← catalogue

The Plurality of Worlds

by William Whewell · English · Gutenberg #36288 · 577,786 chars · public domain (US)

The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Plurality of Worlds
    
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online
at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States,
you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located
before using this eBook.

Title: The Plurality of Worlds

Author: William Whewell

Author of introduction, etc.: Edward Hitchcock


        
Release date: May 31, 2011 [eBook #36288]
                Most recently updated: January 7, 2021

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/36288

Credits: Produced by Jonathan Ingram, Stephen H. Sentoff and the
        Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
        (This file was produced from images generously made
        available by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.)


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE PLURALITY OF WORLDS ***




Produced by Jonathan Ingram, Stephen H. Sentoff and the
Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
(This file was produced from images generously made
available by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.)







[Illustration: 51 Messier; 99 Messier]




  THE
  PLURALITY OF WORLDS.

            On Nature's Alps I stand,
    And see a thousand firmaments beneath!
    A thousand systems, as a thousand grains!
    So much a stranger, _and so late arrived_,
    How shall man's curious spirit not inquire
    What are the natives of this world sublime,
    Of this so distant, unterrestrial sphere,
    Where mortal, untranslated, never strayed?

                                        NIGHT THOUGHTS.

  WITH AN INTRODUCTION
  BY
  EDWARD HITCHCOCK, D.D.,

  PRESIDENT OF AMHERST COLLEGE, AND PROFESSOR OF
  THEOLOGY AND GEOLOGY.

  BOSTON:
  GOULD AND LINCOLN,
  50 WASHINGTON STREET.

  1854.

  Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1854, by
  GOULD AND LINCOLN,
  In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of
  the District of Massachusetts.




PREFACE.


Although the opinions presented in the following Essay are put forwards
without claiming for them any value beyond what they may derive from the
arguments there offered, they are not published without some fear of
giving offence. It will be a curious, but not a very wonderful event, if
it should now be deemed as blamable to doubt the existence of
inhabitants of the Planets and Stars, as, three centuries ago, it was
held heretical to teach that doctrine. Yet probably there are many who
will be willing to see the question examined by all the light which
modern science can throw upon it; and such an examination can be
undertaken to no purpose, except the view which has of late been
generally rejected have the arguments in its favor fairly stated and
candidly considered.

Though Revealed Religion contains no doctrine relative to the
inhabitants of planets and stars; and though, till within the last three
centuries, no Christian thinker deemed such a doctrine to be required,
in order to complete our view of the attributes of the Creator; yet it
is possible that at the present day, when the assumption of such
inhabitants is very generally made and assented to, many persons have so
mingled this assumption with their religious belief, that they regard it
as an essential part of Natural Religion. If any such persons find their
religious convictions interfered with, and their consolatory impressions
disturbed, by what is said in this Essay, the Author will deeply regret
to have had any share in troubling any current of pious thought
belonging to the time. But, as some excuse, it may be recollected, that
if such considerations had prevailed, this very doctrine, of the
Plurality of Worlds, would never have been publicly maintained. And if
such considerations are to have weight, it must be recollected, on the
other hand, that there are many persons to whom the assumption of an
endless multitude of Worlds appears difficult to reconcile with the
belief of that which, as the Christian Revelation teaches us, has been
done for this our World of Earth. In this conflict of religious
difficulties, on a point which rather belongs to science than to
religion, perhaps philosophical arguments may be patiently listened to,
if urged as arguments merely; and in that hope, they are here stated,
without reserve and without exaggeration.

All speculations on subjects in which Science and Religion bear upon
each other, are liable to one of the two opposite charges;--that the
speculator sets Philosophy and Religion at variance; or that he warps
Philosophy into a conformity with Religion. It is confidently hoped that
no candid reader will bring either of these charges against the present
Essay. With regard to the latter, the arguments must speak for
themselves. To the Author at least, they appear to be of no small
philosophical force; though he is quite ready to weigh carefully and
candidly any answers which may be offered to them. With regard to the
amount of agreement between our Philosophy and Religion, it may perhaps
be permitted to the Author to say, that while it appears to him that
some of his philosophical conclusions fall in very remarkably with
certain points of religious doctrine, he is well aware that Philosophy
alone can do little in providing man with the consolations, hopes,
supports, and convictions which Religion offers; and he acknowledges it
as a ground of deep gratitude to the Author of all good, that man is
not left to Philosophy for those blessings; but has a fuller assurance
of them, by a more direct communication from Him.

Perhaps, too, the Author may be allowed to say, that he has tried to
give to the book, not only a moral, but a scientific interest; by
collecting his scientific facts from the best authorities, and the most
recent discoveries. He would flatter himself, in particular, that the
view of the Nebulae and of the Solar System, which he has here given, may
be not unworthy of some attention on the part of astronomers and
observers, as an occasion of future researches in the skies.




  CONTENTS
  OF
  THE PLURALITY OF WORLDS.


                                           PAGE

  Introduction.                               9

  CHAPTER I.
  Astronomical Discoveries.                  17

  CHAPTER II.
  Astronomical Objection to Religion.        33

  CHAPTER III.
  The Answer from the Microscope.            41

  CHAPTER IV.
  Further Statement of the Difficulty.       49

  CHAPTER V.
  Geology.                                   72

  CHAPTER VI.
  The Argument from Geology.                 98

  CHAPTER VII.
  The Nebulae.                               135

  CHAPTER VIII.
  The Fixed Stars.                          163

  CHAPTER IX.
  The Planets.                              192

  CHAPTER X.
  Theory of the Solar System.               219

  CHAPTER XI.
  The Argument from Design.                 236

  CHAPTER XII.
  The Unity of the World.                   275

  CHAPTER XIII.
  The Future.                               292




  INTRODUCTORY NOTICE
  TO THE
  AMERICAN EDITION.


It is an interesting feature in the literature of our day, that so many
minds are turning their attention to the bearings of science upon
religion. With a few honorable exceptions, Christian scholars have
regarded this as a most unpromising field, which they have left to the
tilting and gladiatorship of scepticism. But we owe it mainly to the
disclosures of geology, that the tables are beginning to be turned. For
a long time suspected of being in league with infidelity, it was treated
as an enemy, and Christians thought only of fortifying themselves
against its attacks. But they are finding out, that if this science has
been seen in the enemy's camp, it was only because of their jealousy
that it was compelled to remain there; like captives that are sometimes
pushed forwards to cover the front rank and receive the fire of their
friends. Judging from the number of works, some of them very able, that
appear almost monthly from the press, in which illustrations of
religion are drawn from geology, we may infer that this science is
beginning to be recognized by the friends of religion as an efficient
auxiliary.

"The Plurality of Worlds," now republished, is the most recent work of
this description that has fallen under our notice. We can see no reason
why an Essay of so much ability, in which the reasoning is so
dispassionate, and opponents are treated so candidly, should appear
anonymously. True, the author takes ground against some opinions widely
maintained respecting the extent of the inhabited universe, and seems to
suppose that he shall meet with little sympathy; and this may be his
reason, though in our view quite insufficient, for remaining incognito.
We think he will find that there are a secret seven thousand, who never
have bowed their understandings to a belief of many of the doctrines
which he combats, and he might reasonably calculate that his reasoning
will add seven thousand more to the number. We confess, however, that
though we have long been of this number to a certain extent, we cannot
go as far as this writer has done in his conclusions.

All the world is acquainted with Dr. Chalmers' splendid Astronomical
Discourses. Assuming, or rather supposing that he has proved, that the
universe contains a vast number of worlds peopled like our own, he
imagines the infidel to raise an objection to the mission of the Son of
God, on the ground that this world is too insignificant to receive such
an extraordinary interposition. His replies to this objection, drawn
chiefly from our ignorance, are ingenious and convincing. But the author
of the Plurality of Worlds doubts the premises on which the objection is
founded. He thinks the facts of science will not sustain the conclusion
that many of the heavenly bodies are inhabited; certainly not with moral
and intellectual beings like man. Nay, by making his appeal to geology,
he thinks the evidence strong against such an opinion. This science
shows us that this world was once certainly in a molten state, and very
probably, at a still earlier date, may have been dissipated into
self-luminous vapor, like the nebulae or the comets. Immense periods,
then, must have passed before any organic structures, such as have since
peopled the earth, could have existed. And during the vast cycles that
have elapsed since the first animals and plants appeared upon the globe,
it was not in a proper condition to have sustained any other than the
inferior races. Accordingly, it has been only a few thousand years since
man appeared.

Now, so far as astronomy has revealed the condition of other worlds,
almost all of them appear to be passing through those preparatory
changes which the earth underwent previous to man's creation. What are
the unresolvable nebulae and most of the comets also, but intensely
heated vapor and gas? What is the sun but a molten globe, or perhaps
gaseous matter condensed so as to possess almost the density of water?
The planets beyond Mars, also, (excluding the asteroids,) appear to be
in a liquid condition, but not from heat, and therefore may be composed
of water, or some fluid perhaps lighter than water; or at least be
covered by such fluid. Moreover, so great is their distance from the
sun, that his light and heat could not sustain organic beings such as
exist upon the earth. Of the inferior planets, Mercury is so near the
sun that it would be equally unfit for the residence of such beings.
Mars, Venus, and the Moon, then, appear to be the only worlds known to
us capable of sustaining a population at all analogous to that upon
earth. But of these, the Moon appears to be merely a mass of
extinguished volcanos, with neither water nor atmosphere. It has
proceeded farther in the process of refrigeration than the earth,
because it is smaller; and in its present state, is manifestly unfit for
the residence either of rational or irrational creatures. So that we are
left with only Mars and Venus in the solar system to which the common
arguments in favor of other worlds being inhabited, will apply.

But are not the fixed stars the suns of other systems? We will thank
those who think so, to read the chapter in this work that treats of the
fixed stars, and we presume they will be satisfied that at least many of
these bodies exhibit characters quite irreconcilable with such an
hypothesis. And if some are not central suns, the presumption that the
rest are, is weakened, and we must wait till a greater perfection of
instruments shall afford us some positive evidence, before we know
whether our solar system is a type of any others.

Thus far, it seems to us, our author has firm ground, both geological
and astronomical, to stand upon. But he does not stop here. He takes the
position that probably our earth may be the only body in the solar
system, nay in the universe, where an intellectual, moral and immortal
being, like man, has an existence. He makes the "earth the domestic
hearth of the solar system; adjusted between the hot and fiery haze on
one side, and the cold and watery vapor on the other: the only fit
region to be a domestic hearth, a seat of habitation." He says that "it
is quite agreeable to analogy that the solar system should have borne
but one fertile flower. And even if any number of the fixed stars were
also found to be barren flowers of the sky, we need not think the powers
of creation wasted, or frustrated, thrown away, or perverted." He does
not deny that some other worlds may be the abodes of plants and animals
such as peopled this earth during the long ages of preadamic history.
But he regards the creation of man as the great event of our world. He
looks upon the space between man and the highest of the irrational
creatures, as a vast one: for though in physical structure they approach
one another, in intellectual and moral powers they cannot be compared.
He does not think it derogatory to Divine Wisdom to have created and
arranged all the other bodies of the universe to give convenience and
elegance to the abode of such a being; especially since this was to be
the theatre of the work of redemption.

Now we sympathize strongly in views that give dignity and exaltation to
man, and not at all with that debasing philosophy, so common at this
day, that looks upon him as little more than a somewhat improved orang.
But we cannot admit that man is the only exalted created being to be
found among the vast array of worlds around us. Geology does, indeed,
teach us, that it is no disparagement of Divine Wisdom and benevolence
to make a world--and if one, why not many--the residence of inferior
creatures; nay to leave it without inhabitants through untold ages. But
it also shows us, that when such worlds have passed through these
preparatory changes, rational and immortal beings may be placed upon
them. Nay, does not the history of our world show us that this seems to
be the grand object of such vast periods of preparation. And is it not
incredible, that amid the countless bodies of the universe, a single
globe only, and that a small one, should have reached the condition
adapted to the residence of beings made in the image of God? Of what
possible use to man are those numberless worlds visible only through the
most powerful telescopes? Surely such a view gives us a very narrow idea
of the plans and purposes of Jehovah, and one not sustained in our
opinion by the analogies of science.

