Before proceeding to give our readers some idea of the mode in which Sir David Brewster encounters Dr Whewell, let us offer a general observation concerning both these eminent gentlemen. While the latter exhibits throughout his Essay a spirit of candour and modesty, without one harsh expression or uncharitable insinuation with reference to the holder of doctrines which he is bent upon impugning with all his mental power and multifarious resources; the former, as we have seen, uses language at once heated, uncourteous, and unjustifiable: especially where he more than insinuates that his opponent, whose great knowledge and ability he admits, either deliberately countenances doctrines tending really to Atheism, or may be believed “ignorant of their tendency, and to have forgotten the truths of Inspiration, and even those of Natural Religion.”[[47]] To venture, however circuitously, to hint such imputations upon an opponent whom he had the slightest reason to suspect being one of such high and responsible academic position, is an offence equally against personal courtesy and public propriety; as we think Sir David Brewster would, on reflection, acknowledge. Both Dr Whewell and Sir David Brewster must excuse us, if, scanning both through the cold medium of impartial criticism, their speculations, questions, or assertions appear to us disturbed and deflected by a leading prepossession or foregone conclusion, which we shall indicate in the words of each.
Dr Whewell.—“The Earth is really the largest Planetary body in the Solar system; its domestic hearth, and the Only World [i. e. collection of intelligent creatures] in the Universe.”[[48]]
Sir David Brewster.—“Life is almost a property of matter.... Wherever there is Matter, there must be Life:—Life physical, to enjoy its beauties; Life Moral, to worship its Maker; and Life Intellectual, to proclaim His wisdom and His power.... Universal Life upon Universal matter, is an idea to which the mind instinctively clings.... Every star in the Heavens, and every point in a nebula which the most powerful telescope has not separated from its neighbour, is a sun surrounded by inhabited planets like our own.... In peopling such worlds with life and intelligence, we assign the cause of their existence; and when the mind is once alive to this great Truth, it cannot fail to realise the grand combination of infinity of life with infinity of matter.”[[49]]
The composition of Sir David Brewster, though occasionally too declamatory and rhetorical, and so far lacking the dignified simplicity befitting the subjects with which he deals, has much merit. It is easy, vivid, and vigorous, but will bear retrenchment, and lowering of tone. As to the substantial texture of his work, we think it betrays, in almost every page, haste and impetuosity, and evidence that the writer has sadly under-estimated the strength of his opponent. Another feature of More Worlds than One, is a manifest desire provocare ad populum—a greater anxiety, in the first instance, to catch the ear of the million, than to convince the “fit audience, though few.” Now, however, to his work; and, as we have already said, on him lies the labouring oar of proof. All that his opponent professes to do, is to ask for arguments “rendering probable” that “doctrine” which Sir David pledges himself to demonstrate to be not only the “hope” of the Christian, but the creed of the philosopher: as much, that is, an article of his belief, as the doctrines of attraction and gravitation, or the existence of demonstrable astronomical facts.
He commences with a brief introduction, sketching the growth of the belief in a plurality of worlds—one steadily and firmly increasing in strength, till it encountered the rude shock of the Essayist, whose “very remarkable work” is “ably written,” and who “defends ingeniously his novel and extraordinary views:” “the direct tendency of which is to ridicule and bring into contempt the grand discoveries in sidereal astronomy by which the last century has been distinguished.” In his next chapter, Sir David discusses “the religious aspect of the question,” representing man, especially the philosopher, as always having pined after a knowledge of the scene of his future being. He declares that neither the Old nor the New Testament contains “a single expression incompatible with the great truth that there are other worlds than our own which are the seats of life and intelligence;” but, on the contrary, there are “other passages which are inexplicable without admitting it to be true.” He regards, as we have seen, the noble exclamation of the Psalmist, “What is man,” as “a positive argument for a plurality of worlds;” and “cannot doubt” that he was gifted with a plenary knowledge of the starry system, inhabited as Sir David would have it to be! Dr Chalmers, let us remark, in passing, expressed himself differently, and with a more becoming reserve: “It is not for us to say whether inspiration revealed to the Psalmist the wonders of the modern astronomy,” but “even though the mind be a perfect stranger to the science of these enlightened times, the heavens present a great and an elevating spectacle, the contemplation of which awakened the piety of the Psalmist”—a view in which Dr Whewell concurs. Sir David then comes to consider the doctrine of “Man, in his future state of existence, consisting, as at present, of a spiritual nature residing in a corporeal frame.” We must, therefore, find for the race of Adam, “if not for the races which preceded him!”