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Before proceeding to give our readers some idea of the mode in which Sir David Brewster encounters Dr Whewell, let us offer a general observation concerning both these eminent gentlemen. While the latter exhibits throughout his Essay a spirit of candour and modesty, without one harsh expression or uncharitable insinuation with reference to the holder of doctrines which he is bent upon impugning with all his mental power and multifarious resources; the former, as we have seen, uses language at once heated, uncourteous, and unjustifiable: especially where he more than insinuates that his opponent, whose great knowledge and ability he admits, either deliberately countenances doctrines tending really to Atheism, or may be believed ignorant of their tendency, and to have forgotten the truths of Inspiration, and even those of Natural Religion."† To venture, however circuitously, to hint such imputations upon an opponent whom he had the slightest reason to suspect being one of such high and responsible academic position, is an offence equally against personal courtesy and public propriety; as we think Sir David Brewster would, on reflection, acknowledge. Both Dr Whewell and Sir David Brewster must excuse us, if, scanning both through the cold medium of impartial criticism, their speculations, questions, or assertions appear to us disturbed and deflected by a leading prepossession or foregone conclusion, which we shall indicate in the words of each.

Dr WHEWELL.- "The Earth is really the largest Planetary body in the Solar system; its domestic hearth, and the Only World [i. e. collection of intelligent creatures] in the Universe."‡

*

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Sir DAVID BREWSTER.-"Life is almost a property of matter. Wherever there is Matter, there must be Life :Life physical, to enjoy its beauties; Life Moral, to worship its Maker; and Life Intellectual, to proclaim His wisdom and His power. Universal Life upon

Universal matter, is an idea to which the mind instinctively clings. Every star in the Heavens, and every point in a nebula which the most powerful telescope has not separated from its neighbour, is a sun surrounded by inhabited planets like our own. In peopling such worlds with life and intelligence, we assign the cause of their existence; and when the mind is once alive to this great Truth, it cannot fail to realise the grand combination of infinity of life with infinity of matter." §

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The composition of Sir David Brewster, though occasionally too declamatory and rhetorical, and so far lacking the dignified simplicity befitting the subjects with which he deals, has much merit. It is easy, vivid, and vigorous, but will bear retrenchment, and lowering of tone. As to the substantial texture of his work, we think it betrays, in almost every page, haste and impetuosity, and evidence that the writer has sadly under-estimated the strength of his opponent. Another feature of More Worlds than One, is a manifest desire provocare ad populum—a greater anxiety, in the first instance, to catch the ear of the million, than to convince the "fit audience, though few." Now, however, to his work; and, as we have already said, on him lies the labouring oar of proof. All that his opponent professes to do, is to ask for arguments "rendering probable" that "doctrine" which Sir David pledges himself to demonstrate to be not only the "hope" of the Christian, but the creed of the philosopher: as much, that is, an article of his belief, as the doctrines of attraction and gravitation, or the existence of demonstrable astronomical facts.

He commences with a brief introduction, sketching the growth of the belief in a plurality of worlds-one steadily and firmly increasing in strength, till it encountered the rude shock of the

+ More Worlds than One, p. 248. chap. xii. sec. 1, p. 359.

Essay, ch. vii. sec. 17, p. 221. Essay, chap. x. sec. 10, pp. 308, 309; § More Worlds than One, pp. 178, 179.

Essayist, whose " very remarkable work" is "ably written," and who "defends ingeniously his novel and extraordinary views:" "the direct tendency of which is to ridicule and bring into contempt the grand discoveries in sidereal astronomy by which the last century has been distinguished." In his next chapter, Sir David discusses "the religious aspect of the question," representing man, especially the philosopher, as always having pined after a knowledge of the scene of his future being. He declares that neither the Old nor the New Testament contains "a single expression incompatible with the great truth that there are other worlds than our own which are the seats of life and intelligence;" but, on the contrary, there are" other passages which are inexplicable without admitting it to be true." He regards, as we have seen, the noble exclamation of the Psalmist, "What is man," as 66 a positive argument for a plurality of worlds;" and "cannot doubt" that he was gifted with a plenary knowledge of the starry system, inhabited as Sir David would have it to be! Dr Chalmers, let us remark, in passing, expressed himself differently, and with a more becoming reserve: "It is not for us to say whether inspiration revealed to the Psalmist the wonders of the modern astronomy," but "even though the mind be a perfect stranger to the science of these enlightened times, the heavens present a great and an elevating spectacle, the contemplation of which awakened the piety of the Psalmist"-a view in which Dr Whewell concurs. Sir David then comes to consider the doctrine of "Man, in his future state of existence, consisting, as at present, of a spiritual nature residing in a corporeal frame." We must, therefore, find for the race of Adam," if not for the races which preceded him!"* & a material home upon which he may reside, or from which he may travel to other localities in the universe." That house, he says, cannot be the earth, for it will not be big enough-there will be such a "population as the habitable parts of our globe could not possibly accommodate;" wherefore, " we can

