what man is, but what he may become, both intellectually and morally, as we have already seen; when we cast our mind's eye over the history of the civilised section of our race, wherever authentic records of their sayings and doings exist, we find repeated and radiant instances of intellectual and moral greatness, rising into sublimity -such as compel us to admit that man is incomparably the most perfect and highly endowed creature which appears to have ever existed on the earth.

"How far previous periods of animal existence were a necessary preparation of the earth as the habitation of man, or

a gradual progression towards the existence of man, we need not now inquire. But this, at least, we may say, that man, now that he is here, forms a climax to all that has preceded-a term incomparably exceeding in value all the previous parts of the series- a complex and ornate capital to the subjacent column-a personage of vastly greater dignity and importance than all the preceding line of the procession." *

If we are thus to regard man as the climax of the creation in space, as in time, can we point out any characters," finally asks the Essayist, "which may tend to make it conceivable that the Creator should thus distinguish him, and care for him-should prepare his habitation, if it be so, by ages of chaotic and rudimentary life, and by accompanying orbs of brute and barren matter? If man be thus the head, the crowned head, of the creation, is he worthy to be thus elevated? Has he any qualities which make it conceivable that, with such an array of preparation and accompaniment "the reader will note the sudden introduction of these elements of the question, the "accompanying orbs!"" he should be placed upon the earth, his throne? Does any answer now occur to us, after the views which have been presented to us ?

That answer," continues the Essayist, "is the one which has been already given:" the transcendent intellectual, moral, and religious character of man-such as warrants him in believing that God, in very deed,

* Essay, pp. 198-199. Ante, p. 289.

is not only mindful of him, but visits him."t

This may be, the objector is conceived to say; but my difficulty haunts and harasses me: that, while man's residence is, with reference to the countless glistening orbs revealed by Astronomy, scarcely in the proportion of a single grain of sand to the entire terraqueous structure of our globe, I am required to believe that the Almighty has dealt with him, and with the speck in which he resides, in the awfully exceptional manner asserted in the Scriptures. Let us here remind the reader of a coarser, and an insolent and blasphemous, expression of this "difficulty," by Thomas Paine, already quoted :-

一

"The system of a plurality of worlds renders the Christian faith at once little and ridiculous, and scatters it in the mind like feathers in the air: the two beliefs cannot be held together in the same mind." With such an opponent Dr Whewell expressly states that he has no concern; he deals with a 666 difficulty' felt by a friend:" wishing" rather to examine how to quiet the troubled and perplexed believer, than how to triumph over the dogmatical and self-satisfied unbeliever."

"Let the difficulty," he says, be put in any way the objector pleases."

I. Is it that it is unworthy of the greatness and majesty of God, according to our conception of Him, to bestow such peculiar care on 80 SMALL A PART of His creation ? §

But a narrow inspection of the atom of space assigned to man, proves that He has done so. He has made the period of mankind, though only a moment in the ages of animal life, the only period of Intelligence, Morality, Religion. If it be contrary to OUR! conception of Him, to suppose Him to have done so, it is plain that these conceptions are wrong. God has not judged as to what is worthy of Him, as we have presumed to judge. has deemed it worthy of Himself to bestow upon man this special care, though he occupy so small a portion of TIME-why not, then, though he occupy so small a portion of SPACE?

Ibid., p. 203. § Essay, p. 194.

He

one part of the universe must resemble another in its population, because it has a resemblance in physical conditions, is negatived, as a law of creation. Analogy really affords no support to such a notion.

IV. Nay, continues Dr Whewell, * we may go further: instead of the analogy of creation pointing to such entire resemblance of similar parts, it points in the opposite direction: it is not entire resemblance, but universal difference, that we discover: not the repetition of exactly similar cases, but a series of cases perpetually dissimilar, presents itself: not constancy, but change-perhaps advance; not one permanent and pervading scheme, but preparation, and completion of successive schemes:-not uniformity, and a fixed type of existences, but progression and a climax.

Viewing the advent of Man, and what preceded it, it seems the analogy of nature that there should be inferior, as well as superior, provinces in the universe, and that the inferior may occupy an immensely larger portion of Time than the superior. Why not, then, of Space?

"The earth was brute and inert, compared with its present condition; dark and chaotic, so far as the light of reason and intelligence are concerned, for countless centuries before man was created. Why then may not other parts of creation be still in this brute and inert and chaotic state, while the earth is under the influence of a higher exercise of creative power? If the earth was for ages a turbid abyss of lava and of mud, why may not Mars or Saturn be so still?

