glass, but for 
 different ends and nobler purposes ? And yet 
 who will deny but there are great multitudes 
 of lucid stars even beyond the reach of the 
 best telescopes; and that every visible star may 
 17 
 
194: MORE WORLDS THAN ONE. 
 
 have opaque planets* revolving about them 
 which, we cannot discover ? Now, if they were 
 not created for our sakes, it is certain and 
 evident that they were not made for their own ; 
 for matter has no life nor perception, is not 
 conscious of its own existence, nor capable of 
 happiness, nor gives the sacrifice of praise and 
 worship to the Author of its being. It remains, 
 therefore, that all bodies were formed for the 
 sake of intelligent minds; and as the Earth 
 was principally designed for the being and 
 service and contemplation of men ; why may 
 not all other planets be created for the like 
 uses, each for their own inhabitants which have 
 life and understanding?"! 
 
 Various attempts have been made, but 
 without much success, to give a popular illus- 
 
 * This is the earliest allusion, we remember, to dark bodies in the side 
 real regionSj unless Dr. Bentley uses the word opaque in contradistinction 
 to self-luminous bodies. The planets in single or binary systems are invisi 
 ble from their distance, not from their being unable to reflect light. Mr. 
 Pigot had long ago concluded, from various celestial phenomena, that 
 there are " primary invisible bodies or unenlightened stars that have ever 
 remained in eternal darkness." The late Professor Bessel having found 
 that the proper motions of Sirius and Procyon deviate very sensibly from 
 uniformity, has come to the conclusion, that they describe orbits in space 
 under the influence of central forces round dark or non-luminous central 
 bodies, not very remote from the stars themselves. 
 
 t Eighth Sermon, pp. 5, 6. 
 
GENERAL SUMMARY. 195 
 
 tration of the argument from analogy, by 
 which we infer the existence of inhabitants in 
 the planets, from their similarity to the Earth. 
 M. Fontenelle, the first person who attempted 
 this, gave the following illustration : 
 
 " Suppose," says he, " that there never had 
 been any communication between Paris and St.* 
 Denis, and that a person who had never been 
 out of the city was upon the towers of Notre 
 Dame, and saw St. Denis at a distance : He is 
 asked if he believes that St. Denis is inhabited, 
 like Paris. He will boldly answer, No. For 
 he will say, I see distinctly the inhabitants of 
 Paris ; but those of St. Denis I do not see ; 
 and I never heard anybody speak of them. It 
 is true, some will tell him, that from the tow 
 ers of Notre Dame he cannot see the inhabit 
 ants of St. Denis, on account of the dis 
 tance ; that all that he can see of St. Denis 
 greatly resembles Paris ; that St. Denis has 
 steeples, houses, and walls, and that it may 
 very well resemble Paris in being inhabited. 
 All this will produce no effect upon my Pa 
 risian ; he will persist in maintaining that St. 
 Denis is not inhabited, as he sees nobody. 
 
196 MORE WORLDS THAN ONE. 
 
 Our St. Denis is the Moon, and each of us is 
 this citizen of Paris, who was never out of it. 
 You are too severe, said the Marchioness ; we 
 are not such fools as your citizen ; for, as he 
 sees that St. Denis is just like Paris, he must 
 have lost his reason, if he does not believe that 
 it is inhabited; but the Moon is not at all 
 made like the Earth. Take care, madam, I re 
 plied ; for if the Moon in every respect resem 
 bles the Earth, you will be obliged to believe 
 that the Moon is inhabited.* * 
 
 This illustration is certainly defective ; for, 
 as Pontenelle subsequently remarks, the Moon 
 does not so much resemble the Earth as St. 
 Denis does Paris. The mistake which the 
 author commits arises from his not comparing 
 the Earth with a planet, like Jupiter, with, 
 satellites, and clouds, and trade winds, and a 
 diurnal motion. In this case, the citizen 
 should have been a villager looking at Paris 
 from the steeple of St. Denis, and his answer 
 should have been, I think it very probable 
 that there are or have been inhabitants in 
 Paris, but it is possible that they may have all 
 
 * CEuvres de Fontenelle, 2de Series, vol. ii. p. 19, edit. 1758. 
 
GENERAL SUHMAKY. 197 
 
 left it, or have not yet arrived. It is just pos 
 sible, too, that these walls may never have been 
 a protection to inhabitants, nor these churches 
 thronged, nor these houses occupied ; but if 
 this were the case, the sovereign who founded 
 the city, who encircled it with a wall, who 
 erected the churches, and who built the houses, 
 must have been a fool or a madman. 
 
 A very different illustration is given by 
 Huygens : "If any person," says he, " were 
 shown, in the body of a dissected dog, the 
 heart, the stomach, the lungs, the intestines, 
 and then the veins, the arteries, and the nerves, 
 then, though he never saw the open body of an 
 animal, he could hardly doubt that the same 
 structure and variety of parts existed in the ox, 
 the sow, and other animals. In like manner, 
 if we knew the nature of one of the satellites of 
 Jupiter and Saturn, would we not believe that 
 the very same things which were found in it 
 would be found in all the other satellites ? In 
 like manner, if we saw anything in one comet, 
 we would conclude that this was the structure 
 of all. There is therefore much weight in 
 conclusions drawn from analogies, and in in- 
 17* 
 
198 MORE WORLDS THAN ONE. 
 
 ferences from things that are seen to things 
 that are not seen."* 
 
 The author of the Essay against a Plurality 
 of "Worlds, considers the illustration of Fon- 
 tenelle as unfair ; and he gives the following 
 modification of it as representing his own ar 
 gument more fairly : 
 
 " Let it be supposed," he says, " that we in 
 habit an island, from which innumerable other 
 islands are visible, but the art of navigation 
 being quite unknown, we are ignorant whether 
 any of them are inhabited. In some of these 
 islands are seen masses more or less resembling 
 churches, and some of our neighbors assert that 
 these are churches ; that churches must be sur 
 rounded by houses, and that houses must have 
 inhabitants ; others hold that the seeming 
 churches are only peculiar forms of rocks : in 
 this state of the debate everything depends upon 
 the degree of resemblance to churches which the 
 forms exhibit. But suppose that telescopes are 
 invented and employed with diligence on the 
 questionable shapes. In a long course of careful 
 and skilful examination, no house is seen, and 
 
 * Oosmotheoros, &c., lib. i. Hugenii Opera, torn. ii. pp. 652, 653. 
 
GENERAL SUMMARY. 199 
 
 the rocks do not at all become more like churches, 
 rather the contrary. So far, it would seem, the 
 probability of inhabitants in the islands is less 
 ened. But there are other reasons brought into 
 view. Our island is a long extinct volcano, with 
 a tranquil and fertile soil, but the other islands 
 are apparently somewhat different. Some of 
 them are active volcanoes, the volcanic opera 
 tions covering, so far as we can discern, the 
 whole island ; others undergo changes, such as 
 weather or earthquakes may produce ; but in 
 none of them can we discover such changes as 
 show the Jiand of man. For these islands, it 
 would seem, the probability of inhabitants is 
 further lessened.* And so long as we have no 
 better evidence than these for forming a judg 
 ment, it would surely be accounted rash to assert 
 that the islands in general are inhabited ; and 
 unreasonable to blame those who deny or doubt 
 it. Nor would such blame be j ustified by adduc 
 ing theological or d priori arguments ; as that 
 the analogy of islands with islands makes the 
 assumption allowable ; or that it is inconsistent 
 
 * The observation of volcanoes and church-like rocks, by the tele 
 scope, has no parallel in the analogy of the planets. It is not the moon 
 that our author is dealing with, but innumerable planets. 
 
200 MORE WORLDS THAN ONE. 
 
 with the plan of the Creator of islands to leave 
 them uninhabited. For we know that many 
 islands are or were long uninhabited. And if 
 ours were an island occupied by a numerous, 
 well-governed, moral, and religious race, of 
 which the history was known, and of which the 
 relation to the Creator was connected with its 
 history ; the assumption of a history, more or 
 less similar to ours, for the inhabitants of the 
 other islands, whose existence was utterly un 
 proved, would, probably, be generally deemed 
 a fitter field for the romance writer than for 
 the philosopher. It could not, at best, rise 
 above the region of vague conjecture."* 
 
 This illustration is, we think, so unfair, and 
 so constructed to answer the author s purpose, 
 that we concur in his opinion that the probabil 
 ity of the islands being inhabited " does not rise 
 above the region of vague conjecture." No illus 
 tration indeed can be fair or effective, unless it 
 relates to separate and independent works of God, 
 from the condition of one of which we draw in 
 ferences by analogy relative to the state of others 
 of which we know nothing, excepting their points 
 
 * Of the Plurality of Worlds, An Essay, pp. 157-159. 
 
GENERAL SUMMARY. 201 
 
 of similitude. In the illustration of Huygens, 
 for example, the dog, the ox, and the sow, are 
 independent existences, of whose internal struc 
 ture we know nothing ; but having found cer 
 tain organs upon dissecting the dog, we infer 
 the existence of the same organs in the ox, from 
 the external similitude in their general form, 
 and in various external parts. In the parallel 
 between islands and planets, the peopled islands 
 should have been invested with certain properties 
 or conditions necessary for its inhabitants, which 
 should have been possessed by the other islands. 
 The inhabited island too, should have been made 
 as small in reference to the rest as the Earth is 
 to Jupiter and Saturn. But independent of 
 these defects in the illustration, the mind of 
 the reader is otherwise prepared to admit that 
 they may have no inhabitants, because we know 
 of hundreds of islands without inhabitants. We 
 can assign also a very good reason why they were 
 made, and why they are not inhabited, and if we 
 were to be assured of the fact, it would excite no 
 surprise whatever. We could not say that God 
 therefore made them in vain, because when the 
 art of navigation is discovered, they may be 
 
202 MORE WORLDS THAN ONE. 
 
 found to contain gold and silver, coal and iron, 
 and excellent harbors, such as exist in our in 
 habited island. We, the islanders, may suppose 
 also, that the islands either have been or will 
 be inhabited, and we are entitled to make this 
 supposition, because we must have been origin 
 ally created upon it, and not brought there by 
 the art of navigation ; and consequently the 
 same creation of inhabitants may have taken 
 place, or may yet take place, in the uninhabit 
 ed ones. It is obvious, from these remarks, that 
 the previous knowledge of the reader, to whom 
 the appeal is made, influences what he con 
 ceives would be the speculation of the island 
 er ; and the confusion of ideas which thus takes 
 place, renders the illustration illusory. 
 
