Volume 76 / Part 2 — PART II. (continued 2)

Now, to so much of the foregoing facts and speculations as are contained in the Essay, from which we have faithfully and carefully extracted the substance, in order that our readers may judge for themselves, Sir David Brewster answers, in effect, and generally in words, thus:—

The greatest and grandest truth in astronomy, is the motion of the solar system, advancing with all the planets and satellites in the heavens, at the rate of fifty-seven miles a second, round some distant invisible body, in an orbit of such inconceivable dimensions, that millions of years may be required for a single orbit. When we consider that this centre must be a sun with attendant planets like our own, revolving in like manner round our sun, [?] or round their common centre of gravity, the mind rejects, almost with indignation, the ignoble sentiment that Man is the only being performing this immeasurable journey—and that Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune, with their bright array of regal train-bearers, are but as colossal blocks of lifeless clay, encumbering the Earth as a drag, and mocking the creative majesty of Heaven. From the birth of man to the extinction of his race [!] the system to which he belongs will have described but an infinitesimal arc in that grand cosmical orbit in which it is destined to move. This affords a new argument for the plurality of worlds. Since every fixed star must have planets, the fact of our system revolving round a similar system of planets, furnishes a new argument from analogy; for as there is at least one inhabited planet in the one system, there must for the same reason be one in the other, and consequently as many as there are systems in the Universe.^[107] Thus our system is not absolutely fixed in space, but is connected with the other systems in the Universe.

The Fixed Stars are suns of other systems, whose planets are invisible from their distance, as are ours from the nearest fixed star. Every single star shining by its own native light is the centre of a planetary system like our own—the lamp that lights, the stove that heats, and the power that guides in their orbits, inhabited worlds like our own. Many are double, with a system of planets round each, or the centre of gravity of both. No one can believe that two suns would be placed in the heavens, for no other purpose than to revolve round their common centre of gravity. It is “highly probable,” that our Sun is one of a binary system, and has at present an unseen partner; and we are “entitled to conclude” that all the other binary systems have at least an inhabited planet: wherever there is a self-luminous fixed or movable Sun there must be a planetary system; and wherever there is a planetary system, there must be life and intelligence.^[108]

Apart from the assertion of his cardinal principle with which we are familiar, namely, that since our Sun has an inhabited planet, all others must; and also that all planets must be inhabited;—the argumentative value of these two chapters seems to lie in this that they annihilate one of the Essayist’s points of unlikeness between our Sun and other Fixed Stars, inasmuch as it, together with so many of them, is one of a binary system: wherefore what is true of it, is true of them, et vice versa. He bases this proposition, viz., that our Sun is one of a binary system, on “high probability,” from “the motion of our own system round a distant centre.”^[109] The great truth of this motion, he says the Essayist “has completely misrepresented, foreseeing its influence on the mind as an argument for more worlds than one.”^[110] What the Essayist had said on the subject, was this:^[111] he speaks of “the attempt to show that the Sun, carrying with it the whole solar system, is in motion; and the further attempt to show the direction of that motion;—and again, the hypothesis that the Sun itself revolves round some distant object in space.” These minute inquiries and bold conjectures, he says, “cannot throw any light on the question, whether any part besides the earth be inhabited: any more than the investigation of the movements of the ocean and their laws can prove or disprove the existence of marine plants and animals. They do not, on that account, cease to be important and interesting objects of speculation, but they do not belong to our subject.” As to the Sun’s motion, we are bound to say, that the Astronomer Royal has recently declared that “every astronomer who has examined the matter carefully, has come to the conclusion of Sir William Herschell, that the whole solar system is moving towards a point in the constellation Hercules.”^[112] Before quitting this part of the subject, we may state that the Essayist, in his second Preface,^[113] points out the insecure character of astronomical calculations as to the amount of absolute light ascribed to some of the fixed stars. It has been estimated that the illuminating power of Alpha Centauri is nearly double that of the Sun, placed at that distance, which is two hundred thousand times as far off as is the Sun; but Sir John Herschell will not concur in more of the calculation than attributes to the star the emission of more light than our Sun. Surely the critical and precarious character of such calculations should not be lost sight of by candid inquirers, but incline them to scan somewhat closely any pretensions tinctured by astronomic dogmatism.