There is another principle to which our author attaches, as we think,
too little importance in this connection. When we see how vast is the
variety of organic beings on this globe, and how manifold the conditions
of their existence; how exactly adapted they are to the solid, the
liquid, and the gaseous states of matter, can we doubt that rational and
intelligent beings may be adapted to physical conditions in other worlds
widely diverse from those on this globe? May not spirits be connected
with bodies much heavier, or much lighter, than on earth; nay, with mere
tenuous ether; and those bodies, perhaps, be better adapted to the play
of intellect than ours; and be unaffected by temperatures which, on
earth, would be fatal? It does seem to us that such conclusions are
legitimate inferences from the facts of science; and if so, we can
hardly avoid the conclusion that there may be races of intelligent
beings upon other worlds where the condition of things is widely
different from that on earth. Yet there is a limit to this principle;
and when we can prove another world to be in a similar condition to our
earth, when it was inhabited by preadamic races, or not at all
inhabited, the presumption is strong, that such a world has inhabitants
of a like character, or none at all.

Our author makes but a slight allusion to some most important statements
of revelation, that seem to us to bear strongly upon the hypothesis
which he adopts. We refer to the existence of angels, holy and unholy.
In the history of the latter, we learn that _they kept not their first
estate, but left their own habitation_. Have we not here an example of
other rational creatures, more exalted than man, who, like him, have
fallen from their first estate; and does not the presumption hence
arise, that there may be similar examples in other worlds? And is there
not a probability, that holy angels now in heaven, may be rational
intelligences who have passed a successful probation in other worlds? It
does seem to us, that these biblical facts make the hypothesis of our
author respecting man extremely improbable.

But though we must demur as to some of the views of this work, we can
cordially recommend its perusal to intelligent and reasoning minds. It
is an effort in the right direction, and we think will do much to
correct some false notions respecting the Plurality of Worlds. And even
the author's peculiar hypothetical views are sustained with much
ability. He states the facts of geology and astronomy with great
clearness and correctness, and seems quite familiar with mathematical
reasoning. Nor does he advance opinions that come into collision with
natural or revealed religion; though, as already stated, we think his
favorite notions narrow our conceptions of the Divine plans and
purposes. We predict for the work an extended circulation among
scientific men and theologians; and commend it with confidence to all
readers--and in our country they are numerous--who are fond of tracing
out the connection between science and religion.

                                        E. H.
                                        Amherst College, April, 1854.




THE
PLURALITY OF WORLDS.




CHAPTER I.

ASTRONOMICAL DISCOVERIES.


"When I consider the heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the
stars, which thou hast ordained; What is man, that thou art mindful of
him? and the son of man, that thou visitest him?"

1. These striking words of the Hebrew Psalmist have been made, by an
eloquent and pious writer of our own time, the starting point of a
remarkable train of speculation. Dr. Chalmers, in his _Astronomical
Discourses_, has treated the reflection thus suggested, in connection
with such an aspect of the heavens and the stars, the earth and the
universe, as modern astronomy presents to us. Even from the point of
view in which the ancient Hebrew looked at the stars; seeing only their
number and splendor, their lofty position, and the vast space which they
visibly occupy in the sky; compared with the earth, which lies dark, and
mean, and perhaps small in extent, far beneath them, and on which man
has his habitation; it appeared wonderful, and scarcely credible, that
the maker of all that array of luminaries, the lord of that wide and
magnificent domain, should occupy himself with the concerns of men: and
yet, without a belief in His fatherly care and goodness to us,
thoughtful and religious persons, accustomed to turn their minds
constantly to a Supreme Governor and constant Benefactor, are left in a
desolate and bewildered state of feeling. The notion that while the
heavens are the work of God's fingers, the sun, moon, and stars ordained
by him, He is _not_ mindful of man, does not regard him, does not visit
him, was not tolerable to the thought of the Psalmist. While we read, we
are sure that he believed that, however insignificant and mean man might
be, in comparison with the other works of God,--however difficult it
might seem to conceive, that he should be found worthy the regards and
the visits of the Creator of All,--yet that God _was_ mindful of him,
and _did_ visit him. The question, "What is man, that this is so?"
implies that there is an answer, whether man can discover it or not.
"_What_ is man, that God is mindful of him?" indicates a belief,
unshaken, however much perplexed, that man is _something_, of such a
kind that God _is_ mindful of him.

2. But if there was room for this questioning, and cause for this
perplexity, to a contemplative person, who looked at the skies, with
that belief concerning the stars, which the ancient Hebrew possessed,
the question recurs with far greater force, and the perplexity is
immeasurably increased, by the knowledge, concerning the stars, which is
given to us by the discoveries of modern astronomy. The Jew probably
believed the earth to be a region, upon the whole, level, however
diversified with hills and valleys, and the skies to be a vault arched
over this level;--a firmament in which the moon and the stars were
placed. What magnitude to assign to this vault, he had no means of
knowing; and indeed, the very aspect of the nocturnal heavens, with the
multitude of stars, of various brightness, which come into view, one set
after another, as the light of day dies away, suggests rather the notion
of their being scattered through a vast depth of space, at various
distances, than of their being so many lights fastened to a single
vaulted surface. But however he might judge of this, he regarded them as
placed in a space, of which the earth was the central region. The host
of heaven all had reference to the earth. The sun and the moon were
there, in order to give light to it, by day and by night. And if the
stars had not that for their principal office, as indeed the amount of
light which they gave was not such as to encourage such a belief,--and
perhaps the perception, that the stars must have been created for some
other object than to give light to man, was one of the principal
circumstances which suggested the train of thought that we are now
considering;--yet still, the region of the stars had the earth for its
centre and base. Perhaps the Psalmist, at a subsequent period of his
contemplations, when he was pondering the reflections which he has
expressed in this passage, might have been led to think that the stars
were placed there in order to draw man's thoughts to the greatness of
the Creator of all things; to give some light to his mental, rather than
to his bodily eye; to show how far His mode of working transcends man's
faculties; to suggest that there are things in heaven, very different
from the things which are on earth. If he thought thus, he was only
following a train of thought on which contemplative minds, in all ages
and countries, have often dwelt; and which we cannot, even now,
pronounce to be either unfounded or exhausted; as we trust hereafter to
show. But whether or not this be so, we may be certain that the Psalmist
regarded the stars, as things having a reference to the earth, and yet
not resembling the earth; as works of God's fingers, very different from
the earth with its tribes of inhabitants; as luminaries, not worlds. In
the feeling of awe and perplexity, which made him ask, "What is man that
thou art mindful of him?" there was no mixture of a persuasion that
there were, in those luminaries, creatures, like man, the children and
subjects of God; and therefore, like man, requiring his care and
attention. In asking, "What is man, that thou visitest him?" there was
no latent comparison, to make the question imply, "that thou visitest
_him_, rather than those who dwell in those abodes?" It was the
multitude and magnificence of God's works, which made it seem strange
that he should care for a _thing_ so small and mean as man; not the
supposed multitude of God's intelligent creatures inhabiting those
works, which made it seem strange that he should attend to every
_person_ upon this earth. It was not that the Psalmist thought that,
among a multitude of earths, all peopled like this earth, man might seem
to be in danger of being overlooked and neglected by his Maker; but
that, there being only one earth, occupied by frail, feeble, sinful,
short-lived creatures, it might be unworthy the regards of Him who dwelt
in regions of eternal light and splendor, unsullied by frailty,
inaccessible to corruption.

3. This, we can have no doubt, or something resembling this, was the
Psalmist's view, when he made the reflection, which we have taken as the
basis of our remarks. And even in this view, (which, after all that
science has done, is perhaps still the most natural and familiar,) the
reflection is extremely striking; and the words cannot be uttered
without finding an echo in the breast of every contemplative and
religious person. But this view is, as most readers at this time are
aware, very different from that presented to us by Modern Astronomy. The
discoveries made by astronomers are supposed by most persons to have
proved, or to have made it in the highest degree probable, that this
view of the earth, as the sole habitation of intelligent subjects of
God's government; and of the stars, as placed in a region of which the
earth is the centre, and yet differing in their nature from this lower
world; is altogether erroneous. According to astronomers, the earth is
not a level space, but a globe. Some of the stars which we see in the
vault of heaven, are globes, like it; some smaller than the earth, some
larger. There are reasons, drawn from analogy, for believing that these
globes, the other planets, are inhabited by living creatures, as the
earth is. The earth is not at rest, with the celestial luminaries
circulating above it, as the ancients believed, but itself moves in a
circle about the sun, in the course of every year; and the other planets
also move round the sun in like manner, in circles, some within and some
without that which the earth describes. This collection of planets, thus
circulating about the sun, is the SOLAR SYSTEM: of which the earth thus
forms a very small part. Jupiter and Saturn are much larger than the
earth. Mars and Venus are nearly as large. If these be inhabited, as the
Earth is, which the analogy of their form, movements and conditions,
seems to suggest, the population of the earth is a very small portion of
the population of the solar system. And if the mere number of the
subjects of God's government could produce any difficulty in the
application of his providence to them, a person to whom this view of the
world which we inhabit had been disclosed, might well, and with far more
reason than the Psalmist, exclaim, "Lord, what is man, that thou art
mindful of him? the inhabitants of this Earth, that thou regardest him?"

4. But this is only the first step in the asserted revelations of
astronomy. Some of the stars are, as we have said, planets of the kind
just described. But these stars are a few only:--five, or at most six,
of those visible to the unassisted eye of man. All the rest, innumerable
as they appear, and numerous as they really are, are, it is found,
objects of another kind. They are not, as the planets are, opaque
globes, deriving their light from a sun, about which they circulate.
They shine by a light of their own. They are of the nature of the sun,
not of the planets. That they appear mere specks of light, arises from
their being at a vast distance from us. At a vast distance they
undoubtedly are; for even with our most powerful telescopes, they still
appear mere specks of light;--mere luminous points. They do not, as the
planets do, when seen through telescopes, exhibit to us a circular face
or disk, capable of being magnified and distinguished into parts and
features. But this impossibility of magnifying them by means of
telescopes, does not at all make us doubt that they may be far larger
than the planets. For we know, from other sources of information, that
their distance is immensely greater than that of any of the planets. We
can measure the bodies of the solar system;--the earth, by absolutely
going round a part of it, or in other ways; the other bodies of the
system, by comparing their positions, as seen from different parts of
the earth. In this manner we find that the earth is a globe 8,000 miles
in diameter. In this way, again, we find that the circle which the earth
describes round the sun has, in round numbers, a radius about 24,000
times the earth's radius; that is, nearly a hundred millions of miles.
The earth is, at one time, a hundred millions of miles on one side of
the sun; and at another time, half a year afterwards, a hundred millions
of miles on the other side. Of the bright stars which shine by their own
light,--the _fixed stars_, as we call them, (to distinguish them from
the planets, the _wandering stars_,)--if any one were at any moderate
distance from us, we should see it change its apparent place with regard
to the others, in consequence of our thus changing our point of view two
hundred millions of miles: just as a distant spire changes its apparent
place with regard to the more distant mountain, when we move from one
window of our house to the other. But no such change of place is
discernible in any of the fixed stars: or at least, if we believe the
most recent asserted discoveries of astronomers, the change is so small
as to imply a distance in the star, of more than two hundred thousand
times the radius of the earth's orbit, which is, itself, as we have
said, one hundred millions of miles.[1] This distance is so vastly
great, that we can very well believe that the fixed stars, though to our
best telescopes they appear only as points of light, are really as large
as our sun, and would give as much light as he does, if we could
approach as near to them. For since they are thus, the nearest of them,
two hundred thousand times as far off as he is, even if we could magnify
them a thousand times, which we can hardly do, they would still be only
one two-hundredth of the breadth of the sun; and thus, still a mere
point.

