The Plurality of Worlds

16. To this we reply, that we are so far from saying that the Creator could not place inhabitants in the other planets, that we have attempted to show what kind of inhabitants would be most likely to be placed there, by considering the way in which animals are accommodated to special conditions in their habitation. In judging of such modes of accommodating animals to an abode on other planets, as well as the earth, we have reasoned from what we know, of the mode in which animals are accommodated to their different habitations on the earth. We believe this to be the only safe and philosophical way of treating the question. If we are to reason at all about the possibility of animal life, we must suppose that heat and light, gravity and buoyancy, materials and affinities, air and moisture, produce the same effect, require the same adaptations, in Jupiter or in Venus, as they do on the Earth. If we do not suppose this, we run into the error which so long prevented many from accepting the Newtonian system:—the error of thinking that matter in the heavens is governed by quite different laws from matter on the earth. We must adopt that belief, if we hold that animals may live under relations of heat and moisture, materials and affinities, in Jupiter or Venus, under which they could not live on our planet. And that belief, as we have said, appears to us contrary to all the teaching which the history of science offers us.

17. And not only is it contrary to the teaching of the history of science, to suppose the laws, which connect elemental and organic nature, to be different in the other planets from what they are on ours; but moreover the supposition would not at all answer the purpose, of making it probable that the planets are inhabited. For if we begin to imagine new and unknown laws of nature for those abodes, what is there to limit or determine our assumptions in any degree? What extravagant mixtures of the attributes and properties of mind and matter may we not then accept as probable truths? We know how difficult the poets have found it to describe, with any degree of consistency, the actions and events of a world of angels, or of evil spirits, souls or shades, embodied in forms so as to admit of description, and yet not subject to the laws of human bodies. Virgil, Tasso, Milton, Klopstock, and many others, have struggled with this difficulty:—no one of them, it will be probably agreed, with any great success; at least, regarding his representation as a hypothesis of a possible form of life, different from all the forms which we know. Yet if we are to reject the laws which govern the known forms of life, in order that we may be able to maintain the possibility of some unknown form in a different planet, we must accept some of these hypotheses, or find a better. We must suppose that weight and cohesion, wounds and mutilations, wings and plumage, would have, either the effect which the poets represent them as having, or some different effect: and in either case it will be impossible to give any sufficient reason why we should confine the population to the surface of a planet. If gravity have not, upon any set of beings, the effect which it has upon us, such beings may live upon the surface of Saturn, though it be mere vapor: but then, on that supposition, they may equally well live in the vast space between Saturn and Jupiter, without needing any planet for their mansion. If we are ready to suppose that there are, in the solar system, conscious beings, not subject to the ordinary laws of life, we may go on to imagine creatures constituted of vaporous elements, floating in the fiery haze of a nebula, or close to the body of a sun; and cloudy forms which soar as vapors in the region of vapor. But such imaginations, besides being rather fitted for the employment of poets than of philosophers, will not, as we have said, find a population for the planets; since such forms may just as easily be conceived swimming round the sun in empty space, or darting from star to star, as confining themselves to the neighborhood of any of the solid globes which revolve about the central sun.

18. We should not, then add anything to the probability of inhabitants on the other planets of our system, even if we were arbitrarily to assume unlimited changes in the laws of nature, when we pass from our region to theirs. But probably, all readers will be of opinion that such assumptions are contrary to the whole scheme and spirit of such speculations as we are here presuming:—that if we speculate on such subjects at all, it must be done by supposing that the same laws of nature operate in the same manner, in planetary, as in terrestrial spaces;—and that as we suppose, and prove, gravity and attraction, inertia and momentum, to follow the same rules, and produce the same effects, on brute matter there, which they do here; so, both these forces, and others, as light and heat, moisture and air, if, in the planets, they go beyond the extremes which limit them here, yet must imply, in any organized beings which exist in the planets, changes, though greater in amount, of the same kind as those which occur in approaching the terrestrial extremes of those elementary agents. And what kind of a population that would lead us to suppose in Jupiter or Saturn, Mars or Venus, the reader has already seen our attempt to determine; and may thence judge whether, when we go so far beyond the terrestrial extremes of heat and cold, light and dimness, vapor and water, air and airlessness, any population at all is probable.

