Tutor. If you are satisfied that the planets belonging to our system are inhabited, and that the fixed stars are suns, the centers of other systems, what reasonable objection can you have to all the planets in the universe being so?
Pupil. It is what I cannot comprehend.
Tutor. It may be so.—But is not the same Almighty Power, who does nothing in vain, as capable of making ten thousand worlds if he pleased, as well as one?
Pupil. I will not presume to dispute his power; but are we not told that all mankind descended from Adam?
Tutor. Yes; Moses wrote concerning this earth, he has not made us acquainted with the inhabitants of the other planets: for aught we know they might descend from other Adams.—To-morrow evening, I hope to see you again.
[8]. See Plate I. fig. 2.
[9]. The distance of Syrius is 18,717,442,690,526 miles. A cannon-ball going at the rate of 1143 miles an hour, would only reach the sun in about 1,868,307 years, 88 days.
Adams’s Lectures, vol. 4. page 44.
[10]. Dr. Herschell says, that in some clusters of stars he has observed, they appear too close together to admit any planets to revolve about them.