5. But if each fixed star be of the nature of the sun, and not smaller
than the sun, does not analogy lead us to suppose that they have, some
of them at least, planets circulating about them, as our sun has? If the
Sun is the centre of the Solar System, why should not Sirius, (one of
the brightest of the fixed stars,) be the centre of the _Sirian System_?
And why should not that system have as many planets, with the same
resemblances and differences of the figure, movements, and conditions of
the different planets, as this? Why should not the Sirian System be as
great and as varied as the solar system? And this being granted, why
should not these planets be inhabited, as men have inferred the other
planets of the solar system, as well as the earth, to be? And thus we
have, added to the population of the universe of which we have already
spoken, a number (so far as we have reason to believe) not inferior to
the number of inhabitants of the solar system: this number being,
according to all the analogies, very many fold that of the population of
the whole earth?

And this is the conclusion, when we reason from one star only, from
Sirius. But the argument is the same, from each of the stars. For we
have no reason to think that Sirius, though one of the brightest, is
more like our sun than any of the others is. The others appear less
bright in various degrees, probably because they are further removed
from us in various degrees. They may not be all of the same size and
brightness; it is very unlikely that they are. But they may as easily be
larger than the sun, as smaller. The natural assumption for us to make,
having no ground for any other opinion, is, that they are, upon the
average, of the size of our sun. On that assumption, we have as many
solar systems as we have fixed stars; and, it may be, six or ten, or
twenty times as many inhabited globes; inhabited by creatures of whom
we must suppose, by analogy, that God is mindful, if he is mindful of
us. The question recurs with overwhelming force, if we still follow the
same train of reflection: "What is man, that God is mindful of him?"

6. But we have not yet exhausted the views which thus add to the force
of this reflection. The fixed stars, which appear to the eye so
numerous, so innumerable, in the clear sky on a moonless night, are not
really so numerous as they seem. To the naked eye, there are not visible
more than four or five thousand. The astronomers of Greece, and of other
countries, even in ancient times, counted them, mapped them, and gave
them names and designations. But Astronomy, who thus began her career by
diminishing, in some degree, the supposed numbers of the host of heaven,
has ended by immeasurably increasing them. The first application of the
telescope to the skies discovered a vast number of fixed stars,
previously unseen: and every improvement in that instrument has
disclosed myriads of new stars, visibly smaller than those which had
before been seen; and smaller and smaller, as the power of vision is
more and more strengthened by new aids from art; as if the regions of
space contained an inexhaustible supply of such objects; as if infinite
space were strewn with stars in every part of it to which vision could
reach. The small patch of the sky which forms, at any moment, the field
of view of one of the great telescopes of Herschel, discloses to him as
many stars, and those of as many different magnitudes, as the whole
vault of the sky exhibits to the naked eye. But the magnifying power of
such an instrument only discloses, it does not make, these stars. There
appears to be quite as much reason to believe, that each of these
telescopic stars is a sun, surrounded by its special family of planets,
as to believe that Sirius or Arcturus is so. Here, then, we have again
an extension, indefinite to our apprehension, of the universe, as
occupied by material structures; and if so, why not by a living
population, such as the material structures which are nearest to us
support?

7. Even yet we have not finished the series of successive views which
astronomers have had opened to them, extending more and more their
spectacle of the fulness and largeness of the universe. Not only does
the telescope disclose myriads of stars, unseen to the naked eye, and
new myriads with each increase of the powers of the instrument; but it
discloses also patches of light, which, at first at least, do not appear
to consist of stars: _Nebulae_, as they are called; bright specks, it
might seem, of stellar matter, thin, diffused, and irregular; not
gathered into regular and definite forms, such as we may suppose the
stars to be. Every one who has noticed the starry skies, may understand
what is the general aspect of such nebulae, by looking at the milky way
or galaxy, an irregular band of nebulous light, which runs quite round
the sky; "A circling zone, powdered with stars;" as Milton calls it. But
the nebulae of which I more especially speak, are minute patches,
discovered mainly by the telescope, and in a few instances only
discernible by the naked eye. And what I have to remark especially
concerning them at present is, that though to visual powers which barely
suffice to discern them, they appear like mere bright clouds, patches of
diffused starry matter; yet that, when examined by visual powers of a
higher order, by more penetrating telescopes, these patches of
continuous feeble light are, in many instances at least, distinguishable
into definite points: they are found, in fact, to be aggregations of
stars; which before appeared as diffused light, only because our
telescopes, though strong enough to reveal to our senses the aggregate
mass of light of the cluster, were not strong enough to enable us to
discern any one of the stars of which the cluster consists. The galaxy,
in this way, may, in almost every part, be _resolved_ into separate
stars; and thus, the multitude of the stars in the region of the sky
occupied by that winding stream of light, is, when examined by a
powerful telescope, inconceivably numerous.

8. The small telescopic nebulae are of various forms; some of them may be
in the shape of flat strata, or cakes, as it were, of stars, of small
thickness, compared with the extent of the stratum. Now, if our sun were
one of the individuals of such a stratum, we, looking at the stars of
the stratum from his neighborhood, should see them very numerous and
close in the direction of the edge of the stratum, and comparatively few
and rare in other parts of the sky. We should, in short, see a galaxy
running round the sky, as we see in fact. And hence Sir William Herschel
has inferred, that our sun, with its attendant planets, has its place in
such a stratum; and that it thus belongs to a host of stars which are,
in a certain way, detached from the other nebulae which we see. Perhaps,
he adds, some of those other nebulae are beds and masses of stars not
less numerous than those which compose our galaxy, and which occupy a
larger portion of the sky, only because we are immersed in the interior
of the crowd. And thus, a minute speck of nebulous light, discernible
only by a good telescope, may contain not only as many stars as occupy
the sky to ordinary vision, but as many as is the number into which the
most powerful telescope resolves the milky light of the galaxy. And of
such resolvable nebulae the number which are discovered in the sky is
very great, their forms being of the most various kind; so that many of
them may be, for aught we can tell, more amply stocked with stars than
the galaxy is. And if all the stars, or a large proportion of the
stars, of the galaxy, be suns attended by planets, and these planets
peopled with living creatures, what notion must we form of the
population of the universe, when we have thus to reckon as many galaxies
as there are resolvable nebulae! the stock of discoverable nebulae being
as yet unexhausted by the powers of our telescopes; and the possibility
of resolving them into stars being also an operation which has not yet
been pursued to its limit.

9. For, (and this is the last step which I shall mention in this long
series of ascending steps of multitude apparently infinite,) it now
begins to be suspected that not some nebulae only, but _all_, are
resolvable into separate stars. When the nebulae were first carefully
studied, it was supposed that they consisted, as they appeared to
consist, of some diffused and incoherent matter, not of definite and
limited masses. It was conceived that they were not stars, but Stellar
Matter in the course of formation into stars; and it was conceived,
further, that by the gradual concentration of such matter, whirling
round its centre while it concentrated, not only stars, that is, suns,
might be formed, but also systems of planets, circling round these suns;
and thus this _Nebular Hypothesis_, as it has been termed, gave a kind
of theory of the origin and formation of systems, such as the solar
system. But the great telescope which Lord Rosse has constructed, and
which is much more powerful than any optical instrument yet fabricated,
has been directed to many of the nebulae, whose appearance had given rise
to this theory; and the result has been, in a great number of cases,
that the nebulae are proved to consist entirely of distinct stars; and
that the diffused nebulous appearance is discovered to have been an
illusion, resulting from the accumulated light of a vast number of small
stars near to each other. In this manner, we are led to regard every
nebula, not as an imperfectly formed star or system, but as a vast
multitude of stars, and, for aught we can tell, of systems; for the
apparent smallness and nearness of these stars are, it is thought, mere
results of the vast distance at which they are placed from us. And thus,
perhaps, all the nebulae are, what some of them seem certainly to be, so
many vast armies of stars, each of which stars, we have reason to
believe, is of the nature of our sun; and may have, and according to
analogy has, an accompaniment of living creatures, such as our sun has,
certainly on the earth, probably, it is thought, in the other planets.

10. It is difficult to grasp, in one view, the effect of the successive
steps from number to number, from distance to distance, which we have
thus been measuring over. We may, however, state them again briefly, in
the way of enumeration.

From our own place on the earth, we pass, in thought, as a first step,
to the whole globe of the Earth; from this, as a second step, to the
Planets, the other globes which compose the Solar System. A third step
carries us to the Fixed Stars, as visible to the naked eye; very
numerous and immensely distant. The transition to the Telescopic Stars
makes a fourth step; and in this, the number and the space are
increased, almost beyond the power of numbers to express how many there
are, and at what distances. But a fifth step:--perhaps all this array of
stars, obvious and telescopic, only make up our Nebula; while the
universe is occupied by other Nebulae innumerable, so distant that, seen
from them, our nebula, though including, it may be, stars of the 20th
magnitude, which may be 20 times or 2,000 times more remote than Sirius,
would become a telescopic speck, as their nebulae are to us.

11. Various images and modes of representation have been employed, in
order to convey to the mind some notion of the dimensions of the scheme
of the universe to which we are thus introduced. Thus, we may reckon
that a cannon-ball, moving with its usual original velocity unabated,
would describe the interval between the sun and the earth in about one
year. And this being so, the same missile would, from what has been
said, occupy more, we know not how much more, than 200,000 years in
going to the nearest fixed star: and perhaps a thousand times as much,
in going to other stars belonging to our group; and then again, 200,000
times so much, or some number of the like order, in going from one group
to another. When we have advanced a step or two in this mode of
statement, the velocity of the cannon-ball hardly perceptibly affects
the magnitude of the numbers which we have to use.

And the same nearly is the case if we have recourse to the swiftest
motion with which we are acquainted; that of Light. Light travels, it is
shown by indisputable scientific reasonings, in about eight minutes from
the sun to the earth. Hence we can easily calculate that it would occupy
at least three years to travel as far as Sirius, and probably, three
thousand years, or a much greater number, to reach to the smallest
stars, or to come from them to us. And thus, as Sir W. Herschel
remarked, since light is the only vehicle by which information
concerning these distant bodies is conveyed to us, we do, by seeing
them, receive information, not what they are at this moment, but what
they were, as to visible condition, thousands of years ago. Stars may
have been created when man was created, and yet their light may not have
reached him.[2] Stars may have been extinguished thousands of years
ago, and yet may still be visible to our eyes, by means of the light
which they emitted previous to their extinction, and which has not yet
died away.

12. So vast then are the distances at which the different bodies of the
universe are distributed; and yet so numerous are those bodies. In the
vastness of their distances, there is, indeed, nothing which need
disturb our minds, or which, after a little reflection, is likely to do
so: for when we have said all that can be said, about the largeness of
these distances, still there is no difficulty in finding room for them.
We necessarily conceive _Space_ as being infinite in its extent: however
much space the heavenly bodies occupy, there is space beyond them: if
they are not there, space is there nevertheless. That the stars and
planets are so far from each other, is an arrangement which prevents
their disturbing each other with their mutual attractions, to any
destructive extent; and is an arrangement which the spacious, the
infinite universe, admits of, without any difficulty.

13. But we are more especially concerned with the _Numbers_ of the
heavenly bodies. So many planets about our sun: so many suns, each
perhaps with its family of planets: and then, all these suns making but
one group: and other groups coming into view, one after another, in
seemingly endless succession: and all these planets being of the nature
of our earth, as all these stars are of the nature of our sun:--all
this, presents to us a spectacle of a world--of a countless host of
worlds--of which, when we regard them as thus arranged in planetary
systems, and as having, according to all probability, years and seasons,
days and nights, as we have, we cannot but accept it as at least a
likely suggestion, that they have also inhabitants;--intelligent beings
who can reckon these days and years; who subsist on the fruits which
the season brings forth, and have their daily and yearly occupations,
according to their faculties. When we take, as our scheme of the
universe, such a scheme as this, we may well be overwhelmed with the
number of provinces, besides that in which man dwells, which the empire
of the Lord of all includes; and, recurring to the words of the
Psalmist, we may say with a profundity of meaning immeasurably
augmented--"Lord, what is man?"

