which similarity existing between them, is a presumptive proof that the moon, like our earth, is a commodious habitation for creatures endowed with capacity for knowing and adoring their beneficent Creator. By a very correct analogy we are led to infer, says a learned author, that all the planets and their satellites or attendant moons, are inhabited; for matter seems only to exist for the sake of intelligent beings. And Dr. Herschell’s discoveries have, by the general consent of philosophers, added, besides the Georgian planet, a new habitable world to our system, which is the Sun.
To an attentive mind it will appear highly probable, that the planets of our system, and their moons, are much of the same nature with our earth, and destined for the like purposes; for they are solid opaque globes, capable of supporting animals and vegetables. Some of them are bigger, some less, and others about the size of our earth. They move round the sun, as the earth does, in a shorter or longer time, according to their respective distances from him: and have, where it would not be inconvenient, regular returns of summer and winter, spring and autumn. They have warmer and colder climates, as the various productions of our earth require: and, in such as afford a possibility of discovering it, we observe a regular motion round their axis like that of our earth, causing an alternate return of day and night; which is necessary for labor, rest, and vegetation, and that all their surfaces may be exposed to the rays of the sun.
Can a person who attends to the vast magnitude of the three planets, Jupiter, Saturn, and Herschell or the Georgium Sidus, and compares the systems of moons together which belong to them, bring himself to think, that an infinitely wise Creator should dispose of all his animals and vegetables here, leaving the other planets destitute of living and rational creatures? To suppose that he had any view to our benefit in creating these moons, and giving them their motions round their respective primaries; to imagine, that he intended these vast bodies for any advantage to us, when he well knew, that they could not be seen but by a few astronomers looking through telescopes; and that he gave to the planets regular returns of day and night, and different seasons to all where they would be convenient, but of no manner of service to us, except only what immediately concerns our own planet, the earth; to imagine, I say, that, he did all this on our account, would, I presume, be charging him with having done much in vain: and be as absurd, as to fancy that he has created a little sun, and a planetary system within the shell of our earth, and intended them for our use.
“As well might the minutest emmet say,
That Caucasus was raised to pave his way
The snail, that Lebanon’s extended wood
Was destin’d only for his walk and food.
The vilest cockle, gaping on the coast,
That rounds the ample seas, as well may boast,
The craggy rock projects above the sky,