 The best illustration which we can conceive, 
 is to suppose a philosopher contemplating from 
 a distance the bodies of the Solar system, and 
 wholly ignorant of their condition. He examines 
 them so as to acquire all the knowledge which 
 we possess of their size their motions the 
 influences they receive from the Sun, and all the 
 phenomena disclosed by the telescope. He knows 
 nothing about their being inhabited or uninha- 
 
GENERAL SUMMARY. 203 
 
 bited, but being permitted to visit the Earth, he 
 finds it inhabited, and observes the relation which 
 exists between vegetable, animal, and intellect 
 ual life, the influences which emanate from the 
 sun and moon, and the days and nights, and 
 seasons and atmospheric changes which charac 
 terize our globe. He then takes his place in the 
 distance, and pondering over all the bodies of 
 the system, he will doubtless conclude that they 
 are all inhabited like the Earth. Had he first 
 visited Jupiter, with its gorgeous magnitude 
 and numerous satellites, and found it inhabited, 
 he might have conceived it possible that as the 
 monarch of the system, it might alone have 
 enjoyed the dignity of being the seat of life ; 
 but even in this case, the force of analogy 
 would have compelled him to view the Solar 
 system as one great material scheme planned 
 by its Creator, as the residence of moral and in 
 tellectual life. 
 
CHAPTEE XL 
 
 REPLY TO OBJECTIONS DRAWN FROM GEOLOGY. 
 
 IN" the preceding chapters we have submitted 
 to the reader the facts and arguments by which 
 the doctrine of a plurality of worlds may be 
 maintained, and we have, at the same time, 
 endeavored to answer a variety of objections 
 of a moral and scientific nature, which naturally 
 presented themselves in discussions involv 
 ing so many considerations. We have now, 
 however, a more arduous duty to perform. 
 The author of the Essay to which we have 
 frequently had occasion to refer, has devoted a 
 whole volume to an elaborate attack upon the 
 doctrine we have been supporting. With 
 acquirements of the highest order, and talents 
 of no common kind, which, we think, might 
 have been more usefully employed, he has 
 marshalled all the truths and theories of 
 
OBJECTIONS DRAWN FROM GEOLOGY. 205 
 
 geology, and all the facts of astronomy, against 
 popular and deeply-cherished opinions opin 
 ions which the humblest Christian has shared 
 with the most distinguished philosophers and 
 divines, and which no interests, moral or relig 
 ious, require us to surrender. In questions of 
 doubtful speculation with which vulgar error is 
 largely mingled, we applaud the writer who 
 boldly girds himself for the task of exposing 
 presumption and ignorance, however generally 
 they may prevail ; but in the case with which 
 we are dealing, where the opinions assailed 
 are entrenched in right feeling and embalmed 
 in the warmth of the affections, and where 
 they are as probable as the theories and specu 
 lations by which they are to be superseded, we 
 can ascribe to no better feeling than a love of 
 notoriety any attempt to ridicule or unsettle 
 them. 
 
 The first and the most plausible of the argu 
 ments maintained by the Essayist is drawn 
 from geological facts and theories. We have 
 already, in a preceding chapter, explained these 
 facts, and admitted, with certain limitations, 
 (which, to give our opponent every advantage 
 18 
 
206 MORE WORLbS THAN ONE. 
 
 we at present abandon,) that during a long 
 period of time when the Earth was preparing 
 for the residence of man, it was the seat only of 
 vegetable and animal life. 
 
 Since the Earth, then 5 was during a very 
 long time (a million/* of years we shall say) 
 uninhabited by intelligent beings, our author 
 draws the conclusion that all the other planets 
 may be occupied at present with a life no higher 
 than that of the brutes, or with no life at all / 
 that is, that there is not a plurality of worlds 
 inhabited by rational beings. Now this is not 
 the conclusion which the premises authorize. 
 If God took a million of years to prepare the 
 Earth for man, the probability is, that all the 
 planets were similarly prepared for inhabitants, 
 and that they are now occupied by rational 
 beings. If one or more of them are only in the 
 act of being prepared, and are not yet the scat 
 of intelligence, analogy forces us to the conclu 
 sion, that they will be inhabited like the Earth. 
 The assertion that they may be occupied by no 
 life at all, is contrary to all analogy, unless we 
 
 * We use this number to avoid circumlocution. The Essayist uses 
 the word myriads of years, as the period of only one of the earliest 
 formations ! 
 
OBJECTIONS DRAWN FROM GEOLOGY. 207 
 
 suppose that all the planets are only in that 
 stage of preparation which preceded the pro- 
 tozoic age, a supposition which no person is 
 entitled to make, but which, if it were true, 
 would prove that the time was approaching 
 when all the planets were to be inhabited, like 
 the Earth, 
 
 It is admitted by every geologist that the 
 Earth was not only made to be a fit residence 
 for the human family, but that it was made in 
 such a manner that man might see the won 
 derful processes by which it was prepared, and 
 read its vast chronology in the history of its 
 fossil remains. Is it not probable, therefore, 
 that the other planets were formed in a similar 
 manner, and with a similar object? And if 
 analogy leads us to believe that all the planets 
 have been or are in the azoic, or protozoic, or 
 palaeozoic stage of formation, the conclusion is 
 inevitable, that they are occupied, or are about 
 to be occupied, by beings formed after God s 
 image ; and consequently, that there is a plu 
 rality of worlds. We may put the argument 
 in a simpler form. In the time of Pluygens 
 and Fontenelle and Bentley, when the Mosaic 
 
208 MORE WORLDS THAN ONE. 
 
 account of the creation was adopted in its literal 
 meaning, the argument from analogy had a 
 certain degree of force. Has that degree of 
 force been diminished by the subsequent dis 
 covery that a million of years, in place of six 
 days, were occupied in the preparation of the 
 Earth? The argument from analogy is not 
 only not affected by this discovery, but the 
 discovery itself furnishes us with the new 
 ground of analogy, that planets are made for 
 the very purpose of being inhabited, that they 
 are made in such a way as to teach their in 
 habitants the wonderful processes by which 
 the Almighty has made them, and that they 
 are made of materials essentially necessary for 
 man s personal and social happiness. Man was 
 not made for the planet but the planet was 
 made for man. 
 
 Quitting the ground of analogy, our author 
 has recourse to what we consider the most 
 ingenious, though shallow, piece of sophistry 
 which we have ever encountered in modern 
 dialectics. He founds an elaborate argument 
 on the mutual relation of an atom of time and 
 an atom of space, comparing the different 
 
OBJECTIONS DRAWN FROM GEOLOGY. 209 
 
 periods of time occupied in the formation of 
 the Earth with the different distances in space. 
 In this process he divides the great geological 
 period into four periods of time, and the infinity 
 of space into four lengths of space ; and he 
 "assumes that the numbers which express the 
 antiquity of the four periods" are "on the 
 same scale as the numbers which express the 
 four magnitudes," or lengths of space. We 
 have placed these periods in contrast in the 
 following table, to exhibit clearly the nature 
 of the argument : 
 
 TIME. SPACE. 
 
 1. "The Present organic condition 1. "The magnitude of the Earth." 
 
 of the Earth." 
 a. "The Tertiary period of geol- 2. "The magnitude of the Solar 
 
 ogists which preceded that." system compared with the 
 
 Earth." 
 
 3. "The Secondary period which 3. "The distance of the nearest 
 
 was anterior to that." fixed stars compared with the 
 
 Solar system." 
 
 4. " The Primary period which pre- 4. " The distance of the most remote 
 
 ceded the Secondary." nebula compared with the near 
 
 est fixed star." 
 
 In this table of Time and Space, the time 
 during which the Earth has been in its present 
 condition, which is nearly 6,000 years, is con 
 trasted with the magnitude of the Earth, which 
 18* 
 
210 MORE WORLDS THAN ONE. 
 
 is 8,000 miles nearly in diameter, and these 
 numbers are units in the scale, the one being 
 called an atom of time compared with the du 
 ration of the primary geological period, and the 
 other an atom of space compared with the dis 
 tance of the remotest nebulse. Now the im 
 portance, or the significance of the Earth, in 
 regard to space, is fairly measured by its diam 
 eter of 8,000 miles, which is a fixed quantity ; 
 but its significance with regard to time is not 
 measured by 6,000 years, because its duration 
 is constantly increasing, and every year adds to 
 its significance ; that is, the atom of time is ap 
 proximating to infinity, while the atom of space 
 is invariable. Admitting, however, our author s 
 premises, let us consider his extraordinary con 
 clusions : 
 
 " We find," says he, " that man (the human 
 race, from its present origin till now) has occu 
 pied but an atom of time, as he has occupied but 
 an atom of space" And again, 
 
 " The scale of man s insignificance is of the 
 same order in reference to time as to space. 
 . . . . If the Earth as the habitation of 
 man is a speck in the midst of an infinity of 
 
OBJECTIONS DRAWN FROM GEOLOGY. 211 
 
 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. . . . Or, is the objection this? That 
 if we suppose the Earth only to be occupied . 
 with inhabitants, all the other objects of the 
 universe are waste, turned to no purpose ? Is 
 work of this kind un suited to the character of 
 the Creator? But here, again, we have the like 
 waste in the occupation of the Earth. All its 
 previous ages have been wasted upon mere brute 
 life ; after, so far as we can see, for myriads of 
 years upon the lowest, the least conscious forms 
 of life, upon shell-fish, corals, sponges. Why, 
 then, should not the seas and continents of other 
 planets be occupied at present with a life no higher 
 
 than this, OR WITH NO LIFE AT ALL. 
 