It was this view, I conceive, which Dr. Chalmers had in his thoughts, in
pursuing the speculations which I have mentioned, in the outset of this
Essay.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] It is quite to our purpose to recollect the impression which such
discoveries naturally make upon a pious mind.

    Oh! rack me not to such extent,
      These distances belong to Thee;
    The world's too little for Thy tent,
      A grave too big for me!
                                        GEORGE HERBERT.

[2] This thought is, however, older. Young expresses it in his _Night
Thoughts_, Night IX., (published in 1744):

    How distant some of these nocturnal suns!
    So distant (says the sage) 'twere not absurd
    To doubt if beams, set out at nature's birth,
    Are yet arrived at this so foreign world.




CHAPTER II.

THE ASTRONOMICAL OBJECTION TO RELIGION.


1. Such astronomical views, then, as those just stated, we may suppose
to be those to which Chalmers had reference, in the argument of his
_Astronomical Discourses_. These real or supposed discoveries of
astronomers, or a considerable part of them, were the facts which were
present to his mind, and of which he there discusses the bearings upon
religious truths. This multiplicity of systems and worlds, which the
telescopic scrutiny of the stars is assumed to have disclosed, or to
have made probable, is the main feature in the constitution of the
universe, as revealed by science, to which his reflections are directed.
Nor can we say that, in fixing upon this view, he has gone out of his
way, to struggle with obscure and latent difficulties, such as the bulk
of mankind know and care little about. For in reality, such views are
generally diffused in our time and country, are common to all classes of
readers, and as we may venture to express it, are the _popular_ views of
persons of any degree of intellectual culture, who have, directly or
derivatively, accepted the doctrines of modern science. Among such
persons, expressions which imply that the stars are globes of luminous
matter, like the sun; that there are, among them, systems of revolving
bodies, seats of life and of intelligence; are so frequent and
familiar, that those who so speak, do not seem to be aware that, in
using such expressions, they are making any assumption at all; any more
than they suppose themselves to be making assumptions, when they speak
of the globular form of the earth, or of its motion round the sun, or of
its revolution on its axis. It was, therefore, a suitable and laudable
purpose, for a writer like Chalmers, well instructed in science, of
large and comprehensive views with regard both to religion and to
philosophy, of deep and pervasive piety, and master of a dignified and
persuasive eloquence, to employ himself in correcting any erroneous
opinions and impressions respecting the bearing which such scientific
doctrines have upon religious truth. It was his lot to labor among men
of great intellectual curiosity, acuteness, and boldness: it was his
tendency to deal with new views of others on the most various subjects,
religious, philosophical, and social; and, on such subjects, to
originate new views of his own. It fell especially within his province,
therefore, to satisfy the minds of the public who listened to him, with
regard to the conflict, if a conflict there was, or seemed to be,
between new scientific doctrines, and permanent religious verities. He
was, by his culture and his powers, peculiarly fitted, and therefore
peculiarly called, to mediate between the scientific and the religious
world of his time.

2. The scientific doctrine which he especially deals with, in the work
to which I refer, is the multiplicity of worlds;--the existence of many
seats of life, of enjoyment, of intelligence; and it may be, as he
suggests also, of moral law, of transgression, of alienation from God,
and of the need, and of the means, of reconciliation to Him; or of
obedience to Him and sympathy with Him. That if there be many worlds
resembling our world in other respects, they may resemble it in some of
these, is an obvious, and we may say, an irresistible conjecture, in any
speculative mind to which the doctrine itself has been conveyed. Nor can
it fail to be very interesting, to see how such a writer as I have
described deals with such a suggestion; how far he accepts or inclines
to accept it; and if so, what aspect such a view leads him to give to
truths, either belonging to Natural or to Revealed Theology, which,
before the introduction of such a view, were regarded as bearing only
upon the world of which man is the inhabitant.

3. The mode in which Chalmers treats this suggestion, is to regard it as
the ground of an objection to Religion, either Natural or Revealed. He
supposes an objector to take his stand upon the multiplicity of worlds,
assumed or granted as true; and to argue that, since there are so many
worlds beside this, all alike claiming the care, the government, the
goodness, the interposition, of the Creator, it is in the highest degree
extravagant and absurd, to suppose that he has done, for this world,
that which Religion, both Natural and Revealed, represents him as having
done, and as doing. When we are told that God has provided, and is
constantly providing, for the life, the welfare, the comfort of all the
living things which people this earth, we can, by an effort of thought
and reflection, bring ourselves to believe that it is so. When we are
further told that He has given a moral law to man, the intelligent
inhabitant of the earth, and governs him by a moral government, we are
able, or at least the great bulk of thoughtful men, on due consideration
of all the bearings of the case, are able, to accept the conviction,
that this also is so. When we are still farther asked to believe that
the imperfect sway of this moral law over man has required to be
remedied by a special interposition of the Governor of the world, or by
a series of special interpositions, to make the Law clear, and to
remedy the effects of man's transgression of it; this doctrine
also,--according to the old and unscientific view, which represents the
human race as, in an especial manner, the summit and crown of God's
material workmanship, the end of the rest of creation, and the selected
theatre of God's dealings with transgression and with obedience,--we can
conceive, and, as religious persons hold, we can find ample and
satisfactory evidence to believe. But if this world be merely one of
innumerable worlds, all, like it, the workmanship of God; all, the seats
of life, like it; others, like it, occupied by intelligent creatures,
capable of will, of law, of obedience, of disobedience, as man is; to
hold that this world has been the scene of God's care and kindness, and
still more, of his special interpositions, communications, and personal
dealings with its individual inhabitants, in the way which Religion
teaches, is, the objector is conceived to maintain, extravagant and
incredible. It is to select one of the millions of globes which are
scattered through the vast domain of space, and to suppose that one to
be treated in a special and exceptional manner, without any reason for
the assumption of such a peculiarity, except that this globe happens to
be the habitation of us, who make this assumption. If Religion require
us to assume, that one particular corner of the Universe has been thus
singled out, and made an exception to the general rules by which all
other parts of the Universe are governed; she makes, it may be said, a
demand upon our credulity which cannot fail to be rejected by those who
are in the habit of contemplating and admiring those general laws. Can
the Earth be thus the centre of the moral and religious universe, when
it has been shown to have no claim to be the centre of the physical
universe? Is it not as absurd to maintain this, as it would be to hold,
at the present day, the old Ptolemaic hypothesis, which places the
Earth in the centre of the heavenly motions, instead of the newer
Copernican doctrine, which teaches that the Earth revolves round the
Sun? Is not Religion disproved, by the necessity under which she lies,
of making such an assumption as this?

4. Such is, in a general way, the objection to Religion with which
Chalmers deals; and, as I have said, his mode of treating it is highly
interesting and instructive. Perhaps, however, we shall make our
reasonings and speculations apply to a wider class of readers, if we
consider the view now spoken of, not as an objection, urged by an
opponent of religion, but rather as a difficulty, felt by a friend of
religion. It is, I conceive, certain that many of those who are not at
all disposed to argue against religion, but who, on the contrary, feel
that their whole internal comfort and repose are bound up indissolubly
with their religious convictions, are still troubled and dismayed at the
doctrines of the vastness of the universe, and the multitude of worlds,
which they suppose to be taught and proved by astronomy. They have a
profound reverence for the Idea of God; they are glad to acknowledge
their constant and universal dependence upon His preserving power and
goodness; they are ready and desirous to recognize the working of His
providence; they receive the moral law, as His law, with reverence and
submission; they regard their transgressions of this law as sins against
Him; and are eager to find the mode of reconciliation to Him, when thus
estranged from him; they willingly think of God, as near to them. But
while they listen to the evidence which science, as we have said, sets
before them, of the long array of groups, and hosts, and myriads, of
worlds, which are brought to our knowledge, they find themselves
perturbed and distressed. They would willingly think of God as near to
them; but during the progress of this enumeration, He appears, at every
step, to be removed further and further from them. To discover that the
Earth is so large, the number of its inhabitants so great, its form so
different from what man at first imagines it, may perhaps have startled
them; but in this view, there is nothing which a pious mind does not
easily surmount. But if Venus and Mars also have their inhabitants; if
Saturn and Jupiter, globes so much larger than the earth, have a
proportional amount of population; may not man be neglected or
overlooked? Is he worthy to be regarded by the Creator of all? May not,
must not, the most pious mind recur to the exclamation of the Psalmist:
"Lord, what is man, that thou art mindful of him?" And must not this
exclamation, under the new aspect of things, be accompanied by an
enfeebled and less confident belief that God _is_ mindful of him? And
then, this array of planets, which derive their light from the Sun,
extends much further than even the astronomer at first suspected. The
orbit of Saturn is ten times as wide as the orbit of the earth; but
beyond Saturn, and almost twice as far from the sun, Herschel discovers
Uranus, another great planet; and again, beyond Uranus, and again at
nearly twice _his_ distance, the subtle sagacity of the astronomers of
our day, surmises, and then detects, another great planet. In such a
system as this, the earth shrinks into insignificance. Can its concerns
engage the attention of him who made the whole? But again, this whole
Solar System itself, with all its orbits and planets, shrinks into a
mere point, when compared with the nearest fixed star. And again, the
distance which lies between us and such stars, shrinks into incalculable
smallness, when we journey in thought to other fixed stars. And again,
and again, the field of our previous contemplation suffers an
immeasurable contraction, as we pass on to other points of view.

5. And in all these successive moves, we are still within the dominions
of the same Creator and Governor; and at every move, we are brought, we
may suppose, to new bodies of his subjects, bearing, in the expansion of
their number, some proportion to the expanse of space which they occupy.
And if this be so, how shall the earth, and men, its inhabitants, thus
repeatedly annihilated, as it were, by the growing magnitude of the
known Universe, continue to be anything in the regard of Him who
embraces all? Least of all, how shall men continue to receive that
special, persevering, providential, judicial, personal care, which
religion implies; and without the belief of which, any man who has
religious thoughts, must be disturbed and unhappy, desolate and
forsaken?

6. Such are, I conceive, the thoughts of many persons, under the
influence of the astronomical views which Chalmers refers to as being
sometimes employed against religious belief. Of course, it is natural
that the views which are used by unbelievers as arguments against
religious belief, should create difficulties and troubles in the minds
of believers; at least, till the argument is rebutted. And of course
also, the answers to the arguments, considered as infidel arguments,
would operate to remove the difficulties which believers entertain on
such grounds. Chalmers' reasonings against such arguments, therefore,
will, so for as they are valid, avail to relieve the mental trouble of
believers, who are perplexed and oppressed by the astronomical views of
which I have spoken; as well as to confute and convince those who reject
religion, on such astronomical grounds. It may, however, as I have said,
be of use to deal with these difficulties rather as difficulties of
religious men, than as objections of irreligious men; to examine rather
how we can quiet the troubled and perplexed believer, than how we can
triumph over the dogmatic and self-satisfied infidel. I, at least,
should wish to have the former, rather than the latter of these tasks,
regarded as that which I propose to myself.

I shall hereafter attempt to explain more fully the difficulties which
the doctrine of the Plurality of Worlds appears to some persons to throw
in the way of Revealed Religion; but before I do so, there is one part
of Chalmers' answer, bearing especially upon Natural Religion, which it
may be proper to attend to.




CHAPTER III.

THE ANSWER FROM THE MICROSCOPE.