[[50]] “a material home upon which he may reside, or from which he may travel to other localities in the universe.” That house, he says, cannot be the earth, for it will not be big enough—there will be such a “population as the habitable parts of our globe could not possibly accommodate;” wherefore, “we can scarcely doubt that their future abode must be on some of the primary or secondary planets of the solar system, whose inhabitants have ceased to exist, like those on the earth; or on planets which have long been in a state of preparation, as our earth was, for the advent of intellectual life.” Here, then, is “the creed of the philosopher,” as well as “the hope of the Christian.” Passing, according to the order adopted in this paper, from the first chapter (“Religious Aspect of the Question”), we alight on the seventh, entitled “Religious Difficulties.” We entertain too much consideration for Sir David Brewster to speak harshly of anything falling from his pen; but we think ourselves justified in questioning whether this chapter—dealing with speculations of an awful nature, among which the greatest religious and philosophical intellects tremble as they “go sounding on their dim and perilous way”—shows him equal to cope with his experienced opponent, whom every page devoted to such topics shows to have fixed the Difficulty with which he proposed to deal, fully and steadily before his eyes, in all its moral, metaphysical, and philosophical bearings, and to have discussed it cautiously and reverently. We shall content ourselves with briefly indicating the course of observation on that “difficulty” adopted by Sir David Brewster, and leaving it to the discreet reader to form his own judgment whether Sir David has left the difficulty where he found it, or removed, lessened, or enhanced it.
Dr Whewell, in his Dialogue, thus temperately and effectively deals with this section of his opponent’s lucubrations:—
“His own solution of the question concerning the redemption of other worlds appears to be this, that the provision made for the redemption of man by what took place upon earth eighteen hundred years ago, may have extended its influence to other worlds.
“In reply to which astronomico-theological hypothesis three remarks offer themselves: In the first place, the hypothesis is entirely without warrant or countenance in the revelation from which all our knowledge of the scheme of redemption is derived; in the second place, the events which took place upon earth eighteen hundred years ago, were connected with a train of events in the history of man, which had begun at the creation of man, and extended through all the intervening ages; and the bearing of this whole series of events upon the condition of the inhabitants of other worlds must be so different from its bearing on the condition of man, that the hypothesis needs a dozen other auxiliary hypotheses to make it intelligible; and, in the third place, this hypothesis, making the earth, insignificant as it seems to be in the astronomical scheme, the centre of the theological scheme, ascribes to the earth a peculiar distinction, quite as much at variance with the analogies of the planets to one another, as the supposition that the earth alone is inhabited; to say nothing of the bearing of the critic’s hypothesis on the other systems that encircle other suns.”[[51]]
“In freely discussing the subject of a Plurality of Worlds,” says Sir David, “there can be no collision between Reason and Revelation.” He regrets the extravagant conclusion of some, that the inhabitants of all planets but our own, “are sinless and immortal beings that never broke the Divine Law, and enjoying that perfect felicity reserved for only a few of the less favoured occupants of earth. Thus chained to a planet, the lowest and most unfortunate in the universe, the philosopher, with all his analogies broken down, may justly renounce his faith in a Plurality of Worlds, and rejoice in the more limited but safer creed of the anti-Pluralist author, who makes the earth the only world in the universe, and the special object of God’s paternal care.”[[52]] He proceeds, in accordance with “men of lofty minds and undoubted piety,” to regard the existence of moral evil as a necessary part of the general scheme of the universe, and consequently affecting all its Rational Inhabitants.[[53]] He “rejects the idea that the inhabitants of the planets do not require a Saviour; and maintains the more rational opinion, that they stand in the same moral relation to their Maker as the inhabitants of the earth; and seeks for a solution of the difficulty—how can there be inhabitants in the planets, when God had but One Son, whom He could send to save them? If we can give a satisfactory answer to this question, it may destroy the objections of the Infidel, while it relieves the Christian from his difficulties.”[[54]]... “When our Saviour died, the influence of His death extended backward, in the Past, to millions who never heard His name; in the Future, to millions who never will hear it ... a Force which did not vary with any function of the distance.[[55]]... Emanating from the middle planet of the system.”
——The earth the middle planet of the system? How is this? In an earlier portion of his book (p. 56), Sir David had demonstrated that “our earth is neither the middle [his own italics] planet, nor the planet nearest the sun, nor the planet furthest from that luminary: that therefore the earth, as a planet, has no pre-eminence in the solar system, to induce us to believe that it is the only inhabited world.... Jupiter is the middle planet (p. 55), and is otherwise highly distinguished!” How is this? Can the two passages containing such direct contradictions have emanated from the same scientific controversialist?—To resume, however: