The Plurality of Worlds

by William Whewell

meaning, apparently, the harmony between the immortal spirits that govern each star, and the cherubims that sing before the throne of God. But however beautiful and sublime may be this representation, the philosopher has had to abandon it in its literal sense. He may have adopted, instead, the opinion that each of the stars is the seat, or the centre of a group of seats, of choirs of worshippers; but this again, is still to suppose the nature of those orbs to be entirely different from that of this earth; though in many respects, we know that they are governed by the same laws. And if he will be content to know no more than he has the means of knowing, or even to know only according to his best means of knowing, he must be prepared, if the force of proof so requires, to give up this belief also; at least for the present.

23. Indeed, those who have not been content with this, and have sought to combine with the visible splendor of the skies, some scheme, founded upon astronomical views, which shall people them with intelligent beings and worshippers, have drawn upon their fancy quite as much as Lorenzo in his lesson to Jessica; or rather, they have done what he and those from whom his love was derived, had done before. They have taken the truths which astronomers have discovered and taught, and made the objects and regions so revealed, the scenes and occasions of such sentiments of piety as they themselves have, or feel that they ought to have. Even in Shakspeare, the stars are already orbs, each orb has his motion, and in his motion produces the music of the spheres. More recent preachers, following sounder views of the nature of these orbs and motions, have been equally poetical when they come to their religious reflection. When the poet of the Night Thoughts says,

"Each of these stars is a religious house;
I saw their altars smoke, their incense rise,
And heard hosannas ring through every sphere."

he is no less imaginative than the poet of that Midsummer Night's Dream, which we have in the Merchant of Venice. And we are compelled, by all the evidence which we can discern, to say the same of the preacher who speaks, from the pulpit, of these orbs of worlds, and tells us of the stars which "give animation to other systems[4];" when he says[5] "worlds roll in these distant regions; and these worlds must be the centres of life and intelligence;" when he speaks of the earth[6] as "the humblest of the provinces of God's empire." But then we must recollect that these thoughts still prove the religious nature of man; they show how he is impelled to endeavor to elevate his mind to God by every part of the universe; and it is not too much to say, that through the faculties of man, thus regarding the starry heavens, every star does really testify to the greatness of God, and minister to His worship.

24. We may trust that this mere material magnificence does not require inhabitants, to make it lift man's heart towards the Universal Creator, and to make him accept it as a sublime evidence of His greatness. The grandest objects in nature are blank and void of life;—the mountain-peaks that stand, ridge beyond ridge, serene in the region of perpetual snow;—the summer-clouds, images of such mountain tracts, even upon a grander scale, and tinted with more gorgeous colors;—the thunder-cloud with its dazzling bolt;—the stormy ocean with its mountainous waves;—the Aurora Borealis, with its mysterious pillars of fire;—all these are sublime; all these elevate the soul, and make it acknowledge a mighty Worker in the elements, in spite of any teaching of a material philosophy. And if we have to regard the planets as merely parts of the same great spectacle of nature, we shall not the less regard them with an admiration which ministers to pious awe. Even merely as a spectacle, Saturn made visible in his real shape, only by a vast exertion of human skill, yet shining like a star, in form so curiously complex, symmetrical and seemingly artificial, will never cease to be an object of the ardent and contemplative gaze of all who catch a sight of him. And however much the philosopher may teach that he is merely a mass of water and vapor, ice and snow, he must be far more interesting to the eye than the Alps, or the clouds that crown them, or the ocean with its icebergs; where the same elements occur in forms comparatively shapeless and lawless, irregular and chaotic.

25. But perhaps there is in the minds of many persons, a sentiment connected with this regular and symmetrical form of the heavenly bodies; that being thus beautifully formed and finished they must have been the objects of especial care to the Creator. These regular globes, these nearly circular orbits, these families of satellites, they too so regular in their movements; this ring of Saturn; all the adjustments by which the planetary motions are secured from going wrong, as the profoundest researches into the mechanics of the universe show;—all these things seem to indicate a peculiar attention bestowed by the Maker on each part of the machine. So much of law and order, of symmetry and beauty in every part, implies, it may be thought, that every part has been framed with a view to some use;—that its symmetry and its beauty are the marks of some noble purpose.

26. To reply to this argument, so far as it is requisite for us to do so, we must recur to what we have already said; that though we see in many parts of the universe, inorganic as well as organic, marks which we cannot mistake, of design and purpose; yet that this design and purpose are often effected by laws which are of a much wider sweep than the design, so far as we can trace its bearing. These laws, besides answering the purpose, produce many other effects, in which we can see no purpose. We have now to observe further that these laws, thus ranging widely through the universe, and working everywhere, as if the Creator delighted in the generality of the law, independently of its special application, do often produce innumerable results of beauty and symmetry, as if the Creator delighted in beauty and symmetry, independently of the purpose answered.

27. Thus, to exemplify this reflection: the powers of aggregation and cohesion, which hold together the parts of solid bodies, as metals and stones, salts and ice,—which solidify matter, in short,—we can easily see, to be necessary, in order to the formation and preservation of solid terrestrial bodies. They are requisite, in order that man may have the firm earth to stand upon, and firm materials to use. But let us observe, what a wonderful and beautiful variety of phenomena grows out of this law, with no apparent bearing upon that which seems to us its main purpose. The power of aggregation of solid bodies is, in fact, the force of crystallization. It binds together the particles of bodies by molecular forces, which not only hold the particles together, but are exerted in special directions, which form triangles, squares, hexagons, and the like. And hence we have all the variety of crystalline forms which sparkle in gems, ores, earths, pyrites, blendes; and which, when examined by the crystallographers, are found to be an inexhaustible field of the play of symmetrical complexity. The diamond, the emerald, the topaz, have got each its peculiar kind of symmetry. Gold and other metals have, for the basis of their forms, the cube, but run from this into a vastly greater variety of regular solids than ever geometer dreamt of. Some single species of minerals, as calc-spar, present hundreds of forms, all rigorously regular, and have been alone the subject of volumes. Ice crystallizes by the same laws as other solid bodies; and our Arctic voyagers have sometimes relieved the weariness of their sojourn in those regions, by collecting some of the innumerable forms, resembling an endless collection of hexagonal flowers, sporting into different shapes, which are assumed by flakes of snow[7]. In these and many other ways, the power of crystallization produces an inexhaustible supply of examples of symmetrical beauty. And what are we to conceive to be the object and purpose of this? As we have said, that part of the purpose which is intelligible to us is, that we have here a force holding together the particles of bodies, so as to make them solid. But all these pretty shapes add nothing to this intelligible use. Why then are they there? They are there, it would seem, for their own sake;—because they are pretty;—symmetry and beauty are there on their own account; or because they are universal adjuncts of the general laws by which the creator works. Or rather we may say, combining different branches of our knowledge, that crystallization is the mark and accompaniment of chemical composition: and that as chemical composition takes place according to definite numbers, so crystalline aggregation takes place according to definite forms. The symmetrical relations of space in crystals correspond to the simple relations of number in synthesis; and thus, because there is rule, there is regularity, and regularity assumes the form of beauty.