1. It is not my business, nor my intention, to criticize the remarkable
work of Chalmers to which I have so often referred. But I may say, that
the arguments there employed by him, so far as they go upon astronomical
or philosophical grounds, are of great weight; and upon the whole, such
as we may both assent to, as scientifically true, and accept as
rationally persuasive. I think, however, that there are other arguments,
also drawn from scientific discoveries, which bear, in a very important
and striking manner, upon the opinions in question, and which Chalmers
has not referred to; and I conceive that there are philosophical views
of another kind, which, for those who desire and who will venture to
regard the Universe and its Creator in the wider and deeper relations
which appear to be open to human speculation, may be a source of
satisfaction. When certain positive propositions, maintained as true
while they are really highly doubtful, have given rise to difficulties
in the minds of religious persons, other positive propositions,
combating these, propounded and supported by argument, that they may be
accepted according to their evidence, may, at any rate, have force
enough to break down and dissipate such loosely founded difficulties. To
present to the reader's mind such speculations as I have thus
indicated, is the object of the following pages. They can, of course,
pretend to no charm, except for persons who are willing to have their
minds occupied with such difficulties and such speculations as I have
referred to. Those who are willing to be so employed, may, perhaps, find
in what I have to say something which may interest them. For, of the
arguments which I have to expound, some, though they appear to me both
very obvious and very forcible, have never, so far as I am aware, been
put forth in that religious bearing which seems to belong to them; and
others, though aspiring to point out in some degree the relation of the
Universe and its Creator, are of a very simple kind; that is, for minds
which are prepared to deal with such subjects at all.

2. As I have said, the arguments with which we are here concerned refer
both to Natural Religion and to Revealed Religion; and there is one of
Chalmers' arguments, bearing especially upon the former branch of the
subject, which I may begin by noticing. Among the thoughts which, it was
stated, might naturally arise in men's minds, when the telescope
revealed to them an innumerable multitude of worlds besides the one
which we inhabit, was this: that the Governor of the Universe, who has
so many worlds under his management, cannot be conceived as bestowing
upon this Earth, and its various tribes of inhabitants, that care which,
till then, Natural Religion had taught men that he does employ, to
secure to man the possession and use of his faculties of mind and body;
and to all animals the requisites of animal existence and animal
enjoyment. And upon this Chalmers remarks, that just about the time when
science gave rise to the suggestion of this difficulty, she also gave
occasion to a remarkable reply to it. Just about the same time that the
invention of the _Telescope_ showed that there were innumerable worlds,
which might have inhabitants requiring the Creator's care as much as the
tribes of this earth do,--the invention of the _Microscope_ showed that
there were, in this world, innumerable tribes of animals, which had been
all along enjoying the benefits of the Creator's care, as much as those
kinds with which man had been familiar from the beginning. The telescope
suggested that there might be dwellers in Jupiter or in Saturn, of giant
size and unknown structure, who must share with us the preserving care
of God. The microscope showed that there had been, close to us,
inhabiting minute crevices and crannies, peopling the leaves of plants,
and the bodies of other animals, animalcules of a minuteness hitherto
unguessed, and of a structure hitherto unknown, who had been always
sharers with us in God's preserving care. The telescope brought into
view worlds as numerous as the drops of water which make up the ocean;
the microscope brought into view a world in almost every drop of water.
Infinity in one direction was balanced by infinity in the other. The
doubts which men might feel as to what God could do, were balanced by
certainties which they discovered, as to what he had always been doing.
His care and goodness could not be supposed to be exhausted by the
hitherto known population of the earth, for it was proved that they had
not hitherto been confined to that population. The discovery of new
worlds at vast distances from us, was accompanied by the discovery of
new worlds close to us, even in the very substances with which we were
best acquainted; and was thus rendered ineffective to disturb the belief
of those who had regarded the world as having God for its governor.

3. This is a striking reflection, and is put by Chalmers in a very
striking manner; and it is well fitted to remove the scruples to which
it is especially addressed. If there be any persons to whom the
astronomical discoveries which the telescope has brought to light,
suggests doubts or difficulties with regard to such truths of Natural
Religion as God's care for and government of the inhabitants of the
earth, the discoveries of the many various forms of animalcular life
which the microscope has brought to light are well fitted to remove such
doubts, and to solve such difficulties. We may easily believe that the
power of God to sustain and provide for animal life, animal sustenance,
animal enjoyment, can suffice for innumerable worlds besides this,
without being withdrawn or distracted or wearied in this earth; for we
find that it does suffice for innumerable more inhabitants of this earth
than we were before aware of. If we had imagined before, that, in
conceiving God as able and willing to provide for the life and pleasure
of all the sentient beings which we knew to exist upon the earth, we had
formed an adequate notion of his power and of his goodness, these
microscopical discoveries are well adapted to undeceive us. They show us
that all the notions which our knowledge, hitherto, had enabled us to
form of the powers and attributes of the Creator and Preserver of all
living things, are vastly, are immeasurably below the real truth of the
case. They show us that God, as revealed to us in the animal creation,
is the Author and Giver of life, of the organization which life implies,
of the contrivances by which it is conducted and sustained, of the
enjoyment by which it is accompanied,--to an extent infinitely beyond
what the unassisted vision of man could have suggested. The facts which
are obvious to man, from which religious minds in all ages have drawn
their notions and their evidence of the Divine power and goodness, care
and wisdom, in providing for its creatures, require, we find, to be
indefinitely extended, in virtue of the new tribes of minute creatures,
and still new tribes, and still more minute, which we find existing
around us. The views of our Natural Theology must be indefinitely
extended on one side; and therefore we need not be startled or disturbed
at having to extend them indefinitely on the other side;--at having to
believe that there are, in other worlds, creatures whom God has created,
whom he sustains in life, for whom he provides the pleasures of life, as
he does for the long unsuspected creatures of this world.

4. This is, I say, a reflection which might quiet the mind of a person,
whom astronomical discoveries had led to doubt of the ordinary doctrines
of Natural Religion. But, I think, it may be questioned, whether, to
produce such doubts, is a common or probable effect of an acquaintance
with astronomical discoveries. Undoubtedly, by such discoveries, a
person who believes in God, in his wisdom, power, and goodness, on the
evidence of the natural world, is required to extend and exalt his
conceptions of those Divine Attributes. He had believed God to be the
Author of many forms of life;--he finds him to be the Author of still
more forms of life. He had traced many contrivances in the structure of
animals, for their sustentation and well-being; his new discoveries
disclose to him (for that is undoubtedly among the effects of
microscopic researches) still more nice contrivances. He had seen reason
to think that all sentient beings have their enjoyments; he finds new
fields of enjoyment of the same kind. But in all this, there is little
or nothing to disturb the views and convictions of the Natural
Theologian. He must, even by the evidence of facts patent to ordinary
observation, have been led to believe that the Divine Wisdom and Power
are not only great, but great in a degree which we cannot fathom or
comprehend;--that they are, to our apprehension, infinite: his new
discoveries only confirm the impression of this infinite character of
the Divine Attributes. He had before believed the existence of an
intelligent and wise Creator, on the evidence of the marks of design and
contrivance, which the creation exhibited: of such design and
contrivance he discovers new marks, new examples. He had believed that
God is good, because he found those contrivances invariably had the good
of the creature for their object: he finds, still, that this is the
general, the universal scheme of the creation, now when his view of it
is extended. He has no difficulty in expanding his religious
conceptions, to correspond with his scientific discoveries, so far as
the microscope is the instrument of discovery; there is no reason why he
should have any more difficulty in doing the same, when the telescope is
his informant. It is true, that in this case the information is more
imperfect. It does not tell him, even that there are living inhabitants
in the regions which it reveals; and, consequently, it does not disclose
any of those examples of design which belong to the structure of living
things. But if we suppose, from analogy, that there are living things in
those regions, we have no difficulty in conceiving, from analogy also,
that those living things are constructed with a care and wisdom such as
appear in the inhabitants of earth. It will not readily or commonly
occur to a speculator on such subjects, that there is any source of
perplexity or unbelief, in such an assumption of inhabitants of other
worlds, even if we make the assumption. It is as easy, it may well and
reasonably be thought, for God to create a population for the planets as
to make the planets themselves;--as easy to supply Jupiter with tenants,
as with satellites;--as easy to devise the organization of an inhabitant
of Saturn, as the structure and equilibrium of Saturn's ring. It is no
more difficult for the Universal Creator to extend to those bodies the
powers which operate in organized matter, than the powers which operate
in brute matter. It is as easy for Him to establish circulation and
nutrition in material structures, as cohesion and crystallization, which
we must suppose the planetary masses to possess; or attraction and
inertia, which we know them to possess. No doubt, to our conception,
organization appears to be a step beyond cohesion; circulation of living
fluids, a step beyond crystallization of dead masses:--but then, it is
in tracing such steps, that we discern the peculiar character of the
Creator's agency. He does not merely work with mechanical and chemical
powers, as man to a certain extent can do; but with organic and vital
powers, which man cannot command. The Creator, therefore, can animate
the dust of each planet, as easily as make the dust itself. And when
from organic life we rise to sentient life, we have still only another
step in the known order of Creative Power. To create animals, in any
province of the Universe, cannot be conceived as much more
incomprehensible or incredible, than to create vegetables. No doubt, the
addition of the living and sentient principle to the material, and even
to the organic structure, is a mighty step; and one which may, perhaps,
be made the occasion of some speculative suggestions, in a subsequent
part of this Essay; but still, it is not likely that any one, who had
formed his conceptions of the Divine Mind from its manifestations in the
production and sustentation of animal, as well as vegetable life, on
this earth, would have his belief in the operation of such a Mind,
shaken, by any necessity which might be impressed upon him, of granting
the existence of animal life on other planets, as well as on the earth,
or even on innumerable such planets, and on innumerable systems of
planets and worlds, system above system.

5. The remark of Chalmers, therefore, to which I have referred,
striking as it is, does not appear to bear directly upon a difficulty of
any great force. If astronomy gives birth to scruples which interfere
with religion, they must be found in some other quarter than in the
possibility of mere animal life existing in other parts of the Universe,
as well as on our earth. That possibility may require us to enlarge our
idea of the Deity, but it has little or no tendency to disturb our
apprehension of his attributes.




CHAPTER IV.

FURTHER STATEMENT OF THE DIFFICULTY.


1. We have attempted to show that if the discoveries made by the
Telescope should excite in any one's mind, difficulties respecting those
doctrines of Natural Religion,--the adequacy of the Creator to the
support and guardianship of all the animal life which may exist in the
universe,--the discoveries of the Microscope may remove such
difficulties; but we have remarked also, that the train of thought which
leads men to dwell upon such difficulties does not seem to be common.

But what will be the train of thought to which we shall be led, if we
suppose that there are, on other planets, and in other systems, not
animals only, living things, which, however different from the animals
of this earth, are yet in some way analogous to them, according to the
difference of circumstances; but also creatures analogous to
man;--intellectual creatures, living, we must suppose, under a moral
law, responsible for transgression, the subjects of a Providential
Government? If we suppose that, in the other planets of our solar
systems, and of other systems, there are creatures of such a kind, and
under such conditions as these, how far will the religious opinions
which we had previously entertained be disturbed or modified? Will any
new difficulty be introduced into our views of the government of the
world by such a supposition?

2. I have spoken of man as an Intellectual Creature; meaning thereby
that he has a Mind;--powers of thought, by which he can contemplate the
relations and properties of things in a general and abstract form; and
among other relations, moral relations, the distinction of _right_ and
_wrong_ in his actions. Those powers of thought lead him to think of a
Creator and Ordainer of all things; and his perception of right and
wrong leads him to regard this Creator as also the Governor and Judge of
his creatures. The operation of his mind directs him to believe in a
Supreme Mind: his moral nature directs him to believe that the course of
human affairs, and the condition of men, both as individuals and as
bodies, is determined by the providential government of God.

