We have now gone through a large portion, embracing two of the three sections into which we had divided this startling Essay; presenting as full and fair an account of it as is consistent with our limits. Though the author professes that he “does not pretend to disprove the Plurality of Worlds, but to deny the existence of arguments making the doctrine probable,” his undisguised object is to assign cogent reasons for holding the opposite to be the true doctrine—the Unity of the World. What has gone before is, moreover, on the assumption that the other bodies of the universe are fitted, equally with the Earth, to be the abodes of life. Before passing on, however, to the remaining section of the Essay, which is decidedly hostile to that assumption, let us here introduce on the scene Dr Whewell’s only hitherto avowed antagonist, Sir David Brewster.
Though it is impossible to treat otherwise than with much consideration, whatever is published by this gentleman, we must express our regret that he did not more deliberately approach so formidable an opponent as Dr Whewell, and, as we are compelled to add, in a more calm and courteous spirit. We never read a performance less calculated than this Essay, from its modesty and moderation of tone, and the high and abstract nature of the topics which it discusses with such powerful logic, and such a profusion of knowledge of every kind, to provoke an acrimonious answer. It is happily rare, in recent times, for one of two philosophic disputants, to speak of the other’s “exhibiting an amount of knowledge so massive as occasionally to smother his reason;”[[35]] “ascribing his sentiments only to some morbid condition of the mental powers, which feeds upon paradox, and delights in doing violence to sentiments deeply cherished, and to opinions universally believed;”[[36]] characterising some of his reasonings as “dialectics in which a large dose of banter and ridicule is seasoned with a little condiment of science;”[[37]] and an elaborate argument, of great strength and originality, whether sound or not, as “the most ingenious, though shallow piece of sophistry, which we! (Sir David Brewster) have encountered in modern times;”[[38]] referring his “theories and speculations to no better a feeling than a love of notoriety.”[[39]] It is not to be supposed that Sir David was not perfectly aware who his opponent was,[[40]] which occasions extreme surprise at the tone adopted throughout More Worlds than One. In his preface, he explains as a cause of his anger, that he found that “the author” of the Essay, “under a title calculated to mislead the public, had made an elaborate attack upon opinions consecrated, as Sir David had thought, by reason and revelation,”—that the author had not only adopted a theory (the Nebular) so universally condemned as a dangerous speculation, “but had taken a view of the condition of the solar system calculated to disparage the science of astronomy, and throw a doubt over the noblest of its truths.” We dismiss this topic with a repetition of our regret, that so splendid a subject was not approached in a serener spirit; that greater respect was not shown by one of his contemporaries for one of the most eminent men of the age; and that sufficient time was not taken, in order to avoid divers surprising maculæ occurring in even the composition, and certain rash and unguarded expressions and speculations.
If Dr Whewell may be regarded as (pace tanti viri!) a sort of Star-Smasher, his opponent is in very truth a Star-Peopler. Though he admits that “there are some difficulties to be removed, and some additional analogies to be adduced, before the mind can admit the startling proposition[[41]] that the Sun, Moon, and all the satellites, are inhabited spheres”—yet he believes that they are:[[42]] that all the planets of their respective systems are so; as well as all the single stars, double stars, and nebulæ, with all planets and satellites circling about them!—though “our faltering reason utterly fails us!” he owns,[[43]] “when called on to believe that even the Nebulæ must be surrendered to life and reason! Wherever there is matter there must be life!” One can by this time almost pardon the excitement, the alarm rather, and anger, with which Sir David ruefully beheld Dr Whewell go forth on his exterminating expedition through Infinitude! It was like a father gazing on the ruthless slaughter of his offspring. Planet after planet, satellite after satellite, star after star, sun after sun, single suns and double suns, system after system, nebula after nebula, all disappeared before this sidereal Quixote! As for Jupiter and Saturn, the pet planets of Sir David, they were dealt with in a way perfectly shocking. The former turned out, to the disordered optics and unsteady brain of the Essayist, to be a sphere of water, with perhaps a few cinders at the centre, and peopled “with cartilaginous and glutinous monsters—boneless, watery, pulpy creatures, floating in the fluid;” while poor Saturn may be supposed turning aghast on hearing that, for all his grand appearance, he was little else than a sphere of vapour, with a little water, tenanted, if at all, by “aqueous, gelatinous creatures—too sluggish almost to be deemed alive—floating in their ice-cold waters, shrowded for ever by their humid skies!” But talk after this of the pensive Moon! “She is a mere cinder! a collection of sheets of rigid slag, and inactive craters!” This could be borne no longer; so thus Sir David pours forth the grief and indignation of the Soul Astronomic, in a passage fraught with the spirit, and embodying the results, of his whole book, and which we give, as evidently laboured by the author with peculiar care.