 The intelligent part of creation is thrust into the 
 compass of a few years in the course of myriads 
 of ages ; why then not into the compass of a 
 feiv miles in the expanse of systems ? . . . 
 If then the Earth be the sole inhabited spot in 
 
212 MORE WORLDS THAN ONE. 
 
 the work of creation, the oasis in the desert of 
 our system, there is nothing in this contrary to 
 the analogy of creation." 
 
 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 
 c OF TIME ! If any of our readers 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. What relation is there between the 
 SHORT period of man s occupation of tlie Earth, 
 and the SMALL portion which he occupies in 
 space ? If there is such a relation, that we can 
 reason from the truth of the first to the proba 
 bility of the second, then we can reason as 
 justly from the truth of the second to the prob 
 ability of the first. Now, let ua suppose it 
 to be as certain that the Earth is the only in 
 habited planet, as it is certain that Man has 
 occupied the Earth only for the short period of 
 6,000 years, could any rational being allege that 
 because man occupied only an atom of space. 
 
OBJECTIONS DKAWN FROM GEOLOGY. 213 
 
 he therefore must live only an atom of time 
 upon the Earth ? 
 
 But even if we admit the result with regard 
 to Man, the argument does not apply to other 
 intellectual beings than Man to an inferior or 
 to a superior race that never occupied the Earth 
 at all. If man is thus limited by a syllogism 
 to the occupation of one planet, one atom of 
 space, an angelic race, who never lived on the 
 Earth at all, may be indulged with the occupa 
 tion of Jupiter. But, farther, let us suppose 
 that we learn by the telescope that every planet 
 and satellite in the Solar system is inhabited by 
 Man, he would still occupy but an atom of 
 space, and our author s argument would go to 
 prove that none of the fixed stars or binary 
 systems are inhabited. In like manner, if we 
 could prove that the binary systems were in 
 habited, the sum of them all would be but an 
 atom of space, and our author would still re 
 joice in his conclusion, that the clusters of 
 stars and nebulas were uninhabited vapor. 
 
 If the reasoning which we have examined 
 be sound in its nature, it would fail entirely 
 by a change in the premises. If it is possible. 
 
214 MOEE WORLDS THAN ONE. 
 
 that the time of the Earth s preparation was 
 comparatively short, or that intelligent beings 
 occupied the Earth previous to man ; and if it 
 improbable that Man will continue to occupy 
 the Earth during a period equal, or approxi 
 mating to the period of the Earth s preparation, 
 the whole of our author s argument has neither 
 force nor meaning. 
 
 If the Almighty has occupied a million of 
 years in preparing the crust of the Earth as a 
 suitable residence for man, by the slow opera 
 tion of secondary causes, and has deposited the 
 remains of vegetable and animal life in each 
 series of its formation, in order to enable man 
 to read the history of his omnipotence and 
 wisdom, is that any reason why the Earth, the 
 residence of man, should, among countless and 
 more glorious worlds than his own, be the only 
 one that is inhabited? Eeason and common 
 sense dictate a very different opinion. If nearly 
 infinity of time has been employed to provide 
 for intellectual and immortal life so glorious an 
 abode, is it not probable that nearly infinity of 
 space will be devoted to the same noble pur 
 pose? 
 
CHAPTEE XII. 
 
 OBJECTIONS FEOM THE NATUKE OF NEBULJ3. 
 
 IN a preceding chapter on nebulso, we trust 
 we have satisfied the candid inquirer that all 
 nebulae are clusters of stars, and that there is 
 no proof whatever, not even the shadow of 
 proof, that in the sidereal regions there is what 
 is called nebulous matter, either existing in a 
 stationary condition, or aggregating into stars. 
 The author of the Essay Of the Plurality of 
 Worlds , whose astronomical objections to the 
 doctrine of a plurality of worlds we are about 
 to consider, very dexterously commences his 
 argument with an attack upon that part of the 
 doctrine which relates to nebulas. He is not 
 content with the statement of facts, but he at 
 tempts to throw ridicule upon his opponents by 
 the application of words which are calculated to 
 influence the minds of ignorant or inattentive 
 
216 MOEE WORLDS THAN ONE. 
 
 readers. By calling nebulae clouds, and pieces 
 of comets tails, and the stars into which they are 
 resolved, shining dots, pieces of bright curd, 
 luminous grains, and lumps of light, he fancies 
 that he has demolished the opinion of astrono 
 mers that these dots are suns ; that they are " as 
 far from each other as the dog-star" is from us ; 
 that each sun has its system of planets, and 
 each planet its animal and vegetable life. 
 
 " An astronomer," says the Essayist, " armed 
 with a powerful telescope, resolves a nebula, 
 discerns that a luminous cloud is composed of 
 shining dots ; but what are these dots ? Into 
 what does he resolve the nebula ? Into stars, it 
 is commonly said. Let us not wrangle about 
 words. By all means let those dots be stars, if 
 we know about what we are speaking,- if a star 
 merely means 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 nebulae are resolvable arc resolv 
 able into distinct points certainly a very cu 
 rious, probably a very important discovery. We 
 
OBJECTIONS FROM THE KATUKE OF NEBULJE. 217 
 
 may hereafter learn, that all nebulae are resolv 
 able into distinct points ; that would be a still 
 more curious discovery. But what would it 
 amount to ? What would be the simple way of 
 expressing it without hypothesis and without 
 assumption ? Plainly this, that the substance 
 of all nebula is not continuous but discrete ; 
 separable and separate into distinct luminous 
 elements ; nebulse are, it would thus seem, as 
 it were, of a curdled or granulated texture; 
 they have run into lumps of light, or have been 
 formed originally of such lumps. Highly curi 
 ous ! But what are these lumps ? How large 
 are they ? At what distances ? Of what struc 
 ture? Of what use? It would seem that he 
 must be a bold man who undertakes to answer 
 these questions. Certainly he must appear to 
 ordinary thinkers to be very bold, who, in re 
 ply, says gravely and confidently, as if he had 
 authority for his teaching, These lumps, man, 
 are suns ; they are distant from each other as 
 far as the dog-star is from us ; each has its 
 system of planets, which revolve around it ; and 
 each of these planets is the seat of an animal 
 and vegetable creation. Among these planets 
 19 
 
218 MOKE WOKLDS THAN ONE. 
 
 some, we do not yet know how many, are occu 
 pied by rational and responsible creatures like 
 man ; and the only matter which perplexes us, 
 holding this belief on astronomical grounds, 
 is, that we do not quite see how to put oui 
 theology into its due place and form in our 
 system."* 
 
 This, surely, is neither the language nor the 
 tone of a man of science in search of truth, or 
 holding in respect the great revelations of as 
 tronomy. The Essayist triumphantly asks four 
 questions, and tells us that he would be a bold 
 man that undertakes to answer them. We 
 accept the challenge, and appeal to our readers. 
 
 Question 1. How large are the lumps of light, 
 or the shining dots, into which the astronomer s 
 powerful telescope has resolved the nebulas ? 
 These lumps of light are admitted to be stars 
 shining by their own light. Now, it has been 
 shown by the most distinguished astronomers, 
 by Herschel and by Struve, that in the various 
 order of distances in space, the distances of the 
 nebulse are the greatest. According to the re 
 cent researches of Mr. Peters, as given by M. 
 
 * Essay, pp. 120-122.. 
 
OBJECTIONS FIIOM THE NATUKE OF NEBULA. 219 
 
 Struve,* tlie following are the distances of the 
 stars of different magnitudes, as ascertained by 
 a process approximately correct : 
 
 Apparent 
 Magnitudes. 
 
 Parallaxes. 
 
 Distances in radi 
 of Earth s orbit, 
 
 1, 
 
 . 0" 209 
 
 98600 
 
 2, . 
 
 . 0" 116 
 
 1778000 
 
 3, . 
 
 . 0"-076 
 
 2725000 
 
 4, . 
 
 . 054 
 
 3850000 
 
 5, 
 
 0" 037 
 
 5378000 
 
 6, 
 
 . 0" 027 
 
 7616000 
 
 8i, . 
 
 . 0" 008 
 
 24490000 
 
 11*. . 
 
 . ;/ 00092 
 
 224500000 
 
 As the nebulae are obviously more remote than 
 any of the stars in the above table, and as the 
 nearest of these stars must, from their distance, 
 be equal to our sun, we are entitled to conclude, 
 that the stars or nebulae must be of a much 
 greater size. Sir John Herschel observes, that 
 " when we consider that the united lustre of a 
 group or globular cluster of stars, affects the eye 
 with a less impression of light than a star of 
 the fourth magnitude, (for the largest of these 
 clusters is scarcely visible to the naked eye,) the 
 idea we- are thus compelled to form of their dis 
 tance from us may prepare us for almost any 
 
 * Etudes d Astronomic Stellahe. 
 
220 MOKE WOKLDS THAN ONE. 
 
 estimate of their dimensions. A visible dot, 
 or a visible lump, must therefore be a body of 
 enormous magnitude, and though we cannot 
 give its size in miles or diameters of the Earth, 
 we are sure that every astronomer in the old or 
 the new world will allow that we have answered 
 the question with sufficient accuracy in reference 
 to the object for which it was asked. The size 
 of the DOT or lump is of sufficient magnitude to 
 be a sun. 
 
 Quest. 2. At what distances are the dots or 
 lumps from one another ? 
 
 In order to answer this question, the Essayist 
 knows well that we require to have the appa 
 rent distance between the centres of the dots, 
 and upon the supposition that the two dots are 
 at the same distance from us, we can easily de 
 termine their distances from the parallax which 
 may be assumed for resolvable nebulae. There 
 are double stars in the binary system, whose 
 apparent distance is as small as that of the dots 
 or stars in the nebulas, and yet every astronomer 
 admits that between them, there is ample room 
 for a system of planets round each. 
 
