Our sun, the centre of the small system of worlds of which the earth is one, is distant from us about ninety-three million miles. In winter it is nearer; in summer farther off. Light travels this distance in about eight minutes, to be exact, the rate is 186,400 miles per second. To get an idea of the immensity of the distance of the so-called fixed stars, let us take this as a base of comparison. The nearest fixed star to us is Alpha Centauri, which is one of the brightest as seen in the southern heavens. It requires four and one-quarter years for a beam of light to travel from this star to earth at the rate of 186,000 miles a second, thus showing that Alpha Centauri is about two hundred and seventy-five thousand times as far from us as is the sun, in other words, more than 25,575,000,000,000 miles, which, expressed in our notation, reads twenty-five trillion, five hundred and seventy- five billion miles, a number which the mind of man is incapable of grasping. To use the old familiar illustration of the express train, it would take the "Twentieth Century Limited," which does the thousand mile trip between New York and Chicago in less than twenty-four hours, some one million two hundred and fifty thousand years at the same speed to travel from the earth to Alpha Centauri. Sirius, the Dog-Star, is twice as far away, something like eight or nine "light" years from our solar system; the Pole-Star is forty-eight "light" years removed from us, and so on with the rest, to an infinity of numbers. From the dawn of creation in the eternal cosmos of matter, light has been travelling from some stars in the infinitude of space at the rate of 186,000 miles per second, but so remote are they from our system that it has not reached us as yet. The contemplation is bewildering; the mind sinks into nothingness in consideration of a magnitude so great and distance so confusing. What lies beyond?—a region which numbers cannot measure and thought cannot span, and beyond that?—the eternal answer,—GOD.
In face of the contemplation of the vastness of creation, of its boundlessness the question ever obtrudes itself,—What place have we mortals in the universal cosmos? What place have we finite creatures, who inhabit this speck of matter we call the earth, in this mighty scheme of suns and systems and never-ending space. Does the Creator of all think us the most important of his works, that we should be the particular objects of revelation, that for us especially heaven was built, and a God-man, the Son of the Eternal, came down to take flesh of our flesh and live among us, to show us the way, and finally to offer himself as a victim to the Father to expiate our transgressions. Mystery of mysteries before which we stand appalled and lost in wonder. Self-styled rationalists love to point out the irrationality and absurdity of supposing that the Creator of all the unimaginable vastness of suns and systems, filling for all we know endless space, should take any special interest in so mean and pitiful a creature as man, inhabiting such an infinitesimal speck of matter as the earth, which depends for its very life and light upon a second or third-rate or hundred-rate Sun.
From the earliest times of our era, the sneers and taunts of atheism and agnosticism have been directed at the humble believer, who bows down in submission and questions not. The fathers of the Church, such as Augustine and Chrysostom and Thomas of Aquinas and, at a later time, Luther, and Calvin, and Knox, and Newman, despite the war of creeds, have attacked the citadel of the scoffers; but still the latter hurl their javelins from the ramparts, battlements and parapets and refuse to be repulsed. If there are myriads of other worlds, thousands, millions of them in point of magnitude greater than ours, what concern say they has the Creator with our little atom of matter? Are other worlds inhabited besides our own. This is the question that will not down—that is always begging for an answer. The most learned savants of modern time, scholars, sages, philosophers and scientists have given it their attention, but as yet no one has been able to conclusively decide whether a race of intelligent beings exists in any sphere other than our own. All efforts to determine the matter result in mere surmise, conjecture and guesswork. The best of scientists can only put forward an opinion.
Professor Simon Newcomb, one of the most brilliant minds our country has produced, says: "It is perfectly reasonable to suppose that beings, not only animated but endowed with reason, inhabit countless worlds in space." Professor Mitchell of the Cincinnati Observatory, in his work, "Popular Astronomy," says,—"It is most incredible to assert, as so many do, that our planet, so small and insignificant in its proportions when compared with the planets with which it is allied, is the only world in the whole universe filled with sentient, rational, and intelligent beings capable of comprehending the grand mysteries of the physical universe." Camille Flammarion, in referring to the utter insignificance of the earth in the immensity of space, puts forward his view thus: "If advancing with the velocity of light we could traverse from century to century the unlimited number of suns and spheres without ever meeting any limit to the prodigious immensity where God brings forth his worlds, and looking behind, knowing not in what part of the infinite was the little grain of dust called the earth, we would be compelled to unite our voices with that universal nature and exclaim—'Almighty God, how senseless were we to believe that there was nothing beyond the earth and that our abode alone possessed the privilege of reflecting Thy greatness and honor.'"
The most distinguished astronomers and scientists of a past time, as well as many of the most famous divines, supported the contention of world life beyond the earth. Among these may be mentioned Kepler and Tycho, Giordano Bruno and Cardinal Cusa, Sir William and Sir John Herschel, Dr. Bentley and Dr. Chalmers, and even Newton himself subscribed in great measure to the belief that the planets and stars are inhabited by intelligent beings.