“Those ungenial minds that can be brought to believe that the earth is the only inhabited body in the universe, will have no difficulty in conceiving that it also might have been without inhabitants. Nay, if such minds are imbued with geological truth, they must admit that for millions of years the earth was without inhabitants; and hence we are led to the extraordinary result, that for millions of years there was not an intelligent creature in the vast dominions of the universal King; and that before the formation of the protozoic strata, there was neither a plant nor an animal throughout the infinity of space! During this long period of universal death, when Nature herself was asleep—the sun, with his magnificent attendants—the planets, with their faithful satellites—the stars in the binary systems—the solar system itself, were performing their daily, their annual, and their secular movements unseen, unheeded, and fulfilling no purpose that human reason can conceive; lamps lighting nothing—fires heating nothing—waters quenching nothing—clouds screening nothing—breezes fanning nothing—and everything around, mountain and valley, hill and dale, earth and ocean, all meaning nothing.
‘The stars
Did wander darkling in the eternal space.’
To our apprehension, such a condition of the earth, of the solar system, and of the sidereal universe, would be the same as that of our own globe if all its vessels of war and of commerce were traversing its seas with empty cabins and freightless holds; as if all the railways on its surface were in full activity without passengers and goods; and all our machinery beating the air and gnashing their iron teeth without work performed. A house without tenants, a city without citizens, present to our minds the same idea as a planet without life, and a universe without inhabitants. Why the house was built, why the city was founded, why the planet was made, and why the universe was created, it would be difficult even to conjecture. Equally great would be the difficulty were the planets shapeless lumps of matter, poised in ether, and still and motionless as the grave. But when we consider them as chiselled spheres, and teeming with inorganic beauty, and in full mechanical activity, performing their appointed motions with such miraculous precision that their days and their years never err a second of time in hundreds of centuries, the difficulty of believing them to be without life is, if possible, immeasurably increased. To conceive any one material globe, whether a gigantic clod slumbering in space, or a noble planet equipped like our own, and duly performing its appointed task, to have no living occupants, or not in a state of preparation to receive them, seems to us one of those notions which could be harboured only in an ill-educated and ill-regulated mind—a mind without faith and without hope: but to conceive a whole universe of moving and revolving worlds in such a category, indicates, in our apprehension, a mind dead to feeling and shorn of reason.”[[44]]
“It is doubtless possible,” observes Sir David, however, a little further on,[[45]] as if with a twinge of misgiving, “that the Mighty Architect of the universe may have had other objects in view, incomprehensible by us, than that of supporting animal and vegetable life in these magnificent spheres.” Would that Sir David Brewster would allow himself to be largely influenced by this rational and devout sentiment! His book is, on the contrary, crammed with assertions from beginning to end, and of a peremptory and intolerant character unknown to the spirit of genuine philosophy.
The Essayist, however, is not incapable of quiet humour: and the following pregnant passage is at least worthy to stand side by side with that which we have just quoted from his indignant and eloquent opponent:—
“Undoubtedly, all true astronomers, taught caution and temperance of thought by the discipline of their magnificent science, abstain from founding such assumptions upon their discoveries. They know how necessary it is to be upon their guard against the tricks which fancy plays with the senses; and if they see appearances of which they cannot interpret the meaning, they are content that they should have no meaning for them, till the due explanation comes. We have innumerable examples of this wise and cautious temper in all periods of astronomy. One has occurred lately. Several careful astronomers, observing the stars by day, had been surprised to see globes of light glide across the field of view of their telescopes, often in rapid succession, and in great numbers. They did not, as may be supposed, rush to the assumption that these globes were celestial bodies of a new kind, before unseen, and that, from the peculiarity of their appearance and movement, they were probably inhabited by beings of a peculiar kind. They proceeded differently. They altered the focus of their telescopes, looked with other glasses, made various changes and trials; and finally discovered that these globes of light were the winged seeds of certain plants, which were wafted through the air, and which, illuminated by the sun, were made globular by being at distances unsuited to the focus of the telescopes!”[[46]]