 Quest. 3. What is the structure of these dots 
 
OBJECTIONS FEOM THE NATUKE OF NEBULAE. 221 
 
 or stars ? The author certainly does not expect 
 to learn whether these are made of granite or 
 greywacke. Analogy teaches us that their struc 
 ture will be similar to that of the only sun with 
 which we are acquainted. It will consist of a 
 luminous envelope enclosing a dark nucleus. 
 
 Quest. 4. What is the use of the dots or stars ? 
 Being large bodies, and self-luminous, they can 
 be of no conceivable use but to give light to 
 planets, or to the solid nuclei of which they 
 consist. 
 
 Having thus given answers to our author s 
 questions, answers which we are confident 
 would be given by every astronomer, may we 
 not ask in return, What is the size, and dis 
 tance, and structure, and use of the dots upon 
 his hypothesis, that they are patches of comets 
 tails or luminous grains ? The Essayist is silent. 
 Should he be the very hold man to make the 
 attempt, the astronomical world would repu 
 diate his theory and his answers. 
 
 But there is another way of meeting objec 
 tions of such an unreasonable character. Oar 
 author is a firm believer in the geological spec 
 ulation, that the Earth required " myriads of 
 19* 
 
222 MORE WORLDS THAN ONE. 
 
 millions " of years for its formation, and assum 
 ing his principle of contrasting time and space, 
 may we not ask Mm in return, What was the 
 structure of the primitive Earth ? What were 
 the periods of time required for the deposition 
 of each formation ? And of what use was an 
 arrangement requiring myriads of millions of 
 years for its completion ? 
 
 Believing that " nebulae are vast masses of 
 incoherent, or gaseous matter, of immense 
 tenuity, and destitute of solid moving bodies," 
 a theory which he derives from another theory 
 called the nebular hypothesis, without adducing 
 the least trace of evidence in its support, our 
 author boasts, not surely in the spirit of the 
 inductive philosophy, that he seems to have 
 made it CERTAIN that the celestial objects (the 
 nebula) are not inhabited. To this we reply, 
 that we have made it MOKE PROBABLE that the 
 CELESTIAL objects are inhabited, an assertion 
 less presumptuous, but more certain than his. 
 
 We have described in a preceding chapter 
 the spiral nebulce discovered by Lord Eosse, 
 and wo have endeavored to explain the ap 
 pearance of motion, which may be considered 
 
OBJECTIONS FEOM THE NATURE OF NEBULA. 223 
 
 as indicated by the spirals which they exhibit. 
 With his accustomed boldness, and extrava 
 gance of speculation, our Essayist has made 
 the following observations on these spiral forms: 
 " The comet of Encke/ he affirms, " describes 
 a spiral gradually converging to the Sun," and 
 "in 80,000 years this comet zvill complete its 
 spiral, and be absorbed in the central mass. 
 
 But this spiral converging to its pole 
 
 so slowly that it reaches it only after forming 
 10,000 circuits (or spirals,") while "there are 
 at most three or four circular or oval sweeps 
 in each spiral (of the nebulae), or even the spiral 
 reaches the centre before it has completed a 
 single revolution round it." From data like 
 these, the following theory of the spiral nebulae 
 is deduced: "If we suppose the comet (that 
 of Encke) to consist of a luminous mass, or a 
 string of masses, which would occupy a consid 
 erable arch of such an orbit, the orbit would 
 be marked by a track of light as an oval spiral, 
 or if such a comet were to separate into two 
 portions, as we have, with our own eyes, recently 
 seen Bields Comet do, or into a greater num 
 ber; then these portions would be distributed 
 
224 MOKE WORLDS THAN ONE. 
 
 along such, a spiral. And if we suppose a large 
 mass of cometic matter thus to move in a highly- 
 resisting medium, and to consist of patches of 
 different densities, then some would move faster, 
 and some more slowly, but all in spirals, such 
 as have been spoken of, and the general aspect 
 produced would be that of the Spiral Nebulce, 
 which I have endeavored to describe." A 
 hypothesis more wild and gratuitous than this 
 was never before submitted to the scientific 
 world. In what part of the nebula do the 
 cometic patches reside before they begin their 
 motion of descent to the nucleus ; and what is 
 the cause of their quitting their place of rest ? 
 No comet out of the many hundreds that have 
 been observed, has been so negligent of its tail 
 as to leave it behind. Encke s Comet has been 
 equally careful of its appendage, and the divis 
 ion of Biela s Comet was only apparent. But 
 even if a comet were to separate into a number 
 of portions, these portions would, like the divis 
 ion of Biela s Comet, travel along with it and 
 again unite themselves into one, so that the 
 analogy of this comet is destructive of the spec 
 ulation which it is brought to support. 
 
CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 OBJECTIONS FEOM THE NATURE OF THE FIXED 
 STARS AND BINARY SYSTEMS. 
 
 HAVING, as our author congratulates him 
 self, "cleared away the supposed inhabitants 
 from the outskirts of creation, so far as the 
 nebulae are the outskirts of creation," he pro 
 ceeds to consider the fixed stars, and examine 
 any evidence which he may be able to discover 
 as to the probability of their containing in 
 themselves, or in their accompanying bodies, as 
 planets, inhabitants of any kind. We have 
 already stated the grounds upon which the 
 most distinguished astronomers have believed 
 that single and double stars are accompanied 
 with planets similar to our own ; and we shall 
 now consider the objections which are made to 
 this opinion. 
 
226 MORE WORLDS THAN ONE. 
 
 Beginning with clusters of stars, the author 
 vvhose opinions we have been controverting, 
 justly observes, that they are in the same 
 category with resolvable nebulae, and he there 
 fore regards it as " a very bold assumption to 
 assume, without any farther proof, that these 
 bright points are suns, distant from each other 
 as far as we are from the nearest stars. "When 
 these clusters are globular, Sir John Herschel 
 regards their form as "indicating the existence 
 of some. general bond of union in the nature of 
 an attractive force , and assuming that the 
 " globular space may be filled with equal stars, 
 uniformly dispersed through it, and very numer 
 ous, each of them attracting every other with 
 a force inversely as the square of the distance, 
 . . . each star would describe a perfect ellipse 
 about the common centre of gravity as its 
 centre," Sir John therefore conceives that "such 
 a system might subsist, and realize in a great 
 measure that abstract and ideal harmony which 
 Newton has shown to characterize a law of 
 force directly as the distance." 
 
 Eeferring to" this ingenious theory of globular 
 clusters, the Essayist illustrates it by asserting, 
 
FIXED STARS AND BINARY SYSTEMS. 227 
 
 that if " our Sun were broken into fragments, 
 so as to fill the sphere girdled by the Earth s 
 orbit, all the fragments would revolve round 
 the centre in a year," and as there is no 
 symptom in any cluster of its parts moving so 
 fast, he concludes that clusters, like nebulae, 
 must be extremely rare, that is, vaporous, like 
 the tails of comets. In support of this view of 
 the subject, he alleges that the boldness of the 
 opposite opinion, that they are suns, appears 
 to be felt by our wisest astronomer, meaning 
 Sir John Herschel, to whom he refers in such 
 a manner as if Sir John maintained the same 
 opinion with himself. This, however, is far 
 from being the case, as his own words will 
 prove : " Perhaps" s&ys he, " it may be thought 
 to savor of the gigantesque to look upon the 
 individuals of such a group as suns like our 
 own, and their mutual distances as equal to 
 those which separate our sun from the nearest 
 fixed star: yet, when we consider that their 
 united lustre affects the eye with a less im 
 pression of light than a star of the fourth 
 magnitude, the idea we are thus compelled 
 to form of their distance from us may pre- 
 
228 MORE WORLDS THAN ONE. 
 
 pare us for almost any estimate of their dimen 
 sions."* 
 
 The same just views of the sidereal system, 
 in which no motion is visible, are taken by Dr. 
 Whewell, in his Bridgewater Treatise.f " As 
 tronomy," says he, " teaches us that the stars 
 which we see have no immediate relation to our 
 system. The obvious supposition is, that they 
 are of the nature and order of our sun : the 
 minuteness of their apparent magnitude agrees, 
 on this supposition, with the enormous and almost 
 inconceivable distance which, from all the meas 
 urements of astronomers, we are led to attrib 
 ute to them. If, then, these are suns, they may, 
 like our sun, have planets revolving round them, 
 and these may, like our planet, be the seats of 
 vegetable, animal, and rational life: we may 
 thus have in the universe worlds, no one knows 
 how many, no one can guess how varied ; 
 but, however many, however varied, they are 
 still but so many provinces in the same em 
 pire, subject to common rules, governed by a 
 common power." 
 
 * Outlines, &c., 8G6, referred to by the Essayist, 
 f Book III. chap, ii.p.270. 
 
FIXED STARS AND BINARY SYSTEMS. 229 
 
 From the globular clusters of stars our 
 author proceeds to the binary systems, of which 
 we have treated in a preceding chapter. He 
 admits that the law of universal gravitation is 
 established for several of these systems, "with 
 as complete evidence as that which carries its 
 operation to the orbits of Uranus and Neptune/ 7 
 but he endeavors to show that each of the 
 stars of the best known binary systems, a Cen- 
 tauri and 61 Cygni, "may have its luminous 
 matter diffused through a globe as large as the 
 Earths annual orbit" and that, in this case, 
 " it would not be more dense than the tail of a 
 comet." It is in vain to argue against asser 
 tions like these, which can only be met by an 
 equally positive denial of them. In the present 
 case, however, we can do more. Sir John 
 Herschel has shown that the sum of the two 
 masses of the double star 61 Cygni, is to that 
 of the Sun as 0*353 to 1, or nearly as 1 to 3*1, 
 and hence he concludes, that " the Sun is neither 
 vastly greater nor vastly less than the stars 
 composing 61 Oygni? The conclusion, there 
 fore, of the Essayist, that the matter of these 
 systems, " of these brilliant constituents," as 
 20 
 
230 MORE WORLDS THAN ONE. 
 
 Sir John Herscliel calls them, would fill the 
 Earth s orbit, and have the rarity of comets 
 tails, is contrary to astronomical truth. 
 