One immense step more, however,—and it is our last, brings to “the outskirts of creation,” as the Essayist calls it,—the Nebulæ: and here we find him once more confronted by his indefatigable and implacable opponent. We must therefore take our biggest and best mental telescope to behold these two Specks intellectual, so far off in infinitude, wrangling about a faint cloud vastly further off than themselves. Do you see how angry one of them looks, and how provokingly stolid the other? ’Tis all about the nature of that same cloud, or Nebula; and if we could only hear what they said, we might catch a chord or two of the music of the spheres! The Essayist is required, by his brother speck, to believe that the faintly-luminous patch at which they are gazing—a thousandth part of the visible breadth of our own Sun—contains in it more life than exists in as many such systems as the unassisted eye can see stars in the heavens on the clearest winter night:—a view of the greatness of creation so stupendous, that the astounded speck, the Essayist, asks for a moment’s time to consider the matter. “We are entitled to draw the conclusion,” says the other, “that these Nebulæ are clusters of stars, at such an immense distance from our own system, that each star of which they are composed is the sun or centre of a system of planets; and that these planets are inhabited—like our Earth, the seat of vegetable, animal, and intellectual life:”^[114] that all the Nebulæ are resolvable into stars; and appear as Nebulæ only because they are more distant than the region in which they can appear as stars.^[115] The conclusion, however, at which the Essayist arrives, after an elaborate examination of evidence, and especially of the latest discoveries in this dim and distant region by Sir John Herschell and the Earl of Rosse, is—that “Nebulæ are vast masses of incoherent or gaseous matter, of immense tenuity, diffused in forms more or less irregular, but all of them destitute of any regular system of solid moving bodies.... So far, then,” he concludes, “as these Nebulæ are concerned, the improbability of their being inhabited appears to amount to the highest point that can be conceived. We may, by the indulgence of fancy, people the summer clouds, or the beams of the aurora borealis, with living beings of the same kind of substance as those bright appearances themselves; and in doing so, we are not making any bolder assertion than when we stock the Nebulæ with inhabitants, and call them, in that sense, inhabited worlds.”^[116] The Essayist contends that the argument for the vastness of the scheme of the Universe, suggested by the resolution of the Nebulæ, is found to be untenable:—inasmuch as the greatest astronomers now agree in believing Nebulæ to have distances of the same order as Fixed Stars. Their filmy appearance is a true indication of a highly attenuated substance: so attenuated as to destroy all probability of their being inhabited worlds. With this opinion as to the tenuity of Nebulæ agrees the absence of all observed motion among their parts; while the extraordinary spiral arrangement of many of them, prove that nevertheless many of them really have motion, and suggests modes of calculating their tenuity, and showing how extreme it is. “It is probable,” said Lord Rosse, in a paper which we ourselves heard him read not long ago, from the chair of the Royal Society, “that in the Nebular systems, motion exists. If we see a system with a distinct spiral arrangement, all analogy leads us to conclude that there has been motion; and that if there has been motion, that motion still continues.”... “Among the Nebulæ,” he says, “there are vast numbers, much too faint to be sketched or measured with any prospect of advantage: the most powerful instruments we possess showing in them nothing of an organised structure, but merely a confused mass of nebulosity, of varying brightness.”^[117] The Essayist makes powerful use, moreover, of Sir John Herschell’s celebrated observation of the Magellanic Clouds, lying near the South Pole; exhibiting the coexistence, in a limited compass, and in indiscriminate position, of stars, clusters of stars, nebulæ regular and irregular, and nebular streaks and patches, things different not merely to us, but in themselves: nebulæ, side by side with stars and clusters of stars; nebulous matter resolvable, close to nebulous matter irresolvable;—the last and widest step by which the dimensions of the Universe have been expanded, in the notions of eager speculators, being checked by a completer knowledge, and a sager spirit of speculation.^[118] In discussing such matters as these, he finely observes—“It is difficult to make men feel that so much ignorance can lie close to so much knowledge; to make them believe that they have been allowed to discover so much, and yet are not allowed to discover more.”^[119]