The possibility that the planets are such rude masses, is quite as tenable, on astronomical grounds, as the possibility that the planets resemble the earth, in matters of which astronomy can tell us nothing. We say, therefore, that the example of geology refutes the argument drawn from the supposed analogy of one part of the universe with another; and suggests a strong suspicion that the force of analogy, better known, may tend in the opposite direction." +

We have now gone through a large portion, embracing two of the three sections into which we had divided

* Essay, p. 198.

this startling Essay; presenting as full and fair an account of it as is consistent with our limits. Though the author professes that he "does not pretend to disprove the Plurality of Worlds, but to deny the existence of arguments making the doctrine probable," his undisguised object is to assign cogent reasons for holding the opposite to be the true doctrine-the Unity of the World. What has gone before is, moreover, on the assumption that the other bodies of the universe are fitted, equally with the Earth, to be the abodes of life. Before passing on, however, to the remaining section of the Essay, which is decidedly hostile to that assumption, let us here introduce on the scene Dr Whewell's only hitherto avowed antagonist, Sir David Brewster.

Though it is impossible to treat otherwise than with much consideration, whatever is published by this gentleman, we must express our regret that he did not more deliberately approach so formidable an opponent as Dr Whewell, and, as we are compelled to add, in a more calm and courteous spirit. We never read a performance less calculated than this Essay, from its modesty and moderation of tone, and the high and abstract nature of the topics which it discusses with such powerful logic, and such a profusion of knowledge of every kind, to provoke an acrimonious answer. It is happily rare, in recent times, for one of two philosophic disputants, to speak of the other's "exhibiting an amount of knowledge so massive as occasionally to smother his reason; " "ascribing his sentiments only to some morbid condition of the mental powers, which feeds upon paradox, and delights in doing violence to sentiments deeply cherished, and to opinions universally believed;"§ characterising some of his reasonings as "dialectics in which a large dose of banter and ridicule is seasoned with a little condiment of science;" azad an elaborate argument, of great strength and originality, whether sound or not, as "the most ingenious, though shallow piece

+ Ibid., pp. 199, 200.

of sophistry, which we! (Sir David Brewster) have encountered in modern times;" referring his "theories and speculations to no better a feeling than a love of notoriety."† It is not to be supposed that Sir David was not perfectly aware who his opponent was, which occasions extreme surprise at the tone adopted throughout More Worlds than One. In his preface, he explains as a cause of his anger, that he found that "the author " of the Essay, "under a title calculated to mislead the public, had made an elaborate attack upon opinions consecrated, as Sir David had thought, by reason and revelation," that the author had not only adopted a theory (the Nebular) so universally condemned as a dangerous speculation," but had taken a view of the condition of the solar system calculated to disparage the science of astronomy, and throw a doubt over the noblest of its truths." We dismiss this topic with a repetition of our regret, that so splendid a subject was not approached in a serener spirit; that greater respect was not shown by one of his contemporaries for one of the most eminent men of the age; and that sufficient time was not taken, in order to avoid divers surprising maculæ occurring in even the composition, and certain rash and unguarded expressions and speculations.

If Dr Whewell may be regarded as (pace tanti viri!) a sort of StarSmasher, his opponent is in very truth a Star-Peopler. Though he admits that "there are some difficulties to be removed, and some additional analogies to be adduced, before the mind can admit the startling proposition that the Sun, Moon, and all the satellites, are inhabited spheres " - yet he believes that they are: that all the planets of their respective systems are so; as well as all the single stars, double stars, and nebulæ, with all planets and satellites

our

circling about them!-though faltering reason utterly fails us!" he owns,¶ "when called on to believe that even the Nebula must be surrendered to life and reason! Wherever there is matter there must be life!" One can by this time almost pardon the excitement, the alarm rather, and anger, with which Sir David ruefully beheld Dr Whewell go forth on his exterminating expedition through Infinitude! It was like a father gazing on the ruthless slaughter of his offspring. Planet after planet, satellite after satellite, star after star, sun after sun, single suns and double suns, system after system, nebula after nebula, all disappeared before this sidereal Quixote! As for Jupiter and Saturn, the pet planets of Sir David, they were dealt with in a way perfectly shocking. The former turned out, to the disordered optics and unsteady brain of the Essayist, to be a sphere of water, with perhaps a few cinders at the centre, and peopled "with cartilaginous and glutinous monsters-boneless, watery, pulpy creatures, floating in the fluid; " while poor Saturn may be supposed turning aghast on hearing that, for all his grand appearance, he was little else than a sphere of vapour, with a little water, tenanted, if at all, by "aqueous, gelatinous creatures too sluggish almost to be deemed alive-floating in their ice-cold waters, shrowded for ever by their humid skies!" But talk after this of the pensive Moon! "She is a mere cinder! a collection of sheets of rigid slag, and inactive craters!" This could be borne no longer; so thus Sir David pours forth the grief and indignation of the Soul Astronomic, in a passage fraught with the spirit, and embodying the results, of his whole book, and which we give, as evidently laboured by the author with peculiar care.