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scarcely doubt that their future abode must be on some of the primary or secondary planets of the solar system, whose inhabitants have ceased to exist, like those on the earth; or on planets which have long been in a state of preparation, as our earth was, for the advent of intellectual life." Here, then, is "the creed of the philosopher," as well as "the hope of the Christian." Passing, according to the order adopted in this paper, from the first chapter ("Religious Aspect of the Question"), we alight on the seventh, entitled Religious Difficulties." We entertain_too much consideration for Sir David Brewster to speak harshly of anything falling from his pen; but we think ourselves justified in questioning whether this chapter-dealing with speculations of an awful nature, among which the greatest religious and philosophical intellects tremble as they " go sounding on their dim and perilous way"— shows him equal to cope with his experienced opponent, whom every page devoted to such topics shows to have fixed the DIFFICULTY with which he proposed to deal, fully and steadily before his eyes, in all its moral, metaphysical, and philosophical bearings, and to have discussed it cautiously and reverently. We shall content ourselves with briefly indicating the course of observation on that "difficulty" adopted by Sir David Brewster, and leaving it to the discreet reader to form his own judgment whether Sir David has left the difficulty where he found it, or removed, lessened, or enhanced it.

Dr Whewell, in his Dialogue, thus temperately and effectively deals with this section of his opponent's lucubrations:

"His own solution of the question concerning the redemption of other worlds appears to be this, that the provision made for the redemption of man by what took place upon earth eighteen hundred years ago, may have extended its influence to other worlds.

logical hypothesis three remarks offer themselves: In the first place, the hypothesis is entirely without warrant or countenance in the revelation from which all our knowledge of the scheme of redemption is derived; in the second place, the

"In reply to which astronomico-theo

* More Worlds than One, p. 18.

events which took place upon earth eighteen hundred years ago, were connected with a train of events in the history of man, which had begun at the creation of man, and extended through all the intervening ages; and the bearing of this whole series of events upon the condition of the inhabitants of other worlds must be so different from its bearing on the condition of man, that the hypothesis needs a dozen other auxiliary hypotheses to make it intelligible; and, in the third place, this hypothesis, making the earth, insignificant as it seems to be in the astronomical scheme, the centre of the theological scheme, ascribes to the earth a peculiar distinction, quite as much at variance with the analogies of the planets to one another, as the supposition that the earth alone is inhabited; to say nothing of the bearing of the critic's hypothesis on the other systems that encircle other suns." *

"In freely discussing the subject of a Plurality of Worlds," says Sir David, "there can be no collision between Reason and Revelation." He regrets the extravagant conclusion of some, that the inhabitants of all planets but our own, "are sinless and immortal beings that never broke the Divine Law, and enjoying that perfect felicity reserved for only a few of the less favoured occupants of earth. Thus chained to a planet, the lowest and most unfortunate in the universe, the philosopher, with all his analogies broken down, may justly renounce his faith in a Plurality of Worlds, and rejoice in the more limited but safer creed of the anti-Pluralist author, who makes the earth the only world in the universe, and the special object of God's paternal care." He proceeds, in accordance with " men of lofty minds and undoubted piety," to regard the existence of moral evil as a necessary part of the general scheme of the universe, and consequently affecting all its Rational Inhabitants. He "rejects the idea that the inhabitants of the planets do not require a Saviour; and maintains the more rational opinion, that they stand in the same moral relation to their Maker as the inhabitants of the earth; and seeks for a solution of the difficulty-how can there be inhabitants in the planets, when God had

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but One Son, whom He could send to save them? If we can give a satisfactory answer to this question, it may destroy the objections of the Infidel, while it relieves the Christian from his difficulties." § ... "When our Saviour died, the influence of His death extended backward, in the Past, to millions who never heard His name; in the Future, to millions a Force who never will hear it which did not vary with any function of the distance. || .. Emanating from the middle planet of the system

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The earth the middle planet

of the system? How is this? In an earlier portion of his book (p. 56), Sir David had demonstrated that "our earth is neither the middle [his own italics] planet, nor the planet nearest the sun, nor the planet furthest from that luminary: that therefore the earth, as a planet, has no preeminence in the solar system, to induce us to believe that it is the only inhabited world. . Jupiter is the middle planet (p. 55), and is otherwise highly distinguished !" How is this? Can the two passages containing such direct contradictions have emanated from the same scientific controversialist ?-To resume, how

ever:

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"Emanating from the middle planet of the system, why may it not have extended to them all, to the Planetary Races in the Past, and to the Planetary Races in the Future? . . . But to bring our argument more within the reach of an ordinary understanding "-he supposes our earth split into two parts! the old world and the new (as Biela's comet is supposed to have been divided in 1846), at the beginning of the Christian era!¶-"would not both fragments have shared in the beneficence of the Cross-the penitent on the shores of the Mississippi, as richly as the pilgrim on the banks of the Jordan?