In alluding to the Nebulæ, as subjects of our most powerful telescopic observation, the Essayist speaks in a tone of sarcasm concerning the “shining dots,”—the “lumps of light” which are rendered apparent amidst them: asking, what are these lumps? (1.) How large? (2.) At what distances? (3.) Of what structure? (4.) Of what use?—adding, he must be a bold man who undertakes to answer the question, that each is a Sun, with attendant systems of planets. Sir David, exceedingly irate, says, “We accept the challenge, and appeal to our readers:”—(1.) The size of the dot, or lump, is large enough to be a Sun. (2.) He cannot answer this, for want of knowing ‘the apparent distance between the centres of the dots.’ (3.) Like our Sun—‘It will consist of a luminous envelope, enclosing a dark nucleus.’ (4.) Of no conceivable use, but to give light to planets, or to the solid nuclei of which they consist. In his turn, he asks the Essayist—what is the size, distance, structure, and use of the dots, upon his hypothesis? The Essayist, he observes, is silent;^[120] but in his Essay, he had said, distinctly enough, “Let us not wrangle about words. By all means let these dots be stars, if we know about what we are speaking: if a star mean, merely, a luminous dot in the sky. But that these stars shall resemble, in their nature, Stars of the First Magnitude, and that such stars shall resemble Our Sun, are surely very bold structures of assumption, to build on such a basis. Some nebulæ are resolvable into distinct points: but what would it amount to? That the substance of all nebulæ is not continuous; separate, and separable into distinct luminous elements:—nebulæ are, it would then seem, as it were of a curdled or granulated texture; they have run into lumps of light, or been formed originally of such lumps.” And then follow some very ingenious and refined speculations, into which we have not space to enter; and indeed we may be well content with what we have done, having travelled from a tolerable depth in the crust of our own little planet, past planet after planet, star after star, till we reached the nebulous “outskirts of creation;” accompanied by two Mentors of Infinitude,—whispering into our ear—one, that life, animal, intellectual, moral, was swarming around us at every step; the other, that that life ceased with our own Earth, as far as we were able to detect its existence, and giving us very solemn and mysterious reasons why it should be so.

Our Essayist, however, is not exhausted by the efforts he has made in his destructive career. If he be a “proud setter down” of cosmological systems, he determines, in turn, to be a “putter up:” and so presents us with his own Theory of the Solar System; and an explanation of the mode in which all appearances in the Universe beyond may be reconciled with it. “It may serve” he says, “to confirm his argument, if he give a description of the system which shall continue and connect his views of the constitution and peculiarities as to physical circumstances of each of the planets. It will help us in our speculation, if we can regard the planets as not only a collection, but a scheme;—if we can give not an Enunciation only, but a Theory. Now, such a Scheme, such a Theory, appears to offer itself to us.”^[121] The scope of this scheme, or theory, is, as we some time ago saw, to make our earth, in point of astronomical fact and reality, the largest Planetary Body in the solar system; its domestic hearth; the only part of the frame revolving round the Sun which has become a “World.” We must, however, make short work of it.

The planets exterior to Mars—especially Jupiter and Saturn—appear spheres of water, or aqueous vapour. The Earth has a considerable atmosphere of air and of vapour; while on Venus or Mercury—so close to the sun—we see nothing of a gaseous or aqueous atmosphere; they and Mars differing little in density from the earth.

The Earth’s orbit, according to the Essayist’s theory, is the Temperate Zone of the Solar System, where only the play of hot and cold, moist and dry, is possible. Water and gases, clouds and vapours, form, mainly, the planets in the outer part of the solar system; while masses, such as result from the fusion of the most solid materials, lie nearer the Sun, and are found principally within the orbit of Jupiter. After a further exposition of his “theory,” the Essayist observes that it agrees with the nebular hypothesis, SO FAR as it applies to the Solar System; exactly, and very sternly, repudiating that hypothesis as it applies to the Universe in general.^[122] “If we allow ourselves,” says he, “to speculate at all on physical grounds respecting the origin of the Earth, the hypothesis, that it has passed through a fluid and a gaseous condition, does not appear more extravagant than any other cosmogonical hypothesis: not even if we suppose that the other bodies of the Solar System have shared in the like changes. But, that all the stars and the nebulæ have gone, or are going through, a series of changes such as those by which the Solar System has been formed,—the nebular hypothesis, as it applies to the Universe in general, is precisely the doctrine which I here reject, giving my reasons.”^[123]