"Those ungenial minds that can be brought to believe that the earth is the

+ Ibid., p. 199.

§ More Worlds than One, p. 98.

|| Ibid., p. 108.

¶ Ibid., p. 166.

only inhabited body in the universe, will have no difficulty in conceiving that it also might have been without inhabitants. Nay, if such minds are imbued with geological truth, they must admit that for millions of years the earth was without inhabitants; and hence we are led to the extraordinary result, that for millions of years there was not an intelligent creature in the vast dominions of the universal King; and that before the formation of the protozoic strata, there was neither a plant nor an animal throughout the infinity of space! During this long period of universal death, when Nature herself was asleep-the sun, with his magnificent attendants-the planets, with their faithful satellites the stars in the binary

systems-the solar system itself, were performing their daily, their annual, and their secular movements unseen, unheeded, and fulfilling no purpose that human reason can conceive; lamps lighting nothing — fires heating nothing-waters quenching nothing-clouds screening nothing-breezes fanning nothing-and everything around, mountain and valley, hill and dale, earth and ocean, all meaning nothing.

• The stars

Did wander darkling in the eternal space." To our apprehension, such a condition of the earth, of the solar system, and of the sidereal universe, would be the same as that of our own globe if all its vessels of war and of commerce were traversing its seas with empty cabins and freightless holds; as if all the railways on its surface were in full activity without passengers and goods; and all our machinery beating the air and gnashing their iron teeth without work performed. A house without tenants, a city without citizens, present to our minds the same idea as a planet without life, and a universe without inhabitants. Why the house was built, why the city was founded, why the planet was made, and why the universe was created, it would be difficult even to conjecture. Equally great would be the difficulty were the planets shapeless lumps of matter, poised in ether, and still and motionless as the grave. But when we consider them as chiselled spheres, and teeming with inorganic beauty, and in full mechanical activity, performing their appointed motions with such miraculous precision that their days and their years never err a second of time in hundreds of centuries, the difficulty of believing them to be without life is, if possible, immeasurably increased. To conceive any one material globe,

* More Worlds than One, pp. 180,

whether a gigantic clod slumbering in space, or a noble planet equipped like our own, and duly performing its appointed task, to have no living occupants, or not in a state of preparation to receive them, seems to us one of those notions which could be harboured only in an illeducated and ill-regulated mind—a mind without faith and without hope but to conceive a whole universe of moving and revolving worlds in such a category, indicates, in our apprehension, a mind dead to feeling and shorn of reason.'

"It is doubtless possible," observes Sir David, however, a little further on,+ as if with a twinge of misgiving," that the Mighty Architect of the universe may have had other objects in view, incomprehensible by us, than that of supporting animal and vegetable life in these magnificent spheres." Would that Sir David Brewster would allow himself to be largely influenced by this rational and devout sentiment! His book is, on the contrary, crammed with assertions from beginning to end, and of a peremptory and intolerant character unknown to the spirit of genuine philosophy.

The Essayist, however, is not incapable of quiet humour: and the following pregnant passage is at least worthy to stand side by side with that which we have just quoted from his indignant and eloquent opponent :—

"Undoubtedly, all true astronomers, taught caution and temperance of thought by the discipline of their magnificent science, abstain from founding such assumptions upon their discoveries. They know how necessary it is to be upon their guard against the tricks which fancy plays with the senses; and if they see appearances of which they cannot interpret the meaning, they are content that they should have no meaning for them, till the due explanation comes. We have innumerable examples of this wise and cautious temper in all periods of astronomy. One has occurred lately. Several careful astronomers, observing the stars by day, had been surprised to see globes of light glide across the field of view of their telescopes, often in rapid succession, and in great numbers. They did not, as may be supposed, rush to the assumption that these globes were celestial bodies of a new kind, before unseen, and that, from the peculiarity of their appearance and movement, they were probably inhabited by beings of a peculiar kind. They pro183.

+ Ibid., p. 185.