3. With regard to the bearing of a merely _intellectual_ nature on such
questions, it does not appear that any considerable difficulty would be
_at once_ occasioned in our religious views, by supposing such a nature
to belong to other creatures, the inhabitants of other planets, as well
as to man. The existence of our own minds directs us, as I have said, to
a Supreme Mind; and the nature of Mind is conceived to be, in all its
manifestations, so much the same, that we can conceive minds to be
multiplied indefinitely, without fear of confusion, interference, or
exhaustion. There may be, in Jupiter, creatures endowed with an
intellect which enables them to discover and demonstrate the relations
of space; and if so, they cannot have discovered and demonstrated
anything of that kind as true, which is not true for us also: their
Geometry must coincide with ours, as far as each goes:--thus showing how
absurdly, as Plato long ago observed, we give to the science which deals
with the relations of space, a name (_geometry_), borrowed from the art
of measuring the earth. The earth with its properties is no more the
special basis of geometry, than are Jupiter or Saturn, or, so far as we
can judge, Sirius or Arcturus and their systems, with their properties.
Wherever pure intellect is, we are compelled to conceive that, when
employed upon the same objects, its results and conclusions are the
same. If there be intelligent inhabitants of the Moon, they may, like
us, have employed their intelligence in reasoning upon the properties of
lines and angles and triangles; and must, so far as they have gone, have
arrived, in their thoughts, at the same properties of lines and angles
and triangles, at which we have arrived. They must, like us, have had to
distinguish between right angles and oblique angles. They may have come
to know, as some of the inhabitants of the earth came to know, four
thousand years ago, that, in a right-angled triangle, the square on the
larger side is equal to the sum of the squares on the other two sides.
We can conceive occurrences which would give us evidence that the Moon,
as well as the Earth, contains geometers. If we were to see, on the face
of the full moon, a figure gradually becoming visible, representing a
right-angled triangle with a square constructed on each of its three
sides as a base; we should regard it as the work of intelligent
creatures there, who might be thus making a signal to the inhabitants of
the earth, that they possessed such knowledge, and were desirous of
making known to their nearest neighbors in the solar system, their
existence and their speculations. In such an event, curious and striking
as it would be, we should see nothing but what we could understand and
accept, without unsettling our belief in the Supreme and Divine
Intelligence. On the contrary, we could hardly fail to receive such a
manifestation as a fresh evidence that the Divine Mind had imparted to
the inhabitants of the Moon, as he has to us, a power of apprehending,
in a very general and abstract form, the relations of that space in
which he performs his works. We should judge, that having been led so
far in their speculations, they must, in all probability, have been led
also to a conception of the Universe, as the field of action of a
universal and Divine Mind; that having thus become geometers, they must
have ascended to the Idea of a God who works by geometry.

4. But yet, by such a supposition, on further consideration, we find
ourselves introduced to views entirely different from those to which we
are led by the supposition of mere animal life, existing in other worlds
than the earth. For, not to dwell here upon any speculations as to how
far the operations of our minds may resemble the operations of the
Divine Mind;--a subject which we shall hereafter endeavor to
discuss;--we know that the advance to such truths as those of geometry
has been, among the inhabitants of the earth, gradual and progressive.
Though the human mind have had the same powers and faculties, from the
beginning of the existence of the race up to the present time, (as we
cannot but suppose,) the results of the exercise of these powers and
faculties have been very different in different ages; and have gradually
grown up, from small beginnings, to the vast and complex body of
knowledge concerning the scheme and relations of the Universe, which is
at present accessible to the minds of human speculators. It is, as we
have said, probably about four thousand years, since the first steps in
such knowledge were made. Geometry is said to have had its origin in
Egypt; but it assumed its abstract and speculative character first among
the Greeks. Pythagoras is related to have been the first who saw, in the
clear light of demonstration, the property of the right-angled triangle,
of which we have spoken. The Greeks, from the time of Socrates,
stimulated especially by Plato, pursued, with wonderful success, the
investigation of this kind of truths. They saw that such truths had
their application in the heavens, far more extensively than on the
earth. They were enabled, by such speculations, to unravel, in a great
degree, the scheme of the universe, before so seemingly entangled and
perplexed. They determined, to a very considerable extent, the relative
motions of the planets and of the stars. And in modern times, after a
long interval, in which such knowledge was nearly stationary, the
progress again began; and further advances were successively made in
man's knowledge of the scheme and structure of the visible heavens; till
at length the intellect of man was led to those views of the extent of
the Universe and the nature of the stars, which are the basis of the
discussions in which we are now engaged. And thus man, having probably
been, in the earliest ages of the existence of the species, entirely
ignorant of abstract truth, and of the relations which, by the knowledge
of such truth, we can trace in nature, (as the barbarous tribes which
occupy the greater part of the earth's surface still are;) has, by a
long series of progressive steps, come into the possession of knowledge,
which we cannot regard without wonder and admiration; and which seems to
elevate him in no inconsiderable degree, towards a community of thought
with that Divine Mind, into the nature and scheme of whose works he is
thus permitted to penetrate.

5. Now the knowledge which man is capable, by the nature of his mental
faculties, of acquiring, being thus blank and rudimentary at first, and
only proceeding gradually, by the steps of a progress, numerous, slow,
and often long interrupted, to that stage in which it is the basis of
our present speculations; the view which we have just taken, of the
nature of Intellect, as a faculty always of the same kind, always
uniform in its operations, always consistent in its results, appears to
require reconsideration; and especially with reference to the
application which we made of that view, to the intelligent inhabitants
of other planets and other worlds, if such inhabitants there be. For if
we suppose that there are, in the Moon, or in Jupiter, creatures
possessing intellectual faculties of the same kind as those of man;
capable of apprehending the same abstract and general truths; able, like
man, to attain to a knowledge of the scheme of the Universe; yet this
supposition merely gives the capacity and the ability; and does not
include any security, or even high probability, as it would seem, of the
exercise of such capacity, or of the successful application of such
ability. Even if the surface of the Moon be inhabited by creatures as
intelligent as men, why must we suppose that they know anything more of
the geometry and astronomy, than the great bulk of the less cultured
inhabitants of the earth, who occupy, really, a space far larger than
the surface of the Moon; and, all intelligent though they be, and in the
full possession of mental faculties, are yet, on the subjects of
geometry and astronomy, entirely ignorant;--their minds, as to such a
knowledge, a blank? It does not follow, then, that even if there be such
inhabitants in the Moon, or in the Planets, they have any sympathy with
us, or any community of knowledge on the subjects of which we are now
speaking. The surface of the Moon, or of Jupiter, or of Saturn, even if
well peopled, may be peopled only with tribes as barbarous and ignorant
as Tartars, or Esquimaux, or Australians; and therefore, by making such
a supposition, we do little, even hypothetically, to extend the dominion
of that intelligence, by means of which all intelligent beings have some
community of thought with each other, and some suggestion of the working
of the Divine and Universal Mind.

6. But, in fact, the view which we have given of the mode of existence
of the human species upon the earth, as being a progressive existence,
even in the development of the intellectual powers and their results,
necessarily fastens down our thoughts and our speculations to the earth,
and makes us feel how visionary and gratuitous it is to assume any
similar kind of existence in any region occupied by other beings than
man. As we have said, we have no insuperable difficulty in conceiving
other parts of the Universe to be tenanted by animals. Animal life
implies no progress in the species. Such as they are in one century,
such are they in another. The conditions of their sustentation and
generation being given, which no difference of physical circumstances
can render incredible, the race may, so far as we can see, go on
forever. But a race which makes a progress in the development of its
faculties cannot thus, or at least cannot with the same ease, be
conceived as existing through all time, and under all circumstances.
Progress implies, or at least suggests, a beginning and an end. If the
mere existence of a race imply a sustaining and preserving power in the
Creator, the progress of a race implies a guiding and impelling power; a
Governor and Director, as well as a Creator and Preserver. And progress,
not merely in material conditions, not merely in the exercise of bodily
faculties, but in the exercise of mental faculties, in the intellectual
condition of a portion of the species, still more implies a special
position and character of the race, which cannot, without great license
of hypothesis, be extended to other races; and which, if so extended,
becomes unmeaning, from the impossibility of our knowing what is
progress in any other species;--from what and towards what it tends. The
intellectual progress of the human species has been a progress in the
use of thought, and in the knowledge which such use procures; it has
been a progress from mere matter to mind; from the impressions of sense
to ideas; from what in knowledge is casual, partial, temporary, to what
is necessary, universal, and eternal. We can conceive no progress, of
the nature of this, which is not identical with this; nothing like it,
which is not the same. And, therefore, if we will people other planets
with creatures, intelligent as man is intelligent, we must not only give
to them the intelligence, but the intellectual history of the human
species. They must have had their minds unfolded by steps similar to
those by which the human mind has been unfolded; or at least, differing
from them only as the intellectual history of one nation of the earth
differs from that of another. They must have had their Pythagoras, their
Plato, their Kepler, their Galileo, their Newton, if they know what we
know. And thus, in order to conceive, on the Moon or on Jupiter, a race
of beings intelligent like man, we must conceive, there, colonies of
men, with histories resembling more or less the histories of human
colonies; and indeed resembling the history of those nations whose
knowledge we inherit, far more closely than the history of any other
terrestrial nation resembles that part of terrestrial history. If we do
this, we exercise an act of invention and imagination which may be as
coherent as a fairy tale, but which, without further proof, must be as
purely imaginary and arbitrary. But if we do not do this, we cannot
conceive that those regions are occupied at all by intelligent beings.
Intelligence, as we see in the human race, in order to have those
characters which concern our argument, implies a history of intellectual
development; and to assume arbitrarily a history of intellectual
development for the inhabitants of a remote planet, as a ground of
reasoning either for or against Religion, is a proceeding which we can
hardly be expected either to assent to or to refute. If we are to form
any opinions with regard to the condition of such bodies, and to trace
any bearing of such opinions upon our religious views, we must proceed
upon some ground which has more of reality than such a gratuitous
assumption.

7. Thus the condition of man upon the earth, as a condition of
intellectual progress, implies such a special guidance and government
exercised over the race by the Author of his being, as produces
progress; and we have not, so far as we yet perceive, any reason for
supposing that He exercises a like guidance and government over any of
the other bodies with which the researches of astronomers have made us
acquainted. The earth and its inhabitants are under the care of God in a
special manner; and we are utterly destitute of any reason for believing
that other planets and other systems are under the care of God in the
same manner. If we regarded merely the existence of unprogressive races
of animals upon our globe, we might easily suppose that other globes
also are similarly tenanted; and we might infer, that the Creator and
Upholder of animal life was active on those globes, in the same manner
as upon ours. But when we come to a progressive creature, whose
condition implies a beginning, and therefore suggests an end, we form a
peculiar judgment with respect to God's care of that creature, which we
have not as yet seen the slightest grounds to extend to other possible
fields of existence, where we discern no indication of progress, of
beginning, or of end. So far as we can judge, God is mindful of man, and
has launched and guided his course in a certain path which makes his lot
and state different from that of all other creatures.

8. Now when we have arrived at this result, we have, I conceive, reached
one of the points at which the difficulties which astronomical discovery
puts in the way of religious conviction begin to appear. The Earth and
its human inhabitants are, as far as we yet know, in an especial manner
the subjects of God's care and government, for the race is progressive.
Now can this be? Is it not difficult to believe that it is so? The
earth, so small a speck, only one among so many, so many thousands, so
many millions of other bodies, all, probably, of the same nature with
itself, wherefore should it draw to it the special regards of the
Creator of all, and occupy his care in an especial manner? The teaching
of the history of the human race, as intellectually progressive, agrees
with the teaching of Religion, in impressing upon us that God is mindful
of man; that he does regard him; but still, there naturally arises in
our minds a feeling of perplexity and bewilderment, which expresses
itself in the words already so often quoted, What is man, that this
should be so? Can it be true that this province is thus singled out for
a special and peculiar administration by the Lord of the Universal
Empire?