 We have already seen that Sir John Herschel 
 considers these double stars as suns, " accom 
 panied with their trains of planets and satel 
 lites," and has stated the conditions necessary 
 for the existence of their inhabitants. To our 
 Essayist such a scheme appears so complex, 
 that it would be " impossible to arrange it in a 
 stable manner," so as to protect the inhabitants 
 from such dangers, and he considers himself as 
 having overturned Sir John Herschel s view, by 
 simply asserting, without a ground even for the 
 assertion, that u their sun may be a vast sphere 
 of luminous matter, and the planets, plunged 
 into this atmosphere, may, instead of describ 
 ing regular orbits, plough their way in spiral 
 paths through the nebulous abyss to its central 
 nucleus" ! 
 
 Having obtained, as our author sarcastically 
 remarks, " but little promise of inhabitants from 
 clustered stars and double stars," he turns his 
 attention to the single stars as the most hopeful 
 cases, and asks, " what is the probability that 
 
FIXED STAES AND BINARY SYSTEMS. 231 
 
 the fixed stars or some of them really have plan 
 ets revolving round them ?" To this he justly 
 replies, that " the only proof that the fixed stars 
 are the centres of planetary systems, resides in 
 the assumption that these stars are like the sun ; 
 resemble him in their qualities and nature, 
 and therefore must have the same offices and the 
 same appendage." 
 
 In admitting that the stars, like the sun, shine 
 with an independent light, our author attempts 
 to reduce the force of this point of resemblance 
 by asserting, that "they resemble not only the 
 sun, but nebulous patches in the sky, and the 
 tails of comets," and that " there is no obvious 
 distinction between the original light of the stars 
 and the reflected light of the planets." Now 
 these statements are either irrelevant or erro 
 neous. The nebulous patches are clusters of 
 stars. It is not true that comets tails are self- 
 luminous, and it is utterly untrue that star light 
 and planet light are the same. Our author ought 
 to have known that the reflected light of the 
 planets contains precisely the same definite dark 
 lines in their spectra as the light of the sun, 
 which it ought to do, as it is the same light ; 
 
2S2 MORE WORLDS THAN ONE. 
 
 while it has been proved by the direct observa 
 tions of Fraunhofer and others, that the light of 
 Sir-iusj Procyon, and other stars, is essentially 
 different, having definite dark lines which do 
 not exist in the light of the sun. 
 
 His next assertion is that though the mass of 
 certain stars is one-third of that of the sun, yet 
 their matter may be diffused through a sphere 
 equal to the earth s annual orbit, and that this 
 may be the matrix, so to speak both of the sun 
 and planets of a system not yet formed thus 
 taking for granted the truth of the nebular 
 theory, adopted by the author of the Vestiges of 
 Creation, and maintained only by persons who 
 have very erroneous ideas of creation. The 
 worlds were not made by the operation of law, 
 but by the immediate agency of the Almighty. 
 Sir Isaac Newton considered the nebular theory 
 as tending to Atheism, and in his five interesting 
 letters to Dr. Bentley, he has ably controverted 
 it. " The growth of new systems," he says, "out 
 of old ones, (the doctrine maintained by the Es 
 sayist,) without the mediation of a Divine power, 
 seems to me apparently absurd." " The diurnal 
 rotation of the planets could not be derived from 
 
FIXED STARS AND BINARY SYSTEMS. 233 
 
 gravity, but required a Divine arm to impress 
 them." " The same power," says Newton, 
 " whether natural or supernatural, which placed 
 the sun in the centre of the six primary planets, 
 placed Saturn in the centre of the orb of his five 
 secondary planets ; and Jupiter in the centre of 
 his four secondary planets ; and the Earth in the 
 centre of the moon s orbit ; and therefore had 
 this cause been a blind one, without contrivance 
 or design, the sun would have been a body of the 
 same kind with Saturn, Jupiter, and the Earth ; 
 that is without light or heat. Why there is one 
 body in our system qualified to give light and 
 heat to all the rest, I know no reason, but be 
 cause the Author of the system thought it con 
 venient ; and why there is but one body of 
 this kind, I know no reason, but because one 
 was sufficient to warm and enlighten all the 
 rest."* 
 
 That the stars undergo changes in their me 
 chanical condition, the Essayist considers to be 
 proved by observation. One of these proofs is 
 the different colors of different stars, a fact 
 certainly, but not a proof of change. Had their 
 
 * Newtoni Opera, torn . iv. pp. 430, 438. 
 
234 MORE WORLDS THAN ONE. 
 
 colors changed* we might have inferred a 
 change of condition ; but knowing that no such 
 change takes place, our author most presump 
 tuously regards " their different colors as aris 
 ing from their being at different stages of their 
 progress," an opinion without a shadow of prob 
 ability either from observation or analogy. His 
 next proof of change is derived from the. " mighty 
 changes of which we have evidence in the view 
 which geology gives us of the history of this 
 Earth ;" but this is no proof at all. The changes 
 there referred to are mere changes in the crust 
 of the Earth, and not in its mechanical condition, 
 and changes too, which would not show them 
 selves even to the moon by any change of color 
 or of aspect. "7/J therefore," the Essayist con 
 tinues, " stellar globes can become planetary 
 systems in the progress of ages, it will not be at 
 all inconsistent with what we know of the order 
 of nature, that only a few, or even that only 
 one, (our Earth he means,) should have yet 
 reached that condition. All the others but the 
 
 * Ptolemy is said to have noted Sirius as a red star, though it is now 
 white. Sirius twinkles with red and blue light, and Ptolemy s eyes, like 
 those of several other persons, may have been more sensitive to the red 
 than the blue rays. 
 
FIXED STARS AND BINARY SYSTEMS. 235 
 
 one (our Earth) may be systems yet unformed, 
 (or fragments or sparks, as lie subsequently calls 
 them,) struck off in the forming of the one ! " 
 To such, a succession of assertions and hypothe 
 ses it is scarcely necessary to reply. Stellar 
 globes have never become planetary systems ; 
 and nature has no such order. "We are thus 
 thrown back to the astronomy of Julius Caesar : 
 
 <J The skies are painted with unnumbered sparks." 
 
 SHAKSPEARE. 
 
 The next argument adduced by our author, 
 that the stars are unlike our sun, is the exist 
 ence of changes in the stars supposed to be 
 indicated by the disappearance of some stars, 
 the appearance of others, and the variations in 
 the light of a considerable number. The dis 
 appearance of a star proves only that it has 
 turned a dark side to our system, and the ap 
 pearance of a new star, that its luminous side 
 has come round to us in the course of its rota 
 tion ; while the variations in the light of others 
 may arise from spots upon their surface, from 
 eclipses by their planets, or from obscuration 
 from comets 7 tails, when the variations are of 
 an irregular character. From all these causes 
 
236 MOEE WORLDS THAN ONE. 
 
 our own sun may be a variable star to other 
 planets. To us even its light is diminished 
 when large spots come across its disc ; and 
 when we consider the great number of comets 
 which belong to our system, and the immense 
 magnitude of their tails, the sun s light must 
 be occasionally obscured by the interposition 
 of these imperfectly transparent bodies. 
 
 That the Fixed Stars are like our Sun in 
 every point in which it is possible to compare 
 them, will not now be doubted we think by 
 our readers. That they are suns themselves, 
 as Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler, and Huygens, 
 and every astronomer believes, and as all anal 
 ogy proves, is a doctrine which, we trust, will 
 equally command their faith. 
 
 In concluding his chapter on the Fixed Stars, 
 our Essayist utters sentiments, and throws out 
 conjectures so insulting to Astronomy, and cast 
 ing such ridicule even on the subject of his own 
 work, that we can ascribe them only to some 
 morbid condition of the mental powers, which 
 feeds upon paradox, and delights in doing vio 
 lence to sentiments deeply cherished, and to 
 opinions universally believed. We almost doubt 
 
FIXED STARS AND BINARY SYSTEMS. 237 
 
 the accuracy of our vision, when we read the 
 conjecture that the glorious stars which compose 
 the sidereal universe, that " Arcturus, Orion, 
 and the Pleiades," which Scripture tells us 
 " God made," were never created by Him at 
 all, and a are really long since extinct!" He 
 had previously stated, "that in consequence of 
 the time employed in the transmission of visual 
 impressions, our seeing a star, is evidence not 
 that it exists now, but that it existed it may be 
 many thousands of years ago ;" and thinking 
 that such a statement might seem to some read 
 ers to throw doubts upon reasonings which he 
 had employed, he makes the following obser 
 vation : " It may be said that a star which was 
 a mere chaos when the light by which we see it 
 set out from it, may, in the thousands of years 
 which have since elapsed, have grown into an 
 orderly world. To which bare possibility we 
 may oppose another supposition, at least equally 
 possible, that the distant stars were sparJcs or frag 
 ments struck off in the formation of the Solar sys 
 tem, which are REALLY long since extinct, and 
 survive in appearance only by the light which 
 they at first emitted" t 
 
238 MOKE WORLDS THAN ONE. 
 
 With such a speculation before us, we need 
 not put the question with which we intended 
 to conclude this chapter. If the stars are not 
 suns, for what conceivable purpose were they 
 created ? Our author has answered the ques 
 tion by asserting, that they were never created 
 at all ! To such philosophy and theology we 
 prefer that of the poet 
 
 " Eacli of these stars is a religious house ; 
 I saw their altars smoke, their incense rise, 
 And heard hosannahs ring through every sphere. 
 The great Proprietor s all-bounteous hand 
 Leaves nothing waste, but sows these fiery fields 
 With seeds of reason, which to virtues rise 
 Beneath his genial ray." 
 
 YOUNG. 
 
CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 OBJECTIONS FROM THE NATUKE OF THE PLANETS. 
 
