X
COSMIC INTELLIGENCE
Q. 10. Are there any beings higher in the scale of existence than man?
A. Man is the highest of the dwellers on the planet earth, but the earth is only one of many planets warmed by the sun, and the sun is only one of a myriad of similar suns, which are so far off that we barely see them, and group them indiscriminately as “stars.” We may reasonably conjecture that in some of the innumerable worlds circling round those distant suns there must be beings far higher in the scale of existence than ourselves; indeed, we have no knowledge which enables us to assert the absence of intelligence anywhere.
CLAUSE X
The existence of higher beings and of a Highest Being is a fundamental element in every religious creed. There is no scientific reason for imagining it possible that man is the highest intelligent existence—there is no reason to suppose that we dwellers on this planet know more about the universe than any other existing creature. Such an idea, strictly speaking, is absurd. Science has investigated our ancestry and shown that we are the product of planetary processes. We may be, and surely must be, something more, but this we clearly are—a development of life on this planet earth. Science has also revealed to us an innumerable host of other worlds, and has relegated the earth to its now recognised subordinate place as one of a countless multitude of worlds.
Consider a spherical region bounded by the distance of the farthermost stars visible in the strongest telescope, or say with a radius corresponding to a parallax of one-thousandth of a second of arc, so that the time taken by light to travel right across it is 6000 years:—Lord Kelvin, treating of such a portion of Universe, says:
“There may also be a large amount of matter in many stars outside the sphere of 3×1016 kilometres radius, but however much matter there may be outside it, it seems to be made highly probable, by §§ 11-21, that the total quantity of matter within it is greater than 100 million times, and less than 2000 million times, the sun’s mass” (Philosophical Magazine, August 1901).
It does not follow that all this matter is distributed in masses like our sun with its attendant planets; but, on the average, that is as likely an arrangement as another, and it corresponds with what we know.
So, given, on this hypothesis, the existence of some thousand million solar systems or families of worlds, within our ken, and knowing what we do about the exuberant impulse towards vital development wherever it is possible, we must conclude that those worlds contain life; and if so, it is against all reasonable probability that the only world of which we happen to know the details contains the creature highest in the entire scale. It would be just as reasonable to imagine, what we happen to know is false, that our particular sun is the largest, and our particular planet the brightest of all, as it is to conjecture that this world is the highest and best, or the only one in existence.