19. Perhaps some persons, even if they cannot resist the force of these reasons, may still yield to them with regret; and may feel as if, having hitherto believed that the planets were inhabited, and having now to give up that belief, their view of the solar system, as one of the provinces of God's creation, were made narrower and poorer than it was before. And this feeling may be still further increased, if they are led to believe also that many of the fixed stars are not the centres of inhabited systems; or that very few, or none are. It may seem to them, as if, by such a change of belief, the field of God's greatness, benevolence, and government, were narrowed and impoverished, to an extent painful and shocking;—as if, instead of being the Maker and Governor of innumerable worlds, of the most varied constitution, we were called upon to regard him as merely the Master of the single world in which we live:—as if, instead of being the object of reverence and adoration to the intelligent population of these thousand spheres, he was recognized and worshipped on one only, and on that, how scantily and imperfectly!

20. It is not to be denied that there may be such a regret and disturbance naturally felt at having to give up our belief that the planets and the stars probably contain servants and worshippers of God. It must always be a matter of pain and trouble, to be urged with tenderness, and to be performed in time, to untwine our reverential religious sentiments from erroneous views of the constitution of the universe with which they have been involved. But the change once made, it is found that religion is uninjured, and reverence undiminished. And therefore we trust that the reader will receive with candor and patience the argument which we have to offer with reference to this view, or rather, this sentiment.

21. We remark, in the first place, that however repugnant it may be to us to believe a state of any part of the universe in which there are not creatures who can know, obey and worship God; we are compelled, by geological evidence, to admit that such a state of things has existed upon the earth, during a far longer period than the whole duration of man's race. If we suppose that the human race, if not by their actual knowledge, obedience, and worship of God, yet at least by their faculties for knowing, obeying, and worshipping, are a sufficient reason why there should be such a province in God's empire; still in fact, this race has existed only for a few thousand years, out of the, perhaps, millions of years of the earth's existence; and during all the previous period, the earth, if tenanted, was tenanted by brute creatures, fishes and lizards, beasts and birds, of which none had any faculty, intellectual, moral, or religious. By the same analogy, therefore, on which we have already insisted, we may argue that there is reason to believe, that if other planets, and other stars, are the seats of habitation, it is rather of such habitation as has prevailed upon the earth during the millions, than during the six thousand years; and that if we have, in consequence of physical reasons, to give up the belief of a population in the other planets, or in the stars; we are giving up, not anything with which we might dwell with religious pleasure—hosts of fellow-servants and fellow-worshippers of the Divine Author of all:—but the mere brute tribes, of the land and of the water, things that creep and crawl, prowl and spring;—none that can lift its visage to the sky, with a feeling that it is looking for its Maker and Master. There have not existed upon the Earth, during the immense ages of its præhuman existence, beings who could recognize and think of the Creator of the world: and if astronomy introduces us, as geology has done, to a new order of material structures, thus barren of an intelligent and religious population, we must learn to accept the prospect, in the one case, as in the other. Nor need we fear that on a further contemplation of the universe, we shall find every part of it ministering, though perhaps not in the way our first thoughts had guessed, to sentiments of reverence and adoration towards the Maker of the universe.

22. The truth is, as the slightest recollection of the course of opinion about the stars may satisfy us, that men have had repeatedly to give up the notions which they had adopted, of the manner in which the material heavens, the stars and the skies, are to minister to man's feeling of reverence for the Creator. It was long ago said, that the heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament showeth his handiwork: that day and night, sun and moon, clouds and stars, unite in impressing upon us this sentiment. And this language still finds a sympathetic echo, in the breasts of all religious persons. Nor will it ever cease to do so, however our opinions of the structure and nature of the heavenly bodies may alter. When the new aspects of things become familiar, they will show us the handiwork of God, and declare his glory, as plainly as the old ones. But in the progress of opinions, man has often had to resign what seemed to him, at the time, visions so beautiful, sublime, and glorious, that they could not be dismissed without regret. The Universal Lord was at one time conceived as directing the motions of all the spheres by means of Ruling Angels, appointed to preside over each. The prevalence of proportion and number, in the dimensions of these spheres, was assumed to point to the existence of harmonious sounds, accompanying their movements, though unheard by man; as proportion and number had been found to be the accompaniments and conditions of harmony upon earth. The time came, when these opinions were no longer consistent with man's knowledge of the heavenly motions, and of the wide-spreading causes by which they are produced. Then "Ruling Angels from their spheres were hurled," as a matter of belief; though still the poets loved to refer to imagery in which so many lofty and reverent thoughts had so long been clothed. The aspect of the stars was most naturally turned to a lesson of cheerful and thoughtful piety, by the adoption of such a view of their nature and office; and thus, the midnight contemplator of an Italian sky teaches his companion concerning the starry host;

Sit, Jessica; look how the floor of heav'nIs thick inlaid with patterns of bright gold.There's not the meanest orb, which thou behold'st,But in his motion like an angel sings,Still quiring to the young-eyed cherubims;Such harmony is in immortal souls.

meaning, apparently, the harmony between the immortal spirits that govern each star, and the cherubims that sing before the throne of God. But however beautiful and sublime may be this representation, the philosopher has had to abandon it in its literal sense. He may have adopted, instead, the opinion that each of the stars is the seat, or the centre of a group of seats, of choirs of worshippers; but this again, is still to suppose the nature of those orbs to be entirely different from that of this earth; though in many respects, we know that they are governed by the same laws. And if he will be content to know no more than he has the means of knowing, or even to know only according to his best means of knowing, he must be prepared, if the force of proof so requires, to give up this belief also; at least for the present.

23. Indeed, those who have not been content with this, and have sought to combine with the visible splendor of the skies, some scheme, founded upon astronomical views, which shall people them with intelligent beings and worshippers, have drawn upon their fancy quite as much as Lorenzo in his lesson to Jessica; or rather, they have done what he and those from whom his love was derived, had done before. They have taken the truths which astronomers have discovered and taught, and made the objects and regions so revealed, the scenes and occasions of such sentiments of piety as they themselves have, or feel that they ought to have. Even in Shakspeare, the stars are already orbs, each orb has his motion, and in his motion produces the music of the spheres. More recent preachers, following sounder views of the nature of these orbs and motions, have been equally poetical when they come to their religious reflection. When the poet of the Night Thoughts says,

"Each of these stars is a religious house;I saw their altars smoke, their incense rise,And heard hosannas ring through every sphere."

he is no less imaginative than the poet of that Midsummer Night's Dream, which we have in the Merchant of Venice. And we are compelled, by all the evidence which we can discern, to say the same of the preacher who speaks, from the pulpit, of these orbs of worlds, and tells us of the stars which "give animation to other systems69;" when he says70 "worlds roll in these distant regions; and these worlds must be the centres of life and intelligence;" when he speaks of the earth71 as "the humblest of the provinces of God's empire." But then we must recollect that these thoughts still prove the religious nature of man; they show how he is impelled to endeavor to elevate his mind to God by every part of the universe; and it is not too much to say, that through the faculties of man, thus regarding the starry heavens, every star does really testify to the greatness of God, and minister to His worship.

24. We may trust that this mere material magnificence does not require inhabitants, to make it lift man's heart towards the Universal Creator, and to make him accept it as a sublime evidence of His greatness. The grandest objects in nature are blank and void of life;—the mountain-peaks that stand, ridge beyond ridge, serene in the region of perpetual snow;—the summer-clouds, images of such mountain tracts, even upon a grander scale, and tinted with more gorgeous colors;—the thunder-cloud with its dazzling bolt;—the stormy ocean with its mountainous waves;—the Aurora Borealis, with its mysterious pillars of fire;—all these are sublime; all these elevate the soul, and make it acknowledge a mighty Worker in the elements, in spite of any teaching of a material philosophy. And if we have to regard the planets as merely parts of the same great spectacle of nature, we shall not the less regard them with an admiration which ministers to pious awe. Even merely as a spectacle, Saturn made visible in his real shape, only by a vast exertion of human skill, yet shining like a star, in form so curiously complex, symmetrical and seemingly artificial, will never cease to be an object of the ardent and contemplative gaze of all who catch a sight of him. And however much the philosopher may teach that he is merely a mass of water and vapor, ice and snow, he must be far more interesting to the eye than the Alps, or the clouds that crown them, or the ocean with its icebergs; where the same elements occur in forms comparatively shapeless and lawless, irregular and chaotic.

25. But perhaps there is in the minds of many persons, a sentiment connected with this regular and symmetrical form of the heavenly bodies; that being thus beautifully formed and finished they must have been the objects of especial care to the Creator. These regular globes, these nearly circular orbits, these families of satellites, they too so regular in their movements; this ring of Saturn; all the adjustments by which the planetary motions are secured from going wrong, as the profoundest researches into the mechanics of the universe show;—all these things seem to indicate a peculiar attention bestowed by the Maker on each part of the machine. So much of law and order, of symmetry and beauty in every part, implies, it may be thought, that every part has been framed with a view to some use;—that its symmetry and its beauty are the marks of some noble purpose.

26. To reply to this argument, so far as it is requisite for us to do so, we must recur to what we have already said; that though we see in many parts of the universe, inorganic as well as organic, marks which we cannot mistake, of design and purpose; yet that this design and purpose are often effected by laws which are of a much wider sweep than the design, so far as we can trace its bearing. These laws, besides answering the purpose, produce many other effects, in which we can see no purpose. We have now to observe further that these laws, thus ranging widely through the universe, and working everywhere, as if the Creator delighted in the generality of the law, independently of its special application, do often produce innumerable results of beauty and symmetry, as if the Creator delighted in beauty and symmetry, independently of the purpose answered.

27. Thus, to exemplify this reflection: the powers of aggregation and cohesion, which hold together the parts of solid bodies, as metals and stones, salts and ice,—which solidify matter, in short,—we can easily see, to be necessary, in order to the formation and preservation of solid terrestrial bodies. They are requisite, in order that man may have the firm earth to stand upon, and firm materials to use. But let us observe, what a wonderful and beautiful variety of phenomena grows out of this law, with no apparent bearing upon that which seems to us its main purpose. The power of aggregation of solid bodies is, in fact, the force of crystallization. It binds together the particles of bodies by molecular forces, which not only hold the particles together, but are exerted in special directions, which form triangles, squares, hexagons, and the like. And hence we have all the variety of crystalline forms which sparkle in gems, ores, earths, pyrites, blendes; and which, when examined by the crystallographers, are found to be an inexhaustible field of the play of symmetrical complexity. The diamond, the emerald, the topaz, have got each its peculiar kind of symmetry. Gold and other metals have, for the basis of their forms, the cube, but run from this into a vastly greater variety of regular solids than ever geometer dreamt of. Some single species of minerals, as calc-spar, present hundreds of forms, all rigorously regular, and have been alone the subject of volumes. Ice crystallizes by the same laws as other solid bodies; and our Arctic voyagers have sometimes relieved the weariness of their sojourn in those regions, by collecting some of the innumerable forms, resembling an endless collection of hexagonal flowers, sporting into different shapes, which are assumed by flakes of snow72. In these and many other ways, the power of crystallization produces an inexhaustible supply of examples of symmetrical beauty. And what are we to conceive to be the object and purpose of this? As we have said, that part of the purpose which is intelligible to us is, that we have here a force holding together the particles of bodies, so as to make them solid. But all these pretty shapes add nothing to this intelligible use. Why then are they there? They are there, it would seem, for their own sake;—because they are pretty;—symmetry and beauty are there on their own account; or because they are universal adjuncts of the general laws by which the creator works. Or rather we may say, combining different branches of our knowledge, that crystallization is the mark and accompaniment of chemical composition: and that as chemical composition takes place according to definite numbers, so crystalline aggregation takes place according to definite forms. The symmetrical relations of space in crystals correspond to the simple relations of number in synthesis; and thus, because there is rule, there is regularity, and regularity assumes the form of beauty.