Should this view prove unsatisfactory to the anxious inquirer, we may suggest another sentiment, even though we ourselves may not admit it into our creed. . May not the Divine Nature, which can neither suffer, nor die, and which,

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in our planet, once only clothed itself in humanity, resume elsewhere a physical form, and expiate the guilt of unnumbered worlds?" *

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

man.

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

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

And Sir David thus concludes the chapter :

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

to be endangered by a belief that there are other Worlds than his own."

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

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

Sir David "is not disposed to grudge the geologist even periods so marvellous as "millions of years required for the formation of strata, provided they be considered as merely hypothetical;" and admits that "our seas and continents have nearly the same locality, and cover nearly the same area, as they did at the creation of Adam;" but demurs to the conclusion that the earth was prepared for man by causes operating so gradually as the diurnal change going on around us.

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Why may not the Almighty have deposited the earth's strata, during the whole period of its formation, by a rapid precipitation of their atoms from the waters which suspended them, so as to reduce the period of the earth's formation to little more than the united generations of the different orders of plants and animals constituting its organic remains? Why not still further shorten the period, by supposing that plants and animals, requiring, in our day, a century for their development, may in primitive times have shot up in rank luxuriance, and been ready, in a few days! or months! or years, for the great purpose of exhibiting, by their geological distribution, the progressive formation of the earth?" ||

These questions, of which a myriad similar ones might be asked by any one, we leave to our geological readers; and hasten to inform them, that in involuntary homage to the powerful reasonings of his opponent, Sir David Brewster is fain to question the "inference that man did not exist during the period of the

* More Worlds than One, pp. 141-142.
Ibid., p. 152.
§ Ibid., p. 153.

+ Ibid., p. 151. || Ibid., pp. 44-47.

earth's formation;"* and to suggest that "there may have existed intellectual races in present unexplored continental localities, or the immense regions of the earth now under water! " "The future of geology may be pregnant with startling discoveries of the remains of intellectual races, even beneath the primitive Azoict formations of the earth!... Who can tell what sleeps beyond? Another creation may be beneath! more glorious creatures may be entombed there! the mortal coils of beings more lovely, more pure, more divine than man, may yet read to us the unexpected lesson that we have not been the first, and may not be the last of the intellectual race!" Is he who can entertain and publish conjectures like these, entitled to stigmatise so severely those of other speculators "inconceivable absurdities, which no sane mind can cherish-suppositions too ridiculous even for a writer of romance!" This wild license given to the fancy may not be amiss in a poet, whose privilege it is that his " eye in a fine phrenzy rolling" may give to airy nothing a local habitation, and a name:"-but when set in the scale against the solemnly magnificent array of facts in the earth's history established by Geology, may be summarily discarded by sober and grave inquirers.

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The Essayist's suggested analogy between man's relation to time and to space appears to us not understood, in either its scope or nature, by Sir David Brewster. At this we are as much surprised, as at the roughness with which he characterises the argument, as "the most ingenious though shallow piece of sophistry he has ever encountered in modern dialectics." The Essayist suggests a comparison between the numbers expressing the four magnitudes and distances,-of the earth, the solar system, the fixed stars, and the nebula-and the numbers expressing the antiquity of the four geological periods "for the sake of giving definiteness to our notions."

* More Worlds than One, p. 47.

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Sir David abstains from quoting these last expressions, and alleges that the Essayist, "quitting the ground of analogy," founds an elaborate argument on the mutual relation of an atom of time and an atom of space. The argument" Sir David thus presents to his readers, the capital and italic letters being his own: "That is, the earth, the ATOM OF SPACE, is the only one of the planetary and sidereal worlds that is inhabited, because it was so long without inhabitants, and has been occupied only an ATOM OF TIME.” § “If any of our readers," he adds, " see the force of this argument, they must possess an acuteness of perception to which we lay no claim. To us, it is not only illogical; it is a mere sound in the ear, without any sense in the brain." This is the language possibly befitting an irritated Professor towards an ignorant and conceited student, but hardly suitable when Sir David Brewster is speaking of such an antagonist as he cannot but know he has to deal with. It does not appear to us the Essayist's attempt, or purpose, to establish any arbitrary abз0lute relation between time and space, or definite proportions of either, as concurring or alternative elements for determining the probability of a plurality of worlds. But he says to the dogmatic astronomical objector to Christianity, Such arguments as you have hitherto derived from your consideration of SPACE, MULTITUDE, and MAGNITUDE, for the purpose of depressing man into a being beneath his Maker's special notice, I encounter by arguments derived from recent disclosures concerning another condition of existence-DURATION, or TIME. Protesting that neither Time nor Space has any true connection with the subject, nevertheless I will turn your own weapons against yourself. My argument from Time shall at least neutralise yours from Space: mine shall involve the conditions of yours, fraught with their supposed irresistible force, and falsify them in fact, as forming premises whence may be deduced derogatory inferences con

Azoic signifies those primary rocks which contain no traces of organic life, no remains of plants or animals.

+ More Worlds than One, p. 52.

|| Ibid., p. 206.

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