Everyday Objects; Or, Picturesque Aspects of Natural History.

by W. H. Davenport Adams

The world will never end, you say; it is eternal.

But how do you know this? If it has had a beginning, as geology and astronomy prove,[90] it will also have an end. This end, however, will not be an annihilation; it will simply be, as we have already pointed out, a transformation of matter. As for the problems, whether nature itself was created, and whether it is eternal, let us leave them to the discussion of heated theoricians, who are too blind to perceive that some questions it is wisest neither to affirm nor deny, but to know how to ignore.

The error, then, which we have been considering, destroys itself through its consequences. Let us admit, in effect, that our world—such as it is, just as it is—will last for ever. In that case what becomes of the power and travail of humanity? All they have accomplished are some slight changes of the terrestrial crust, barely sufficient, here and there, to modify the influences of climate. A limited number of men labour, it is true, for the progress and full development of transmissible thought. But even supposing that, in the course of centuries, humanity succeeds in comprehending, it can only grow through the development of the faculties of all its members, and the due balance of all the social forces by means of liberty. Supposing that reason, united to science and conscience, should finally combine in one family the various tribes and peoples scattered over the earth's broad surface; do you indulge yourself in the hope of crossing the limits of the human organization, and establishing the royalty of man "through the interpretation and imitation of Nature?"

Do you cherish the idea of penetrating, through the perfect union of all your intellectual forces, the mysteries of creation?

No; you would never dare to form such a hope, to nourish such an idea, at least unless you felt that the earth (which you must first demonstrate) comprehends in itself the whole universe, that the humanity swarming on its surface is eternal, that every other creature is absolutely subordinate to it: in a word, that Man is all!

But we know how limited is human power. We are not masters even of the mechanism of the body; the movements of organic life are independent of our will; we can neither command the stomach, the lungs, nor the heart: that marvellous process of absorption and elimination, that perpetual movement hither or thither which constitutes the essence of the assimilative function, goes on in us—as in all living beings, animal or vegetable—completely outside our sphere of activity. Then, without quitting our planet, how numerous are the movements which still escape the human will!

It is quite different when we lift up our eyes to examine the face of heaven. We have no grasp whatever of the incommensurable spiraloids of innumerable worlds to which our own belongs; we have no means of communicating with the inhabitants of other planets; we cannot establish any interchange of thought with the men (if there be any) of Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn,—who form, perhaps, like the men of the earth, the most elevated circle of material life, varying under an infinity of forms upon each of their floating domiciles.... I see you smiling, reader, because you do not believe that these other earths—satellites of the sun, like our own—are inhabited by beings analagous to our human race. You are at liberty not to believe it. But then, to be in agreement with yourselves, you ought to declare in favour of the Science of the Past, though demonstrated to be false, against the Science of the Present. Will you do so? Certainly not. But then, of two things, one: either you will be obliged to make the earth an unique exception, a kind of monstrosity in the midst of the other mechanism of the universe, which will be to throw yourself back upon the erroneous science of the ancients; or you must perforce admit that the earth is not specially privileged, and that the other planets, its companions, have also their human inhabitants.

Is this all? Alas, all this is nothing! The other worlds whose suns appear to us under the form of scintillating points or stars, will, undoubtedly, in like manner, possess their systems of planets and satellites. Why should they divaricate from the general plan of the universe? Now, multiply the number of the stars—who has counted them?—with the probable number of their planets, and you will gain, if this be permitted you, the number of humanities who people yonder star-sown space. And it is not only with these we must be able to correspond, but with the humanities of all the nebulæ of all the firmaments—for remember our starry heaven itself is but a nebula—that we must establish an interchange of ideas, if you would have your power, and civilisation, and intellectual royalty, something more than a mere optical illusion of your pride.

You do not cease to proclaim as an axiom that "there are no abrupt intervals in Nature;" that Nature never ventures upon sudden leaps or bounds ("in natura non datur saltus"), and yet you would make an exception for the world of thought—a world which no more lies outside the laws of nature than does the physical world. The former ought even to secure our preference; it is there only that we are free, that we can become true creators, by creating for ourselves our own happiness; that we can grow great before our own eyes, by following, not the tyrannous will of the brute, but the tender voice of the angel; by listening to conscience—that pure and infallible counsellor—conscience, the foundation of all justice, the latent force of generations passing away and coming, the universal gravitation of our species as of all the ultra-terrestrial humanities.