Those who deny the possibility of other worlds being inhabited, endeavor to show that our position in the universe is unique, that our solar system is quite different from all others, and, to crown the argument, they assert that our little world has just the right amount of water, air, and gravitational force to enable it to be the abode of intelligent life, whereas elsewhere, such conditions do not prevail, and that on no other sphere can such physical habitudes be found as will enable life to originate or to exist. It can be easily shown that such reasoning is based on untenable foundations. Other worlds have to go through processes of evolution, and there can be no doubt that many are in a state similar to our own. It required hundreds of thousands, perhaps hundreds of millions of years, before this earth was fit to sustain human life. The same transitions which took place on earth are taking place in other planets of our system, and other systems, and it is but reasonable to assume that in other systems there are much older worlds than the earth, and that these have arrived at a more developed state of existence, and therefore have a life much higher than our own. As far as physical conditions are concerned, there are suns similar to our own, as revealed by the spectroscope, and which have the same eruptive energy. Astronomical Science has incontrovertibly demonstrated, and evidence is continually increasing to show that dark, opaque worlds like ours exist and revolve around their primaries. Why should not these worlds be inhabited by a race equal or even superior in intelligence to ourselves, according to their place in the cosmos of creation?
Leaving out of the question the outlying worlds of space, let us come to a consideration of the nearest celestial neighbor we have in our own system, the planet Mars: Is there rational life on Mars and if so can we communicate with the inhabitants?
Though little more than half the earth's size, Mars has a significance in the public eye which places it first in importance among the planets. It is our nearest neighbor on the outer side of the earth's path around the Sun and, viewed through a telescope of good magnifying power, shows surface markings, suggestive of continents, mountains, valleys, oceans, seas and rivers, and all the varying phenomena which the mind associates with a world like unto our own. Indeed, it possesses so many features in common with the earth, that it is impossible to resist the conception of its being inhabitated. This, however, is not tantamount to saying that if there is a race of beings on Mars they are the same as we on Earth. By no means. Whatever atmosphere exists on Mars must be much thinner than ours and far too rare to sustain the life of a people with our limited lung capacity. A race with immense chests could live under such conditions, and folk with gills like fish could pass a comfortable existence in the rarefied air. Besides the tenuity of the atmosphere, there are other conditions which would cause life to be much different on Mars. Attraction and gravitation are altogether different. The force with which a substance is attracted to the surface of Mars is only a little more than one-third as strong as on the earth. For instance one hundred pounds on Earth would weigh only about thirty-eight pounds on Mars. A man who could jump five feet here could clear fifteen feet on Mars. Paradoxical as it may seem, the smaller a planet, in comparison with ours and consequently the less the pull of gravity at its centre, the greater is the probability that its inhabitants, if any, are giants when compared with us. Professor Lowell has pointed out that to place the Martians (if there are such beings) under the same conditions as those in which we exist, the average inhabitant must be considered to be three times as large and three times as heavy as the average human being; and the strength of the Martians must exceed ours to even a greater extent than the bulk and weight; for their muscles would be twenty-seven times more effective. In fact, one Martian could do the work of fifty or sixty men.
It is idle, however, to speculate as to what the forms of life are like on Mars, for if there are any such forms our ideas and conceptions of them must be imaginary, as we cannot see them on Mars we do not know. There is yet no possibility of seeing anything on the planet less than thirty miles across, and even a city of that size, viewed through the most powerful telescope, would only be visible as a minute speck. Great as is the perfection to which our optical instruments have been brought, they have revealed nothing on the planet save the so-called canals, to indicate the presence of sentient rational beings. The canals discovered by Schiaparelli of the Milan Observatory in 1877 are so regular, outlined with such remarkable geometrical precision, that it is claimed they must be artificial and the work of a high order of intelligence. "The evidence of such work," says Professor Lowell, "points to a highly intelligent mind behind it."
Can this intelligence in any way reach us, or can we express ourselves to it? Can the chasm of space which lies between the Earth and Mars be bridged—a chasm which, at the shortest, is more than thirty-five million miles across or one hundred and fifty times greater than the distance between the earth and the moon? Can the inhabitants of the Earth and Mars exchange signals? To answer the question, let us institute some comparisons. Suppose the fabled "Man in the Moon" were a real personage, we would require a telescope 800 times more powerful than the finest instrument we now have to see him, for the space penetrating power of the best telescope is not more than 300 miles and the moon is 240,000 miles distant. An object to be visible on the moon would require to be as large as the Metropolitan Insurance Building in New York, which is over 700 feet high. To see, therefore, an object on Mars by means of the telescope the object would need to have dimensions one hundred and fifty times as great as the object on the moon; in other words, before we could see a building on Mars, it would have to be one hundred and fifty times the size of the Metropolitan Building. Even if there are inhabitants there, it is not likely they have such large buildings.