 HAYING sullied the glories of the sidereal 
 world by converting the stars and systems which 
 compose it, into vapor, gas, and comets 7 tails, 
 the Essayist proceeds to apply the same process 
 to the planets of the Solar system, converting 
 those exterior to the Earth into water and mud, 
 and the interior ones into cinder or sheets of 
 rigid slag like the moon ! 
 
 This process commences with Neptune, which 
 he describes as a dark and cold world, where 
 the light and heat of the sun is incapable of 
 " unfolding the vital powers, and cherishing the 
 vital enjoyments of animals ;" an assumption 
 without any evidence to support it. It is true, 
 that if we consider the solar influences as ema 
 nations following a geometrical law, their power 
 
240 MORE WOELDS THAN ONE. 
 
 upon the surface of Neptune must be immensely 
 enfeebled ; but such, a law does not exist. Al 
 though the Sun is nearest the Earth in win 
 ter, his light and heat are, from different 
 causes, greatly reduced, and we know, as we 
 have shown in a former chapter, that there 
 may be conditions of the atmosphere of the 
 remoter planets which may procure for them 
 more genial influence from the Sun, or there 
 may be temperatures in their interior which 
 may supply the place of radiated heat. 
 
 The same observations which apply to Nep 
 tune are applicable to Uranus, Saturn, and 
 Jupiter, the same objections on the part of 
 the Essayist, and the same reply to them. 
 Jupiter, however, is the planet to which he 
 especially calls our attention ; and after much 
 irrelevant speculation respecting the internal 
 condition of our globe, as produced by the su 
 perincumbent weight of its outer formations, 
 and " allowing for the compression of the inte 
 rior parts of Jupiter," he pronounces it "toler 
 ably certain that his density is not greater than 
 it would be if his entire globe were composed of 
 water," and he concludes that Jupiter must be 
 
NATUKE OF THE PLANETS. 241 
 
 a mere sphere of water. He afterwards states 
 that there is " much, evidence against the exist 
 ence of solid land " in that planet ; but in 
 opposition to this evidence, he subsequently 
 contributes a few cinders at the centre, arti 
 cles, doubtless, of peculiar value and interest, 
 where everything else is water. The existence 
 of cinders, however, where there is no heat, and 
 where, as we shall presently see, the water is 
 ice, must have perplexed his chemistry, and 
 hence he wisely withdraws them, by telling us 
 that the waters in Jupiter are bottomless, that 
 is, without a nucleus of cinders. 
 
 In order to prove that Jupiter and the exte 
 rior planets cannot be inhabited, he adduces 
 the extreme cold which must exist upon their 
 surface ; but when his assertion that Jupiter is 
 a sphere of water, and, if peopled at all, 
 peopled with cartilaginous and glutinous mon 
 sters, boneless, watery, pulpy creatures, floating 
 in the fluid, is met with the objection that the 
 waters must he frozen into ice, he has no diffi 
 culty in making Jupiter as hot to answer this 
 one purpose, as he formerly made it cold to 
 answer another. In this wonderful process of 
 
24:2 MORE WORLDS THAN ONE. 
 
 adaptation, our author s genius and his in 
 ductive method are singularly displayed. No 
 difficulty is to him insurmountable. In his 
 omniscience of speculation he finds a theory for 
 anything or everything ; " Even in the outer re 
 gions of our atmosphere," he says, "the cold is 
 probably very many degrees below freezing, 
 and in the blank and airless void beyond, it may 
 be colder still. It has been calculated by phys 
 ical philosophers, on grounds which seem to 
 be solid, that the cold in the space beyond 
 our atmosphere is 100 below Zero. The space 
 near to Jupiter, IF AN ABSOLUTE VACUUM, in 
 which there is no matter to receive and retain, 
 
 MAY, PEEHAPS r BE NO COLDER THAN IT IS NEARER 
 
 THE SUN !" Were we to indulge in arbitrary 
 conjectures like these, we could refute, without 
 argument, all our author s objections to a plu 
 rality of worlds ; but without availing ourselves 
 of so destructive a weapon, may we not, upon 
 good grounds, prefer the probable ice to the 
 possible water, and accommodate the inhab 
 itants of Jupiter with very comfortable quarters, 
 in huts of snow and houses of crystal, warmed 
 by subterranean heat, and lighted with ths 
 
NATUKE OF THE PLANETS. 243 
 
 hydrogen of its waters, and its cinders not 
 wholly deprived of their bitumen ? 
 
 But we are not driven to the necessity of be 
 lieving that Jupiter and the exterior planets 
 are either water or ice. That they are neither 
 composed of the one material nor the other, is 
 proved by direct experiment. If their surfaces 
 were either wholly or partly aqueous, the rays 
 reflected from them when the planets are in 
 quadrature, would contain, what it does not, 
 a large portion of polarized light ; and if their 
 crust consisted of mountains, and precipices, 
 and rocks of ice, some of whose faces must 
 occasionally reflect the incident light at nearly 
 the polarizing angle, the polarization of their 
 light would be distinctly indicated. 
 
 Had our author not exhibited the great 
 amount of his knowledge, an amount so mas 
 sive as occasionally to smother his reason, we 
 should have charged him with ignorance of the 
 various forms and conditions of density, in 
 which the same elements may be combined ; 
 but we believe that he knows these as well as 
 we do,, and, in our position, would use them 
 more skilfully. It is difficult to understand 
 
244: MORE WORLDS THAN ONE. 
 
 why Jupiter should be made of water. His den 
 sity is 1-359, (that of the Earth being 5 66, and 
 that of water being I OOO,) greater even than 
 that of certain specimens of coal, far greater 
 than amianthus, and pumice stone, which are 
 lighter than water. Silex or flint, too, occurs 
 with such various densities that there are con 
 ditions of it less dense than Jupiter. In the 
 state of tabasheer it is very much lighter than 
 water. In the state of siliceous sinter its den 
 sity is only 1/8. In the state of opal its density 
 is 1 9, and in certain varieties of quartz it is so 
 high as 2*88. There are pitchstones, too, vary 
 ing from 1-9 of specific gravity to 2 70 ; so that 
 the hardest mineral may exist in Jupiter, and 
 yet his density not exceed 1 359. But why 
 should the minerals in Jupiter be of the same 
 nature as those on the Earth ? May not the 
 elementary atoms of matter be there combined 
 according to different laws, and form spars, and 
 gems, and metals, entirely different from ours ? 
 Admitting, however, for a moment, the suppo 
 sition, otherwise inadmissible, that there is a 
 terrestrial type of inorganic bodies which is to 
 be the exemplar for all the planets, we have 
 
NATURE OF THE PLANETS. 245 
 
 only to suppose these planets to be hollow, or 
 to contain large cavities, in order to reconcile 
 their average densities with the densities of 
 terrestrial bodies. 
 
 The arguments against Saturn being inhab 
 ited, our author considers to be much stronger 
 than in the case of Jupiter. He tells us that 
 " the outward part of the globe of Saturn is prov 
 ed to be vapor by his streaks and belts," and 
 that " we must either suppose that he has no 
 inhabitants, or that they are aqueous gelatinous 
 creatures too sluggish almost to l>e deemed 
 alive, floating in their ice cold water, and 
 shrouded for ever by their humid skies! 7 
 He "cannot tell us," he says, "whether they 
 have eyes or no, but probably if they had, they 
 would never see the sun ; and therefore," he 
 continues, "we need not commiserate their lot 
 in not seeing the host of Saturnian satellites, 
 and the ring which to an intelligent Saturnian 
 spectator would be so splendid a celestial ob 
 ject. The rang is a glorious object for man s 
 view and his contemplation, and therefore is 
 not altogether without its use. Still less need 
 21* 
 
246 MORE WORLDS THAN ONE. 
 
 we (as some* appear to do) regard as a serious 
 misfortune to the inhabitants of certain regions 
 of the planet, a solar eclipse of fifteen years 
 duration, to which they are liable by the inter 
 position of the ring between them and the sun." 
 This specimen of our author s dialectics, in 
 which a large dose of banter and ridicule is 
 seasoned, with a little condiment of science, 
 forms a painful contrast with the following 
 noble passage, in which Sir John Herschel dis 
 cusses the very same subject. " The rings of 
 Saturn must present a magnificent spectacle 
 from those regions of the planets which lie above 
 their enlightened sides, as vast arches spanning 
 the sky from horizon to horizon, and holding an 
 almost invariable situation among the stars. 
 On the other hand, in the regions beneath the 
 dark side, a solar eclipse of fifteen years in dur 
 ation, under their shadow, must afford (to our 
 ideas) an inhospitable asylum to animated 
 beings, ill compensated by the faint light of 
 the satellites. But we shall do wrong to judge 
 
 * The author here refers to Sir John Herschel, whose authority h 
 quotes for the Solar eclipse of fifteen years. Outlines, &c.,52-2. 
 
NATURE OF THE PLANETS. 247 
 
 of the fitness or unfitness of their condition 
 from what we see aiming us, when perhaps the 
 very combinations which only convey images 
 of horror to our minds, may be, in reality, thea 
 tres of the most striking and glorious displays of 
 beneficent contrivance" 
 
 The remarkable phenomenon, however, of a 
 fifteen years eclipse of the sun to the regions of 
 Saturn, placed under the shadow of the dark 
 side of the ring, does not exist. Dr. Lardner, 
 in an elaborate memoir, On the Appearance of 
 Saturn s Rings to the Inhabitants of the Planet, * 
 has solved the problem of the appearance of the 
 system of rings in the Saturn ian firmament, 
 and their effect in eclipsing occasionally and 
 temporarily the sun, the eight moons, and other 
 celestial objects. 
 
 "It is there demonstrated," he says, "that 
 the infinite skill of the great Architect of the 
 universe has not permitted that this stupendous 
 annular appendage, the uses of which still remain 
 undiscovered, should be the cause of such dark 
 ness and desolation to the inhabitants of the 
 planet, and such an aggravation of the rigors 
 
 * Transactions of the Astronomical Society, 1853, vol. xxii. 
 