The whole of the Chapter devoted to “the Theory of the Solar System,” is distinguished by remarkable ingenuity and originality. It is, however, that entitled the Argument from Design, which, independently of all connection with the speculations of the author as already laid before our readers, is worthiest of consideration, by all interested in Natural Theology. It touches many topics which must have occupied the profoundest thoughts of mankind, and touches them with the utmost caution and delicacy. In the 34th Section will be found a passage of singular boldness and imaginative eloquence; but liable, in our opinion, to serious misconception, and susceptible of misrepresentation—by those, at least, who are either unable, or indisposed, to weigh the entire chapter, and ascertain its real value and tendency. Some expressions have startled us not a little, when reflecting that they relate to the possible mode of action of Omniscient Omnipotence; and we shall be gratified by seeing them vindicated or explained in the next edition of his “Essay.”

Each of our speculators closes his book with a chapter devoted to “The Future.” The ideas of Sir David concerning the duration of the human race upon the earth (which Inspiration tells us is so awfully uncertain, and will be cut short suddenly—in a moment—in the twinkling of an eye), seem to be curiously definite; for we have seen that in his sixth chapter he states that “from the birth of man to the extinction of his race, the Solar System to which he belongs will have described but an infinitesimal arc in that grand cosmical orbit in which it is destined to move.” Without pausing to ask who told him this, let us intimate, that in his final chapter he says that the scientific truths on which depends the plurality of worlds are intimately associated with the future destiny of man: he turns to the future of the sidereal systems, as the hallowed spots in which is to be spent his immortal existence. Scripture has not spoken articulately of the future locality of the blest; but Reason has combined the scattered utterances of Inspiration, and with an almost oracular voice declared that the Maker of the worlds will place in these the beings of his choice. In what region, reason does not determine; but it is impossible for man, with the light of Revelation as his guide, to doubt for a moment that on the celestial spheres his future is to be spent in lofty inquiries; social intercourse; the renewal of domestic ties; and in the service of his Almighty benefactor. The Christian’s future, not defined in his creed, enwrapt in apocalyptic mysteries, evades his grasp: it is only Astronomy that opens the mysterious expanse of the Universe to his eye, and creates an intelligible paradise in the world to come: wherefore, says Sir David, we must impregnate the popular mind with the truths of natural science; teaching them in every school, and recommending, if not illustrating, them from every pulpit: fixing in the minds and associating in the affections, alike of age and youth, the great truths in the planetary and sidereal universe, on which the doctrine of More Worlds than One must respectively rest—the philosopher scanning with a new sense the sphere in which he is to study; and the Christian the temples in which he is to worship.—Such, in his own words, is Sir David Brewster’s final and authoritative exposition of the CREED of the philosopher, and the HOPE of the Christian:—of such a nature are to be the new heavens and the new earth wherein dwelleth righteousness; and such, henceforth, as he has indicated, becomes the duty of the Christian teacher in the Family, in the School, in the Pulpit! So absolutely and irrefragably, it seems, are demonstrated the stupendous facts of astronomical science on which this Creed and this Faith depend: so unerring are our telescopes and other instruments, that he who does not receive this “Creed” is no philosopher, nor he who rejects the “Hope” a Christian. But, in the mean time, how inconceivably embarrassing to such a philosopher, and to such a Christian, is the possibility that many, or a few years hence, such immense improvements may be made in telescopes, or in other modes of acquiring a knowledge of the celestial structures, as to demonstrate to the sense, as well as reason, of us impatient and presumptuous tenants of the earth, that the planets are not inhabited! that the fixed stars are not suns, and have not a planet a piece—no, not even a solitary planet among them! Thus rendering our astounded and dismayed philosopher homeless and creedless, and the Christian helpless and hopeless:—the former one of those who professing themselves to be wise become fools;^[124] the latter, likened unto a foolish man which built his house upon the sand.^[125]

The “Future” of the Essayist is of a different kind, and adumbrated with becoming humility and diffidence. “I did not,” he says, “venture further than to intimate, that when we are taught, that as we have borne the image of the Earthy, we shall also bear the image of the Heavenly, we may find, in even natural science, reasons for opening our minds to the reception of the cheering and elevating announcement.”^[126]

We have now placed before our readers the substance of the arguments for and against a plurality of worlds, so far as developed in the essays of Dr Whewell and Sir David Brewster. The former is a work so replete with subtle thought, bold speculation, and knowledge of almost every kind, used with extraordinary force and dexterity, as to challenge the patient and watchful attention of the most thoughtful reader; and that whether he be, or be not, versed in astronomical speculations. Great as are the power and resources of the author, we detect no trace of dogmatism or arrogance, but, on the contrary, a true spirit of fearless, but patient and candid, inquiry. It is a mighty problem of which he proposes a solution, and he does no more than propose it: in his Preface declaring that, to himself at least, his arguments “appear to be of no small philosophical force, though he is quite ready to weigh carefully and candidly any answer which may be offered to them.”

