The Plurality of Worlds

by William Whewell

In the first place, this is a natural reflection. The terrestrial world having made this advance from brute to human life, can we think it at all likely, that the present condition of the earth's inhabitants is a final condition? Has the vast step from animal to human life, exhausted the progressive powers of nature? or to speak more reverently and justly, has it completed the progressive plan of the Creator? After the great revolution by which man became what he is, can and will nothing be done, to bring into being something better than now is; however that future creature may be related to man? We leave out of consideration any supposed progression, which may have taken place in the animal creation previous to man's existence; any progression by which the animal organization was made to approximate, gradually or by sudden steps, to the human organization; partly, because such successive approximation is questioned by some geologists; and is, at any rate, obscure and perplexed: but much more, because it is not really to our purpose. Similarity of organization is not the point in question. The endowments and capacities of man, by which he is Man, are the great distinction, which places all other animals at an immeasurable distance below him. The closest approximation of form or organs, does nothing to obliterate this distinction. It does not bring the monkey nearer to man, that his tongue has the same muscular apparatus as man's, so long as he cannot talk; and so long as he has not the thought and idea which language implies, and which are unfolded indefinitely in the use of language. The step, then, by which the earth became, a human habitation, was an immeasurable advance on all that existed before; and therefore there is a question which we are, it seems, irresistibly prompted to ask, Is this the last such step? Is there nothing beyond it? Man is the head of creation, in his present condition; but is that condition the final result and ultimate goal of the progress of creation in the plan of the Creator? As there was found and produced something so far beyond animals, as man is, may there not also, in some course of the revolutions of the world, be produced something far beyond what man is? The question is put, as implying a difficulty in believing that it should be so; and this difficulty must be very generally felt. Considering how vast the resources of the Creative Power have been shown to be, it is difficult to suppose they are exhausted. Considering how great things have been done, in the progress of the work of creation, we naturally think that even greater things than these, still remain to be done.

6. But then, on the other hand, there is an immense difficulty in supposing, even in imagining, any further change, at all commensurate in kind and degree, with the step which carried the world from a mere brute population, to a human population. In a proportion in which the two first terms are brute and man, what can be the third term? In the progress from mere Instinct to Reason, we have a progress from blindness to sight; and what can we do more than see? When pure Intellect is evolved in man, he approaches to the nature of the Supreme Mind: how can a creature rise higher? When mere impulse, appetite, and passion are placed under the control and direction of duty and virtue, man is put under Divine Government: what greater lot can any created being have?

7. And the difficulty of conceiving any ulterior step at all analogous to the last and most wonderful of the revolutions which have taken place in the condition of the earth's inhabitants, will be found to grow upon us, as it is more closely examined. For it may truly be said, the change which occurred when man was placed on the earth, was not one which could have been imagined and constructed beforehand, by a speculator merely looking at the endowments and capacities of the creatures which were previously living. Even in the way of organization, could any intelligent spectator, contemplating anything which then existed in the animal world, have guessed the wonderful new and powerful purposes to which it was to be made subservient in man? Could such a spectator, from seeing the rudiments of a Hand, in the horse or the cow, or even from seeing the hand of a quadrumanous animal, have conjectured, that the Hand was, in man, to be made an instrument by which infinite numbers of new instruments were to be constructed, subduing the elements to man's uses, giving him a command over nature which might seem supernatural, taming or conquering all other animals, enabling him to scrutinize the farthest regions of the universe, and the subtlest combinations of material things?

8. Or again; could such a spectator, by dissecting the tongues of animals, have divined that the Tongue, in man, was to be the means of communicating the finest movements of thought and feeling; of giving one man, weak and feeble, an unbounded ascendency over robust and angry multitudes; and, assisted by the (writing) hand, of influencing the intimate thoughts, laws, and habits of the most remote posterity?

9. And again, could such a spectator, seeing animals entirely occupied by their appetites and desires, and the objects subservient to their individual gratification, have ever dreamt that there should appear on earth a creature who should desire to know, and should know, the distances and motions of the stars, future as well as present; the causes of their motions, the history of the earth, and his own history; and even should know truths by which all possible objects and events not only are, but must be regulated?

10. And yet again, could such a spectator, seeing that animals obeyed their appetites with no restraint but external fear, and knew of no difference of good and bad except the sensual difference, ever have imagined that there should be a creature acknowledging a difference of right and wrong, as a distinction supreme over what was good or bad to the sense; and a rule of duty which might forbid and prevent gratification by an internal prohibition?

11. And finally, could such a spectator, seeing nothing but animals with all their faculties thus entirely immersed in the elements of their bodily being, have supposed that a creature should come, who should raise his thoughts to his Creator, acknowledge Him as his Master and Governor, look to His Judgment, and aspire to live eternally in His presence?

12. If it would have been impossible for a spectator of the præhuman creation, however intelligent, imaginative, bold and inventive, to have conjectured beforehand the endowments of such a creature as Man, taking only those which we have thus indicated; it may well be thought, that if there is to be a creature which is to succeed man, as man has succeeded the animals, it must be equally impossible for us to conjecture beforehand, what kind of creature that must be, and what will be his endowments and privileges.

13. Thus a spectator who should thus have studied the præhuman creation, and who should have had nothing else to help him in his conjectures and conceptions, (of course, by the supposition of a præhuman period, not any knowledge of the operation of intelligence, though a most active intelligence would be necessary for such speculations,) would not have been able to divine the future appearance of a creature, so excellent as Man; or to guess at his endowments and privileges, or his relation to the previous animal creation; and just as little able may we be, even if there is to exist at some time, a creature more excellent and glorious than man, to divine what kind of creature he will be, and how related to man. And here, therefore, it would perhaps be best, that we should quit the subject; and not offer conjectures which we thus acknowledge to have no value. Perhaps, however, the few brief remarks which we have still to make, put forwards, as they are, merely as suggestions to be weighed by others, can not reasonably give offence, or trouble even the most reverent thinker.

14. To suppose a higher development of endowments which already exist in man, is a natural mode of rising to the imagination of a being nobler than man is; but we shall find that such hypotheses do not lead us to any satisfactory result. Looking at the first of those features of the superiority of man over brutes, which we have just pointed out, the Human Hand, we can imagine this superiority carried further. Indeed, in the course of human progress, and especially in recent times, and in our own country, man employs instead of, or in addition to the hand, innumerable instruments to make nature serve his needs and do his will. He works by Tools and Machinery, derivative hands, which increase a hundred-fold the power of the natural hand. Shall we try to ascend to a New Period, to imagine a New Creature, by supposing this power increased hundreds and thousands of times more, so that nature should obey man, and minister to his needs, in an incomparably greater degree than she now does? We may imagine this carried so far, that all need for manual labor shall be superseded; and thus, abundant time shall be left to the creature thus gifted, for developing the intellectual and moral powers which must be the higher part of its nature. But still, that higher nature of the creature itself, and not its command over external material nature, must be the quarter in which we are to find anything which shall elevate the creature above man, as man is elevated above brutes.