248 MORE WORLDS THAN ONE. 
 
 of their fifteen years winter, as it has been in 
 ferred to be It is shown, on the 
 
 contrary, that by the apparent motion of the 
 heavens, produced by the diurnal rotation of Sat- 
 turn, the celestial objects, including, of course,the 
 sun and the eight moons, are not carried paral 
 lel to the edges of the rings, as has been hitherto 
 supposed ; that they are moved so as to pass 
 alternately from side to side of each of these 
 edges ; that, in general, such objects as pass 
 under the rings are only occulted by them for 
 short intervals, before and after their meridional 
 culmination ; that though under some rare and 
 exceptional circumstances and conditions, cer 
 tain objects, the sun being among the number, 
 are occulted from rising to setting, the contin 
 uance of such phenomena is not such as has 
 been supposed, and the places of its occurrence 
 are far more limited. In short, it has no such 
 character as would deprive the planet of any 
 essential condition ofhabitability" 
 
 By arguments " of the same kind, as in the 
 case of Jupiter and Saturn, but greatly increased 
 in strength," as he alleges, our Essayist banishes 
 inhabitants from Neptune and Uranus, and he 
 
NATURE OF THE PLANETS. 249 
 
 sneeringly " commends the supposition of the 
 probable watery nature and low vitality of their 
 inhabitants to the consideration of those who 
 contend for inhabitants in those remote regions 
 of the Solar system." 
 
 In returning towards the sun, our author 
 pays his passing respects to Mars, which he 
 thinks is more likely to have inhabitants than 
 any other planet. This probability, however, 
 disappears, and he concedes to this planet the 
 possibility of having " creatures of the nature of 
 corals and molluscs, saurians and iguanodons." 
 
 The twenty-nine asteroids between Mars and 
 Jupiter afford our author a new and inviting 
 field for speculation. He considers them as 
 mere dots, whose form is not even known to be 
 spherical. Setting aside the theory that they 
 are the fragments of an exploded planet, he 
 thinks "they may be the results of some imper 
 fectly effected concentration of the elements of 
 our system (of star dust), which if it had gone 
 on more completely and regularly, might have 
 produced another planet between Mars and Ju 
 piter. Perhaps they are only the larger masses 
 among a great number of smaller ones, result- 
 
250 MORE WORLDS THAN ONE. 
 
 ing from such, a process ; and it is very con 
 ceivable that the meteoric stones, which have 
 from time to time fallen upon the Earth s sur 
 face, are other results of the like process ; bits 
 of planets which have failed in the making, and 
 lost their way till arrested by the resistance of 
 the Earth s atmosphere !" 
 
 The two interior planets, Venus and Mer 
 cury, are depopulated into a single page. The 
 light and heat of Venus is admitted to be only 
 " double those which come to the Earth." He 
 finds it " hard to say what kind of animals he 
 could place in her, except perhaps the micro 
 scopic creatures with siliceous coverings, which, 
 as modern explorers assert, are almost inde 
 structible by heat." u Of Mercury," he says, 
 "we know still less, and he has not, so far as 
 we can tell, any of the conditions which make 
 animal existence conceivable." Opinions of a 
 very different nature from these we have 
 already had occasion to state in a preceding 
 chapter, and we must leave it to the judgment 
 of the reader to decide upon their relative 
 probabilities. 
 
 In order to combine under on general prin- 
 
NATUKE OF THE PLANETS. 251 
 
 eiple the views which lie has taken of the 
 condition of the individual planets, the Essayist 
 adopts the nebular hypothesis, in which the Sun 
 and all the planets are formed out of star dust 
 or fire-mist, by its gradual contraction and the 
 subsequent solidification of its parts, without 
 any interference on the part of the Almighty. 
 Upon this hypothesis he erects a scheme or a 
 theory of the Solar system, which he consid 
 ers as having a sort of religioas dignity, though 
 he fears that, at first, it may appear, to many, 
 rash, fanciful, and almost irreverent. In this 
 scheme, the fire and water of the nebular 
 mass have been separated during their "planet- 
 making powers" " the water and the va 
 por which belong to the system being driven 
 off into the outer regions of its vast cir 
 cuit, while the solid 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." In 
 support of these theories he adduces the 
 zodiacal light, itself a creature of theory, as an 
 appendage to the Sun, and as the remains of 
 the Sun s atmosphere extending beyond the 
 
252 MOKE WORLDS THAN ONE. 
 
 orbits of Mercury and Venus "planets which, 
 have not yet fully emerged from the atmosphere 
 in which they had their origin the mother 
 light and mother fire in which they began to crys* 
 tallize, as crystals do in their mother water ! 
 These planets are, therefore, within a nebular 
 region, which may easily be conceived to be un* 
 inhabitable. And where this nebular region, 
 marked by the zodiacal light, terminates, the 
 world of life begins, namely, at the Earth ! 
 " The orlit of the Earth is the temperate zone 
 of the Solar system, and in that zone is the 
 play of Hot and Cold, of Moist and Dry pos 
 sible. 7 
 
 With these wild and extravagant notions 
 our author connects the shooting stars or 
 meteors which appear in such numbers in our 
 atmosphere. He considers them as " revolving 
 specks of nebulas," the "outriders of the zo 
 diacal light," which, when "broken into patches, 
 arc seen as stars for the moment we are near to 
 them." " And if this be true," he continues, 
 " we have to correct, in a certain way, what we 
 have previously said of the zodiacal light : that 
 no one had thought of resolving it into stars ; 
 
NATURE OF THE PLANETS. 253 
 
 for it would thus appear, that in its outer region 
 it resolves itself into stars, visible, though but for a 
 moment, to the naked eye /" 
 
 In concluding this novel and startling theory 
 of the Solar system, the Essayist tells us that 
 " the Earth is placed in that region of the 
 system in which the planet-forming powers are 
 the most vigorous and potent ; that the 
 Earth is really the largest planetary body in 
 the Solar system, its domestic hearth, and the 
 only world in the universe"* We are unwilling 
 to charge the author of such theories with. 
 
 * A very different opinion is stated by Dr. Whewell, in his Bridgewater 
 Treatise. " The view of the universe," says he, " expands also on another 
 side. The Earth, the globular body thus covered with life, is not the only 
 globe in the universe. There are circling about our own Sun six others, 
 so far as we can judge, perfectly analogous in their nature : besides our 
 Moon and other bodies analogous to it. JVo one can resist the temptation 
 to conjecture that these globes, some of them much larger than our own, 
 are not dead and barren ; that they are, like ours, occupied with organi 
 zation, life, intelligence. To conjecture is all that we can do ; yet even 
 by the perception of such a possibility, our view of the kingdom of nature 
 is enlarged and elevated." Chap. ii. pp. 269,270. The rest of this chap 
 ter, " On the Vastness of the Universe" in which he speaks of the bi 
 liary systems of the stars as "giving rise possibly to new conditions of 
 worlds," of "the millions of stars" in the universe, as containing " the 
 whole range of created objects in our own system," and of " the ten 
 dency of all the arrangements which we can comprehend to support the 
 existence, develop the faculties, and to promote the happiness of count 
 less species of creature," is well worthy of the perusal of the read 
 er, and forms a striking contrast with the opinions of the Essayist. 
 
 22 
 
254 MORR WORLDS THAN ONE. 
 
 cherishing opinions hostile to religion. "We 
 believe that he is ignorant of their tendency, 
 and that he has forgotten the truths of inspira 
 tion, and even those of natural religion, amid 
 the excitement of discussions, from which he 
 is to obtain the high reputation of " having 
 accounted for, and reduced into consistency 
 and connection, a very extraordinary number 
 of points hitherto unexplained." But, however 
 sincere may be his piety, which we do not 
 question, we tell him, with confidence, that 
 his theories are replete with danger, and that 
 young minds will draw from them opinions 
 the very reverse of his own. When we are 
 told that a planet has been bungled in its 
 formation, that meteoric stones are bits of 
 planets which have failed in the making,* and 
 lost their way, can we believe that the all-wise 
 Creator was present at the process, " making 
 the earth by His power, and establishing the 
 world by His wisdom ?" Can we believe that 
 He who formed the worlds has made only one, 
 
 * " We know of no blemishes or blunders in creation," says Pro- 
 fi-ssor Sedgwick, " and were they there, what would it mailer to our 
 cqnception of them, whether they sprang from deud material laws or 
 dained by an all-powerful and all-seeing God, or from an immediate de 
 fect iu creative power ?" 
 
NATUEE OF THE PLANETS. 255 
 
 and that, in place of resting on the seventh 
 day, He rested during the whole week of crea 
 tion, and still rests, having transferred His 
 almighty power to certain laws of matter and 
 motion, by which the Sun and all his planets 
 were manufactured from nebulous matter? 
 Sir Isaac Newton considered the nebular theory, 
 though in his time not known by that name, 
 as not only absurd, but verging on atheism. 
 In reference to the creation of a central and 
 immovable sun, he observes, that to suppose a 
 " central particle so accurately placed in the 
 middle (of nebulous matter in a finite space) 
 as to be always equally attracted on all sides, 
 and thereby continue without motion, seems to 
 me fully as hard as to make the sharpest 
 needle stand upright on its point upon a 
 looking-glass. And much harder it is to sup 
 pose that all the particles in an infinite space 
 should be so accurately poised, one upon an 
 other, as to stand still in a perfect equilibrium. 
 For I reckon this as hard as to make not one 
 needle only, but an infinite number of them, 
 stand accurately poised upon their points."* 
 
 * Letter to Bentley, Lett. iv. 
 
256 MOKE WORLDS THAN ONE. 
 
 And in another place he urges another objec 
 tion to the hypothesis : " But how the matter 
 (the nebular matter) should divide itself into 
 two sorts, and that part of it which is fit to 
 compose a shining body should fall down into 
 one mass, and make a sun, and the rest, which 
 is fit to compose an opaque body, should 
 coalesce, not into one great body, like the 
 shining matter, but into many little ones, I do 
 not think explicable by mere natural causes, 
 but am forced to ascribe it to the counsel and 
 contrivance of a voluntary agent. * And with 
 respect to the diurnal rotation of the planets, 
 he distinctly declares that "they could not be 
 derived from gravity, but required a divine arm 
 to impress them."f 
 
 A more modern, and still living author, who, 
 we trust, will long continue an honor to science 
 and to his country, has characterized specula 
 tions like these, as " dashing from hypothesis 
 to hypothesis, and building a scheme of nature 
 against nature, and against the sober interpre 
 tation of those who have best studied their 
 works." We will not say of the language of the 
 
 * Letter to Bentley, Lett. i. f Id. Lett. iv. 
 
NATURE OF THE PLANETS. 257 
 
 Essayist, when lie speaks of Nature, or the God 
 of Nature, having failed in producing a planet 
 where He intended it to be, and of haying re 
 corded that failure by broken planets and show 
 ers of meteoric stones ;* we will not say what 
 Professor Sedgwick has said of speculations 
 about the nebular theory not more absurd, that 
 they are "the raying madness of hypothetical 
 extravagance ;" but we sincerely, and without 
 desiring to give offence, adopt the rest of his 
 declaration, " that it is at open war with all the 
 calm lessons of inductive truth, and, in any in 
 terpretation we can give it, bears upon its front 
 the stamp of folly and irreverence towards the 
 God of Nature." 
 
 " Though this Earth," says Dr. Chalmers, 
 " and these heavens were to disappear, there 
 are other worlds which roll afar ; the light of 
 other suns shines upon them, and the sky 
 which mantles them is garnished with other 
 stars. Is it presumption to say that the moral 
 
 * " The planets and the stars," says the Essayist, " are the lumps which 
 have flown from the Potter s wheel of the Great-worker, the shred coils 
 of which*in His working, sprung from His mighty lathe ; the sparks 
 which darted from His awful anvil, when the Solar system lay incan 
 descent thereon ; the curls of vapor which rose from the preat caul 
 dron of creation, when its elements were separated." P. 243. 
 
 22* 
 
258 MOKE WOKLDS THAN ONE. 
 
 world extends to these distant and unknown 
 regions ; that they are occupied with people ; 
 that the charities of home and of neighbor 
 hood flourish there ; that the praises of God are 
 there lifted up, and His goodness rejoiced in ; 
 that piety has there its temples and its offer 
 ings ; and that the richness of the Divine attri 
 butes is there felt and admired by intelligent 
 worshippers?"* 
 
 * Astronomical Discourses, pp. 3G, 37. Without multiplying extracts 
 from the writings of philosophers and divines, it may be sufficient to 
 state, that Dr. Derham, in his Astrotheology, 3d edit., 1717, pp. xlvii., 
 liii., liv., has stated his reasons for believing that the fixed stars and 
 planets " are worlds, or places of habitation, which is concluded from 
 their being habitable, and well provided for habitation." Dr, Paley also, 
 though he does not discuss the subject, evinces his opinion when he 
 states, that " even ignorance of tho sensitive natures by which other plan 
 ets are inhabited, necessarily keeps from us the knowledge of numberless 
 utilities, relations, and subserviences, which we perceive upon our own 
 globe. Natural Theology, edited by Lord Brougham and Sir Charles 
 Bell, London, 1836, p. 16. 
 
CHAPTER XV. 
 
 THE FUTURE OF THE UNIVERSE. 
 
 HAD the doctrine of a Plurality of Worlds 
 been one of those subjects which merely gratify 
 our curiosity, we should not have occupied .the 
 reader s time, or spent our own, in illustrating 
 and defending it. "While the scientific truths 
 on which it depends form one of the most in 
 teresting branches of natural theology, and yield 
 the most striking proofs of wisdom and design, 
 they are intimately associated with the future 
 destiny of Man. 
 
 There are three departments of Natural The 
 ology which demand our most earnest attention, 
 the living world around us, the world of the 
 past, and the world of the future. In the wonder 
 ful mechanisms of animal and vegetable life with 
 which we are so familiar, and in the inorganic 
 structures amid which we dwell, we recognize 
 imperfectly the innumerable proofs of matchless 
 
260 MOKE WOHKDS THAN ONE. 
 
 skill and benevolent adaptationwith which they 
 abound. Our daily familiarity with the ordinary 
 functions of life, degrades them in our estima 
 tion. There is something which we deem un 
 clean even in the healthy condition of animal 
 bodies, and their functions and their products, 
 which deters all but professional men from their 
 study, and robs them of their inherent claims 
 as incentives to piety, and as proofs of design. 
 Even the chemistry of inspiration by which we 
 live, and the science of the Eye and the Ear, 
 on which all our intercourse with nature and 
 with society depends, are scarcely known to the 
 best educated of the people. 
 
 It is otherwise, however, with that department 
 of natural science whfch treats of the formations 
 and fossil remains of an ancient world. With 
 the structure and functions of animals which 
 inhabited the earth previous to its occupation 
 by man, we have no familiarity. We see them 
 only in their graves of stone, and beneath their 
 monuments of marble creations which cannot 
 again die, and with which everything mortal 
 has ceased to be associated. Time, in its most 
 hoary aspect, has invested them with a hallowed 
 
THE FUTUKE OF THE UNIVERSE. 261 
 
 and a mystic character. The green waves have 
 washed them in their coral beds, and after ages 
 of ablution in a tempestuous sea, the ordeal of 
 a central fire has completed their purification. 
 The bones, and the integuments, and the mean 
 est products of animal life, have thus become 
 sainted relics which the most sensitive may 
 handle, and the most delicate may prize. 
 
 But there is another department of natural 
 science which in its interests, is deeper and more 
 varied still. Carrying us back to the birth of 
 matter, before life was breathed among its atoms, 
 and before light rushed through the darkness 
 of space, Astronomy unites, in a remarkable 
 degree, the interests of the past, the present, and 
 the future. From the time when the earth was 
 without form and void to the present hour, As 
 tronomy has been the study of the shepherd and 
 the sage, and in the bosom of sidereal space the 
 genius of man has explored the most gigantic 
 works of the Almighty, and studied the most 
 mysterious of His arrangements. But while the 
 astronomer ponders over the wonderful struc 
 tures of the spheres, and investigates the laws 
 of their movements, the Christian contemplates 
 
262 MORE WORLDS THAN ONE. 
 
 them with a warmer and more affectionate in 
 terest. From their past and present history his 
 eager eye turns to the future of the sidereal 
 systems, and he looks to them as the hallowed 
 spots in which his immortal existence is to 
 run. Scripture has not spoken with an articu 
 late voice of the future locality of the blest, but 
 Eeason has combined the scattered utterances 
 of inspiration, and with a voice, almost oracular, 
 has declared that He who made the worlds, 
 will in the worlds which He has made, place the 
 beings of His choice. In the spiritual character 
 of their faith, the ambassadors of our Saviour 
 have not referred to the materiality of His fu 
 ture kingdom ; but reason compels us to believe, 
 that the material body, which is to be raised, 
 must be subject to material laws, and reside in 
 a material home a house of many mansions, 
 though not made with many hands. 
 
 In what regions of space these mansions are 
 built on what sphere the mouldering dust is 
 to be gathered and revived, and by what process 
 it is to reach its destination, reason does not 
 enable us to determine ; but it is impossible for 
 immortal man, with the light of revelation as 
 
FUTUKE OF THE UNIVKESE. 263 
 
 his guide, to doubt for a moment that on the 
 celestial spheres his future is to be spent spent, 
 doubtless, in lofty inquiries in social intercourse 
 
 in the renewal of domestic ties, and in the 
 service of his almighty Benefactor. With such 
 a vista before us, so wide in its expanse, and so 
 remote in its termination, what scenes of beauty 
 
 what forms of the sublime what enjoyments, 
 physical and intellectual, may we not anticipate, 
 
 wisdom to the sage rest to the pilgrim and 
 gladness to the broken in heart ! 
 
 " How welcome those untrodden spheres ! 
 
 How sweet this very hour to die ! 
 
 To soar from earth, and find all fears 
 
 Lost in thy light Eternity. 
 " Oh ! in that future let us think 
 
 To hold each heart the heart that shares ; 
 
 With them the immortal waters drink, 
 
 And soul in soul grow deathless theirs." BYRON. 
 
 If these expectations are just, how are we to 
 implant them in the popular mind as incentives 
 to piety and principles of action ? The future of 
 the Christian is not defined in his creed. En- 
 wrapt in apocalyptic mysteries, it evades his 
 grasp, and presents no salient points upon which 
 either reason or imagination can rest. He look? 
 
264 MOKE WOKLDS THAN ONE. 
 
 beyond the grave as into a nebular region, where 
 a few stars are with difficulty descried ; but he 
 sees no glorious suns, and no gorgeous planets 
 upon which he is to dwell. It is astronomy alone, 
 when its simple truths are impressed upon the 
 mind, that opens to the Christian s eye the mys 
 terious expanse of the universe ; that fills it with 
 objects which arrest his deepest attention ; and 
 that creates an intelligible paradise in the world 
 to come. We must, therefore, impregnate the 
 popular mind with the truths of natural science, 
 teaching them in every school, and recommend 
 ing, if not illustrating them, from every pulpit. 
 We must instruct our youth, and even age it 
 self, in the geology and physical geography of 
 the globe, that they may thus learn the struc 
 ture and use of its brother planets ; and we 
 must fix in their memories, and associate with 
 their affections, the great truths in the planet 
 ary and sidereal universe on which the doctrine 
 of more worlds than one must necessarily rest. 
 Thus familiar with the great works of crea 
 tion, thus seeing them through the heart, as 
 well as through the eye, the young will look 
 to the future with a keener glance, and with 
 
THE FUTURE OF THE UNIVERSE. 265 
 
 brighter hopes ; the weary and the heavy laden 
 will rejoice in the vision of their place of rest ; 
 the philosopher will scan with a new sense the 
 lofty spheres in which he is to study ; and the 
 Christian will recognize, in the eternal abodes, 
 the gorgeous Temples in which he is to offer his 
 sacrifice of praise. 
 
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