We feel grateful to the accomplished Essayist for the storehouse of authentic facts, and the novel combination of inferences from them, with which he has presented us; and we are not aware that he has given us just reason to regret confiding in his correctness or candour. And in travelling with him through his vast and chequered course, we feel that we have accompanied not only the philosopher and the divine, but the gentleman: one who, while manifestly knowing what is due to himself, as manifestly respects his intelligent reader. In several of his astronomical assumptions and inferences we may be unable to concur, particularly in respect of the nebulous stars. We may also well falter at expressing a decisive “Aye” or “No,” to the great question proposed by him for discussion, on scientific grounds, and independently of Scriptural Revelation; yet we acknowledge that he has sensibly shaken our opinion as to the validity of the reasons usually assigned for believing in a plurality of worlds. He remorselessly ties us down to Evidence, as he ought to do; and all the more rigorously, because the affirmative conclusion, at which many heedless persons are disposed to jump, is one which, if well founded, occasions religious difficulties of a grave character among the profoundest and perhaps even devoutest thinkers. To suppose that Omnipotence may not have peopled already, or contemplate a future peopling of the starry spheres with intelligent beings, of as different a kind and order as it is possible for our limited faculties to conceive, yet in some way involved in physical conditions, altogether inexplicable to us, would be the acme of impious presumption. When we look at Sirius, in his solitary splendour in the midnight sky, pouring forth possibly fifty times the light and heat of our sun, upon a prodigiously greater planetary system than our own, it is natural to conjecture whether, among many other possibilities, it may be the seat of intelligence, perhaps of a transcendent character. Here the imagination may disport itself as it pleases: yet we shall feel ourselves compelled—those who can think about the matter—to own, that our imaginations are, as it were, “cabined, cribbed, confined,” by the objects and associations to which we are at present restricted; and as the late eminent Prussian astronomer, Bessel, observed, those who imagine inhabitants in the moon and planets, “supposed them, in spite of all their protestations, as like to men, as one egg to another.” But when we proceed further, and insist on likening these supposed inhabitants to ourselves, intellectually and morally, then it is that both philosophy and religion concur in rebuking us, and enjoining a reverent diffidence. We have probably read as much on these subjects as many of our readers, and that with deep interest and attention; but we never met with so cogent a demonstration as is contained in this Essay, of the theological difficulties besetting the popular doctrine of a plurality of worlds. Had God vouchsafed to tell us that it was so, there would have been an end of the matter, and with it all difficulty would have disappeared, to one whose whole life, as the Christian’s ought to be, is one continued act of faith; but God has thought fit to preserve an awful silence concerning his dealings with other scenes of physical existence: while He has as distinctly revealed that of spiritual beings whose functions are vitally connected with man, as he exists upon the earth, the subject of a sublime economy, which, we are assured by Inspiration, that the angels desire to look into. The Christian implicitly believes that there IS a Heaven, where the presence of the adorable Deity constitutes happiness, to the most exalted of His ministers and servants, perfect and ineffable: happiness in which He has solemnly assured us that we may hereafter participate: for since the beginning of the world, men have not heard, nor perceived by the ear, neither hath the eye seen, O God, beside Thee, what He hath prepared for him that waiteth for Him.^[127] This, our Maker has told us; he has not told us the other, nor anything about it: no, not when He visited the earth, unless we can dimly see such a significance in the words, “In my Father’s house (οἰκίᾳ) are many mansions (μοναι): if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place (τόπον) for you.” The word μονη is used twice in the New Testament, and in the same chapter:^[128] in the verse already quoted, and in the 23d—“If a man love me, he will keep my words: and my Father will love him, and we will come unto him, and make our abode (μονὴν) with him.” Here are the three words in the same verse, οἰκια, μονη, τοπος. In my Father’s house there are μοναὶ πολλαὶ, many places of abode. Heaven is the οικια, our common place, and it has many subdivisions, room enough for angels, as well as for the spirits of just men made perfect. It is possibly an allusion to the temple, God’s earthly house, which had many chambers in it. But who shall require us to believe that this μονη, was a star, or planet? It may be so, it may not; there can be no sin in a devout mind conjecturing on the subject; but the Essayist does not meddle with these solemn topics: confining himself to the physical reasons for conjecturing, with more or less probability, that the stars are habitations for human beings. We take our leave of him with a quotation from his Dialogue, couched in grave and dignified terms:—