28. This, which thus shows itself throughout the mineral kingdom, or, speaking more widely and truly, throughout the whole range of chemical composition, is still more manifest in the vegetable domain. All the vast array of flowers, so infinitely various, and so beautiful in their variety, are the results of a few general laws; and show, in the degree of their symmetry, the alternate operation of one law and another. The rose, the lily, the cowslip, the violet, differ in something of the same way, in which the crystalline forms of the several gems differ. Their parts are arranged in fives or in threes, in pentagons or in hexagons, and in these regular forms, one part or another is expanded or contracted, rendered conspicuous by color or by shape, so as to produce all the multiplicity of beauty which the florist admires. Or rather, in the eye of the philosophical botanist, the whole of the structure of plants, with all their array of stems and leaves, blossoms and fruits, is but the manifestation of one Law; and all these members of the vegetable form, are, in their natures, the same, developed more or less in this way or in that. The daisy consists of a close cluster of flowers of which each has, in its form, the rudiments of the valerian. The peablossom is a rose, with some of its petals expanded into butterfly-like wings. Even without changing the species, this general law leads to endless changes. The garden-rose is the common hedge-rose with innumerable filaments changed into glowing petals. By the addition of whorl to whorl, of vegetable coronet over coronet, green and colored, broad and narrow, filmy and rigid, every plant is generated, and the glory of the field and of the garden, of the jungle and of the forest, is brought forth in all its magnificence. Here, then, we have an immeasurable wealth of beauty and regularity, brought to view by the operation of a single law. And to what use? What purpose do these beauties answer? What is the object for which the lilies of the field are clothed so gaily and gorgeously? Some plants, indeed, are subservient to the use of animals and of man: but how small is the number in which we can trace this, as an intelligent purpose of their existence! And does it not, in fact, better express the impression which the survey of this province of nature suggests to us, to say, that they grow because the Creator willed that they should grow? Their vegetable life was an object of His care and contrivance, as well as animal and human life. And they are beautiful, also because He willed that they should be so:—because He delights in producing beauty;—and, as we have further tried to make it appear, because He acts by general law, and law produces beauty. Is not such a tendency here apparent, as a part of the general scheme of Creation?

29. We have already attempted to show, that in the structure of animals, especially that large class best known to us, vertebrate animals, there is also a general plan which, so far as we can see, goes beyond the circuit of the special adaptation of each animal to its mode of living: and is a rule of creative action, in addition to the rule that the parts shall be subservient to an intelligible purpose of animal life. We have noticed several phenomena in the animal kingdom, where parts and features appear, rudimentary and inert, discharging no office in their economy, and speaking to us, not of purpose, but of law:—consistent with an end which is visible, but seemingly the results of a rule whose end is in itself.

30. And do we not, in innumerable cases, see beauties of color and form, texture and lustre, which suggests to us irresistibly the belief that beauty and regular form are rules of the Creative agency, even when they seem to us, looking at the creation for uses only, idle and wanton expenditure of beauty and regularity. To what purpose are the host of splendid circles which decorate the tail of the peacock, more beautiful, each of them, than Saturn with his rings? To what purpose the exquisite textures of microscopic objects, more curiously regular than anything which the telescope discloses? To what purpose the gorgeous colors of tropical birds and insects, that live and die where human eye never approaches to admire them? To what purpose the thousands of species of butterflies with the gay and varied embroidery of their microscopic plumage, of which one in millions, if seen at all, only draws the admiration of the wandering schoolboy? To what purpose the delicate and brilliant markings of shells, which live, generation after generation, in the sunless and sightless depths of the ocean? Do not all these examples, to which we might add countless others, (for the world, so far as human eye has scanned it, is full of them,) prove that beauty and regularity are universal features of the work of Creation, in all its parts, small and great: and that we judge in a way contrary to a vast range of analogy, which runs through the whole of the Universe, when we infer that, because the objects which are presented to our contemplation are beautiful in aspect and regular in form, they must, in each case, be means for some special end, of those which we commonly fix upon, as the main ends of the Creation, the support and advantage of animals or of man?