9. Before I make any attempt to answer these questions, I must pursue
the difficulty somewhat further, and look at it in other forms. As I
have said, the history of Man has been, in certain nations, a history of
intellectual progress, from the earliest times up to our own day. But
intellectual progress has been, as I have also said, in a great measure
confined to certain nations thus especially favored. The greater part of
the earth's inhabitants have shared very scantily in that wealth of
knowledge to which the brightest and happiest intellects among men have
thus been led. But though the bulk of mankind have thus had little share
in the grand treasures of science which are open to the race, their life
has still been very different from that of other animals. Many nations,
though they may not have been conspicuous in the history of intellectual
progress, have yet not been without their place in progress of other
kinds--in arts, in arms, and, above all, in morals--in the recognition
of the distinction of right and wrong in human actions, and in the
practical application of this distinction. Such a progress as this has
been far more extensively aimed at, than a progress in abstract and
general knowledge; and, we may venture to say, has been, in many nations
and in a very great measure, really effected. No doubt the imperfection
of this progress, and the constant recurrence of events which appear to
counteract and reverse it, are so obvious and so common as to fill with
grief and indignation the minds of those who regard such a progress as
the great business of the human race; but yet still, looking at the
whole history of the human race, the progress is visible; and even the
grief and the indignation of which we have spoken are a part of its
evidences. There has been, upon the whole, a moral government of the
human race. The moral law, the distinction of right and wrong, has been
established in every nation; and penalties have been established for
wrong-doing. The notion of right and wrong has been extended, from mere
outward acts, to the springs of action, to affection, desire, and will.
The course of human affairs has generally been such, that the just, the
truthful, the kind, the chaste, the orderly portion of mankind have been
happier than the violent and wicked. External wrong has been commonly
punished by the act of human society. Internal sins, impure and
dishonest designs, falsehood, cruelty, have very often led to their own
punishment, by their effect upon the guilty mind itself. We do not say
that the moral government which has prevailed among men has been such,
that we can consider it complete and final in its visible form. We see
that the aspect of things is much the contrary; and we think we see
reasons why it may be expected to be so. But still, there has existed
upon earth a moral government of the human race, exercised, as we must
needs hold, by the Creator of man; partly through the direct operation
of man's faculties, affections, and emotions; and partly through the
authorities which, in all ages and nations, the nature of man has led
him to establish. Now this moral progress and moral government of the
human race is one of the leading facts on which Natural Religion is
founded. We are thus led to regard God as the Moral Governor of man; not
only his Creator and Preserver, but his Lawgiver and his Judge. And the
grounds on which we entertain this belief are peculiarly the human
faculties of man, and their operation in history and in society. The
belief is derived from the whole complex nature of man--the working of
his Affections, Desires, Convictions, Reason, Conscience, and whatever
else enters into the production of human action and its consequences.
God is seen to be the Moral Governor of man by evidence which is
especially derived from the character of Man, and which we could not
attempt to apply to any other creature than man without making our words
altogether unmeaning. But would it not be too bold an assumption to
speak of the Conscience of an inhabitant of Jupiter? Would it not be a
rash philosophy to assume the operation of Remorse or Self-approval on
the planet, in order that we may extend to it the moral government of
God? Except we can point out something more solid than this to reason
from, on such subjects, there is no use in our attempting to reason at
all. Our doctrines must be mere results of invention and imagination.
Here then, again, we are brought to the conviction that God is, so far
as we yet see, in an especial and peculiar manner, the Governor of the
earth and of its human inhabitants, in such a way that the like
government cannot be conceived to be extended to other planets, and
other systems, without arbitrary and fanciful assumptions; assumptions
either of unintelligible differences with incomprehensible results, or
of beings in all respects human, inhabiting the most remote regions of
the universe. And here, again, therefore, we are led to the same
difficulty which we have already encountered: Can the earth, a small
globe among so many millions, have been selected as the scene of this
especially Divine Government?

10. That when we attempt to extend our sympathies to the inhabitants of
other planets and other worlds, and to regard them as living, like us,
under a moral government, we are driven to suppose them to be, in all
essential respects, human beings like ourselves, we have proof, in all
the attempts which have been made, with whatever license of hypothesis
and fancy, to present to us descriptions and representations of the
inhabitants of other parts of the universe. Such representations, though
purposely made as unlike human beings as the imagination of man can
frame them, still are merely combinations, slightly varied, of the
elements of human being; and thus show us that not only our reason, but
even our imagination, cannot conceive creatures subjected to the same
government to which man is subjected, without conceiving them as being
men of one kind or other. A mere animal life, with no interest but
animal enjoyment, we may conceive as assuming forms different from those
which appear in existing animal races; though even here, there are, as
we shall hereafter attempt to show, certain general principles which run
through all animal life. But when in addition to mere animal impulses,
we assume or suppose moral and intellectual interests, we conceive them
as the moral and intellectual interests of man. Truth and falsehood,
right and wrong, law and transgression, happiness and misery, reward and
punishment, are the necessary elements of all that can interest us--of
all that we can call _Government_. To transfer these to Jupiter or to
Sirius, is merely to imagine those bodies to be a sort of island of
Formosa, or new Atlantis, or Utopia, or Platonic Polity, or something of
the like kind. The boldest and most resolute attempts to devise some
life different from human life, have not produced anything more
different than romance-writers and political theorists have devised _as_
a form of human life. And this being so, there is no more wisdom or
philosophy in believing such assemblages of beings to exist in Jupiter
or Sirius, without evidence, than in believing them to exist in the
island of Formosa, with the like absence of evidence.

11. Any examination of what has been written on this subject would show
that, in speculating about moral and intellectual beings in other
regions of the universe, we merely make them to be men in another place.
With regard to the plants and animals of other planets, fancy has freer
play; but man cannot conceive any moral creature who is not man. Thus
Fontenelle, in his _Dialogues on the Plurality of Worlds_, makes the
inhabitants of Venus possess, in an exaggerated degree, the
characteristics of the men of the warm climates of the earth. They are
like the Moors of Grenada; or rather, the Moors of Grenada would be to
them as cold as Greenlanders and Laplanders to us. And the inhabitants
of Mercury have so much vivacity, that they would pass with us for
insane. "Enfin c'est dans Mercure que sont les Petites-Maisons de
l'Univers." The inhabitants of Jupiter and Saturn are immensely slow and
phlegmatic. And though he and other writers attempt to make these
inhabitants of remote regions in some respects superior to man, telling
us that instead of only five senses, they may have six, or ten, or a
hundred, still these are mere words which convey no meaning; and the
great astronomer Bessel had reason to say, that those who imagined
inhabitants in the Moon and Planets, supposed them, in spite of all
their protestations, as like to men as one egg to another.[1]

12. But there is one step more, which we still have to make, in order to
bring out this difficulty in its full force. As we have said, the moral
law has been, to a certain extent, established, developed, and enforced
among men. But, as I have also said, looking carefully at the law, and
at the degree of man's obedience to it, and at the operation of the
sanctions by which it is supported, we cannot help seeing, that man's
knowledge of the law is imperfect, his conviction of its authority
feeble, his transgressions habitual, their punishment and consequences
obscure. When, therefore, we regard God, as the Lawgiver and Judge of
man, it will not appear strange to us, that he should have taken some
mode of promulgating his Law, and announcing his Judgments, in addition
to that ordinary operation of the faculties of man, of which we have
spoken. Revealed Religion teaches us that he has done so: that from the
first placing of the race of man upon the earth, it was his purpose to
do so: that by his dealing with the race of man in the earlier times,
and at various intervals, he made preparation for the mission of a
special Messenger, whom, in the fulness of time, he sent upon the earth
in the form of a man; and who both taught men the Law of God in a purer
and clearer form than any in which it had yet been given; and revealed
His purpose, of rewards for obedience, and punishments for disobedience,
to be executed in a state of being to which this human life is only an
introduction; and established the means by which the spirit of man, when
alienated from God by transgression, may be again reconciled to Him. The
arrival of this especial Messenger of Holiness, Judgment, and
Redemption, forms the great event in the history of the earth,
considered in a religious view, as the abode of God's servants. It was
attended with the sufferings and cruel death of the Divine Messenger
thus sent; was preceded by prophetic announcements of his coming; and
the history of the world, for the two thousand years that have since
elapsed, has been in a great measure occupied with the consequences of
that advent. Such a proceeding shows, of course, that God has an
especial care for the race of man. The earth, thus selected as the
theatre of such a scheme of Teaching and of Redemption, cannot, in the
eyes of any one who accepts this Christian faith, be regarded as being
on a level with any other domiciles. It is the Stage of the great Drama
of God's Mercy and Man's Salvation; the Sanctuary of the Universe; the
Holy Land of Creation; the Royal Abode, for a time at least, of the
Eternal King. This being the character which has thus been conferred
upon it, how can we assent to the assertions of Astronomers, when they
tell us that it is only one among millions of similar habitations, not
distinguishable from them, except that it is smaller than most of them
that we can measure; confused and rude in its materials like them? Or if
we believe the Astronomers, will not such a belief lead us to doubt the
truth of the great scheme of Christianity, which thus makes the earth
the scene of a special dispensation.

13. This is the form in which Chalmers has taken up the argument. This
is the difficulty which he proposes to solve; or rather, (such being as
I have said the mode in which he presents the subject,) the objection
which he proposes to refute. It is the bearing of the Astronomical
discoveries of modern times, not upon the doctrines of Natural Religion,
but upon the scheme of Christianity, which he discusses. And the
question which he supposes his opponent to propound, as an objection to
the Christian scheme, is:--How is it consistent with the dignity, the
impartiality, the comprehensiveness, the analogy of God's proceedings,
that he should make so special and pre-eminent a provision for the
salvation of the inhabitants of this Earth, where there are such myriads
of other worlds, all of which may require the like provision, and all of
which have an equal claim to their Creator's care?

14. The answer which Chalmers gives to this objection, is one drawn, in
the first instance, from our ignorance. He urges that, when the objector
asserts that other worlds may have the like need with our own, of a
special provision for the rescue of their inhabitants from the
consequences of the transgression of God's laws, he is really making an
assertion without the slightest foundation. Not only does Science not
give us any information on such subjects, but the whole spirit of the
scientific procedure, which has led to the knowledge which we possess,
concerning other planets and other systems, is utterly opposed to our
making such assumptions, respecting other worlds, as the objection
involves. Modern Science, in proportion as she is confident when she has
good grounds of proof, however strange may be the doctrines proved, is
not only diffident, but is utterly silent, and abstains even from
guessing, when she has no grounds of proof. Chalmers takes Newton's
reasoning, as offering a special example of this mixed temper, of
courage in following the evidence, and temperance in not advancing when
there is no evidence. He puts, in opposition to this, the example of the
true philosophical temper,--a supposed rash theorist, who should make
unwarranted suppositions and assumptions, concerning matters to which
our scientific evidence does not reach;--the animals and plants, for
instance, which are to be found in the planet Jupiter. No one, he says,
would more utterly reject and condemn such speculations than Newton,
who first rightly explained the motion of Jupiter and of his attendant
satellites, about which Science _can_ pronounce her truths. And thus,
nothing can be more opposite to the real spirit of modern science, and
astronomy in particular, than arguments, such as we have stated,
professing to be drawn from science and from astronomy. Since we know
nothing about the inhabitants of Jupiter, true science requires that we
say and suppose nothing about them; still more requires that we should
not, on the ground of assumptions made with regard to them, and other
supposed groups of living creatures, reject a belief, founded on direct
and positive proofs, such as is the belief in the truths of Natural and
of Revealed Religion.

15. To this argument of Chalmers, we may not only give our full assent,
but we may venture to suggest, in accordance with what we have already
said, that the argument, when so put, is not stated in all its
legitimate force. The assertion that the inhabitants of Jupiter have the
same need as we have, of a special dispensation for their preservation
from moral ruin, is not only as merely arbitrary an assumption, as any
assertion could be, founded on a supposed knowledge of an analogy
between the botany of Jupiter, and the botany of the earth; but it is a
great deal more so. There may be circumstances which may afford some
reason to believe that something of the nature of vegetables grows on
the surface of Jupiter; for instance, if we find that he is a solid
globe surrounded by an atmosphere, vapor, clouds, showers. But, as we
have already said, there is an immeasurable distance between the
existence of unprogressive tribes of organized creatures, plants, or
even animals, and the existence of a progressive creature, which can
pass through the conditions of receiving, discerning, disobeying, and
obeying a moral law; which can be estranged from God, and then
reconciled to him. To assume, without further proof, that there are, in
Jupiter, creatures of such a nature that these descriptions apply to
them, is a far bolder and more unphilosophical assumption, than any that
the objector could make concerning the botany of Jupiter; and therefore,
the objection thus supposed to be drawn from our supposed knowledge, is
very properly answered by an appeal to our really utter ignorance, as to
the points on which the argument rests.