“U. But your arguments are merely negative. You prove only that we do not know the planets to be inhabited.

“Z. If, when I have proved that point, men were to cease to talk as if they knew that the planets are inhabited, I should have produced a great effect.

“U. Your basis is too narrow for so vast a superstructure, as that all the rest of the universe, besides the earth, is uninhabited.

“Z. Perhaps; for my philosophical basis is only the earth—the only known habitation. But on this same narrow basis, the earth, you build up a superstructure that other bodies ARE inhabited. What I do is, to show that each part of your structure is void of tenacity, and cannot stand.

“It is probable that when we have reduced to their real value all the presumptions drawn from physical reasoning, for the opinion of planets and stars being either inhabited, or uninhabited, the face of these will be perceived to be so small, that the belief of all thoughtful persons on this subject will be determined by moral, metaphysical, and theological consideration.”^[129]

“More Worlds than One” will not, we are constrained to say, in our opinion, add to the well-earned reputation of Sir David Brewster. It is a hasty and slight performance, entirely of a popular character; and disfigured throughout, not only by an overweening confidence and peremptoriness of assertion, but by tinges of personality and outbursts of heat that are indeed strange disturbing forces in a philosophical discussion. Dr Whewell’s Essay is a work requiring, in a worthy answer, great consideration; and we do not think that “More Worlds than One” evidences a tithe of such consideration. Nor does Sir David show a proper respect for his opponent; nor has he taken a proper measure of his formidable proportions as a logical and scientific disputant, one who should be answered in a cold and exact spirit; or it were much better to leave him alone. Sir David must forgive us if we quote a sentence or two from devout old John Wesley, a man who had several points of greatness in him:—

“Be not so positive, especially with regard to things which are neither easy, nor necessary to be determined. When I was young, I was sure of everything. In a few years, having been mistaken a thousand times, I was not half so sure of most things as before. At present, I am hardly sure of anything, but what God has revealed to me!... Upon the whole, an ingenious man may easily flourish on this head. How much more glorious is it for the great God to have created innumerable worlds than this little globe only!... Do you ask, then, what is This Spot to the great God? Why, as much as millions of systems. Great and LITTLE have place with regard to us; but before Him, they vanish away!”^[130]

Fontenelle has much to answer for, if we may judge from what has been said concerning the extent and nature of the influence he has exercised on thoughtless minds. That flippant but brilliant trifler, Horace Walpole, for instance, declared that the reading Fontenelle had made him a sceptic! He maintained, on the supposition of a plurality of worlds, the impossibility of any revelation! That the reception of this opinion was sufficient, with him, to destroy the credibility of all revelation!^[131] This ground he has, if this report be true, the honour of occupying with Thomas Paine.

Let us, however, think and speak and act differently, remembering fearfully, how often the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God. Is it, indeed, consistent with even mere worldly wisdom, on the ground of an assumption with regard to inhabited planets, to reject a belief founded on direct and positive proofs, such as is the belief in the truths of Natural and Revealed Religion?

“Newton,” says Dr Chalmers, in his discourse on the Modesty of True Science, “knew the boundary which hemmed him. He knew that he had not thrown one particle of light on the moral or religious history of these planetary regions. He had not ascertained what visits of communication they received from the God who upholds them. But he knew that the fact of a Real Visit to this Planet had such evidence to rest upon that it was not to be disposted by any aerial imagination.” Let this noble and devout spirit be in us: both Faith and Reason assuring us, that we stand, in Scriptural Truth, safe and immovable, like a wise man, which built his house upon a rock.^[132]

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