16. This appeal to our ignorance is the main feature in Chalmers'
reasonings, so far as the argument on the one side or the other has
reference to science. Chalmers, indeed, pursues the argument into other
fields of speculation. He urges, that not only we have no right to
assume that other worlds require a redemption of the same kind as that
provided for man, but that the very reverse maybe the case. Man maybe
the only transgressor; and this, the only world that needed so great a
provision for its salvation. We read in Scripture, expressions which
imply that other beings, besides man, take an interest in the salvation
of man. May not this be true of the inhabitants of other worlds, if such
inhabitants there be? These speculations he pursues to a considerable
length, with great richness of imagination, and great eloquence. But the
suppositions on which they proceed are too loosely connected with the
results of science, to make it safe for us to dwell upon them here.

17. I conceive, as I have said, that the argument with which Chalmers
thus deals admits of answers, also drawn from modern science, which to
many persons will seem more complete than that which is thus drawn from
our ignorance. But before I proceed to bring forward these answers,
which will require several steps of explanation, I have one or two
remarks still to make.

18. Undoubtedly they who believe firmly both that the earth has been
the scene of a Divine Plan for the benefit of man, and also that other
bodies in the universe are inhabited by creatures who may have an
interest in such a Plan, are naturally led to conjectures and
imaginations as to the nature and extent of that interest. The religious
poet, in his Night Thoughts, interrogates the inhabitants of a distant
star, whether their race too has, in its history, events resembling the
fall of man, and the redemption of man.

    Enjoy your happy realms their golden age?
    And had your Eden an abstemious Eve?
    Or, if your mother fell are you redeemed?
    And if redeemed, is your Redeemer scorned?

And such imaginations may be readily allowed to the preacher or the
poet, to be employed in order to impress upon man the conviction of his
privileges, his thanklessness, his inconsistency, and the like. But
every form in which such reflections can be put shows how intimately
they depend upon the nature and history of man. And when such
reflections are made the source of difficulty or objection in the way of
religious thought, and when these difficulties and objections are
represented as derived from astronomical discoveries, it cannot be
superfluous to inquire whether astronomy has really discovered any
ground for such objections. To some persons it may be more grateful to
remedy one assumption by another: the assumption of moral agents in
other worlds, by the assumption of some operation of the Divine Plan in
other worlds. But since many persons find great difficulty in conceiving
such an operation of the Divine Plan in a satisfactory way; and many
persons also think that to make such unauthorized and fanciful
assumptions with regard to the Divine Plans for the government of God's
creatures is a violation of the humility, submission of mind, and spirit
of reverence which religion requires; it may be useful if we can show
that such assumptions, with regard to the Divine Plans, are called forth
by assumptions equally gratuitous on the other side: that Astronomy no
more reveals to us extra-terrestrial moral agents, than Religion reveals
to us extra-terrestrial Plans of Divine government. Chalmers has spoken
of the _rashness_ of making assumptions on such subjects without proof;
leaving it however, to be supposed, that though astronomy does not
supply proof of intelligent inhabitants of other parts of the universe,
she yet does offer strong analogies in favor of such an opinion. But
such a procedure is more than rash: when astronomical doctrines are
presented in the form in which they have been already laid before the
reader, which is the ordinary and popular mode of apprehending them, the
analogies in favor of "other worlds," are (to say the least) greatly
exaggerated. And by taking into account what astronomy really teaches
us, and what we learn also from other sciences, I shall attempt to
reduce such "analogies" to their true value.

14. The privileges of man, which make the difficulty in assigning him
his place in the vast scheme of the Universe, we have described as
consisting in his being an _intellectual_, _moral_, and _religious_
creature. Perhaps the privileges implied in the last term, and their
place in our argument, may justify a word more of explanation. Religion
teaches us that there is opened to man, not only a prospect of a life in
the presence of God, after this mortal life, but also the possibility
and the duty of spending this life as in the presence of God. This is
properly the highest result and manifestation of the effect of Religion
upon man. Precisely because it is this, it is difficult to speak of this
effect without seeming to use the language of enthusiasm; and yet
again, precisely because it is so, our argument would be incomplete
without a reference to it. There is for man, a possibility and a duty of
bringing his thoughts, purposes, and affections more and more into
continual unison with the will of God. This, even Natural Religion
taught men, was the highest point at which man could aim; and Revealed
Religion has still more clearly enjoined the duty of aiming at such a
condition. The means of a progress towards such a state belong to the
Religion of the heart and mind. They include a constant purification and
elevation of the thoughts, affections, and will, wrought by habits of
religious reflection and meditation, of prayer and gratitude to God.
Without entering into further explanation, all religious persons will
agree that such a progress is, under happy influences, possible for man,
and is the highest condition to which he can attain in this life.
Whatever names may have been applied at different times to the steps of
such a progress;--the cultivation of the divine nature in us;
resignation; devotion; holiness; union with God; living in God, and with
God in us;--religious persons will not doubt that there is a reality of
internal state corresponding to these expressions; and that, to be
capable of elevation into the condition which these expressions
indicate, is one of the especial privileges of man. Man's soul,
considered especially as the subject of God's government, is often
called his _Spirit_; and that man is capable of such conformity to the
will of God, and approximation to Him, is sometimes expressed by
speaking of him as a _spiritual creature_. And though the privilege of
being, or of being capable of becoming, in this sense, a spiritual
creature, is a part of man's religious privileges; we may sometimes be
allowed to use this additional expression, in order to remind the
reader, how great those religious privileges are, and how close is the
relation between man and God, which they imply.

15. We have given a view of the peculiar character of man's condition,
which seem to claim for him a nature and place unique and incapable of
repetition, in the scheme of the universe; and to this view astronomy,
exhibiting to us the habitation of man as only one among many similar
abodes, offers an objection. We are, therefore, now called upon, I
conceive, to proceed to exhibit the answer which a somewhat different
view of modern science suggests to this difficulty or objection.

For this purpose, we must begin by regarding the Earth in another point
of view, different from that hitherto considered by us.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Populaere Vorlesungen ueber Wissenschaftliche Gegenstaende, p. 31.




CHAPTER V.

GEOLOGY.


1. Man, as I trust has been made apparent to the consciousness and
conviction of the reader, is an intelligent, moral, religious, and
spiritual creature; and we have to discuss the difficulty, or
perplexity, or objection, which arises in our minds, when we consider
such a creature as occupying an habitation, which is but one among many
globes apparently equally fitted to be the dwelling-places of living
things--a mere speck in the immensity of creation--an atom among such a
vast array of material structures--a world, as we needs must deem it,
among millions of other objects which appear to have an equal claim to
be regarded as worlds.

2. The difficulty appears to be great, either way. Can the earth alone
be the theatre of such intelligent, moral, religious, and spiritual
action? On the other hand, can we conceive such action to go on in the
other bodies of the universe? If we take the latter alternative, we must
people other planets and other systems with men such as we are, even as
to their history. For the intellectual and moral condition of man
implies a _history_ of the species; and the view of man's condition
which religion presents, not only involves a scheme of which the history
of the human race is a part, but also asserts a peculiar reference had,
in the provisions of God, to the nature of man; and even a peculiar
relation and connection between the human and the divine nature. To
extend such suppositions to other worlds would be a proceeding so
arbitrary and fanciful, that we are led to consider whether the
alternative supposition may not be more admissible. The alternative
supposition is, that man is, in an especial and eminent manner, the
object of God's care; that his place in the creation is, not that he
merely occupies one among millions of similar domiciles provided in
boundless profusion by the Creator of the Universe, but that he is the
servant, subject, and child of God, in a way unique and peculiar; that
his being a spiritual creature, (including his other attributes in the
highest for the sake of brevity,) makes him belong to a spiritual world,
which is not to be judged of merely by analogies belonging to the
material universe.

3. Between these two difficulties the choice is embarrassing, and the
decision must be unsatisfactory, except we can find some further ground
of judgment. But perhaps this is not hopeless. We have hitherto referred
to the evidence and analogies supplied by one science, namely,
astronomy. But there are other sciences which give us information
concerning the nature and history of the earth. From some of these,
perhaps, we may obtain some knowledge of the place of the earth in the
scheme of creation--how far it is, in its present condition, a thing
unique, or only one thing among many like it. Any science which supplies
us with evidence or information on this head, will give us aid in
forming a judgment upon the question under our consideration. To such
sciences, then, we will turn our attention.

One science has employed itself in investigating the nature and history
of the earth by an examination of the materials of which it is
composed; namely, Geology. Let us call to mind some of the results at
which this science has arrived.

4. A very little attention to what is going on among the materials of
which the earth's surface is composed, suffices to show us that there
are causes of change constantly and effectually at work. The earth's
surface is composed of land and water, hills and valleys, rocks and
rivers. But these features undergo change, and produce change in each
other. The mountain-rivers cut deeper and deeper into the ravines in
which they run; they break up the rocks over which they rush, use the
fragments as implements of further destruction, pile them up in sloping
mounds where the streams issue from the mountains, spread them over the
plains, fill up lakes with sediment, push into the sea great deltas. The
sea batters the cliffs and eats away the land, and again, forms banks
and islands where there had been deep water. Volcanoes pour out streams
of lava, which destroy the vegetation over which they flow, and which
again, after a series of years, are themselves clothed with vegetation.
Earthquakes throw down tracts of land beneath the sea, and elevate other
tracts from the bottom of the ocean. These agencies are everywhere
manifest; and though at a given moment, at a given spot, their effect
may seem to us almost imperceptible, too insignificant to be taken
account of, yet in a long course of years almost every place has
undergone considerable changes. Rivers have altered their courses, lakes
have become plains, coasts have been swept away or have become inland
districts, rich valleys have been ravaged by watery or fiery deluges,
the country has in some way or other assumed a new face. The present
aspect of the earth is in some degree different from what it was a few
thousand years ago.

5. But yet, in truth, the changes of which we thus speak have not been
very considerable. The forms of countries, the lines of coasts, the
ranges of mountains, the groups of valleys, the courses of rivers, are
much the same now as they were in ancient times. The face of the earth,
since man has had any knowledge of it, may have undergone some change,
but the changeable has borne a small proportion to the permanent.
Changes have taken place, and are taking place, but they do not take
place rapidly. The ancient earth and the modern earth are, in all their
main physical features, identical; and we must go backwards through a
considerably larger interval than that which carries us back to what we
usually term _antiquity_, before we are led, by the operation of causes
now at work, to an aspect of the earth's surface very different from
that which it now presents.

6. For instance, rivers do, no doubt, more or less alter, in the course
of years, by natural causes. The Rhine, the Rhone, the Po, the Danube,
have, certainly, during the last four thousand years, silted up their
beds in level places, expanded the deltas at their mouths, changed the
channels by which they enter the sea; and very probably, in their upper
parts, altered the forms of their waterfalls and of their shingle beds.
Yet even if we were thus to go backwards ten thousand, or twenty, or
thirty thousand years, (setting aside great and violent causes of
change, as earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, and the like,) the general
form and course of these rivers, and of the ranges of mountains in which
they flow, would not be different from what it is now. And the same may
be said of coasts and islands, seas and bays. The present geography of
the earth may be, and from all the evidence which we have, must be, very
ancient, according to any measures of antiquity which can apply to human
affairs.

7. But yet the further examination of the materials of the earth
carries us to a view beyond this. Though the general forms of the land
and the waters of continents and seas, were, several thousand years ago,
much the same as they now are; yet it was not always so. We have clear
evidence that large tracts which are now dry ground, were formerly the
bed of the ocean; and these, not tracts of the shore, where the varying
warfare of sea and land is still going on, but the very central parts of
great continents; the Alps, the Pyrenees, the Himalayas. For not only
are the rocks of which these great mountain-chains consist, of such
structure that they appear to have been formed as layers of sediment at
the bottom of water; but also, these layers contain vast accumulations
of shells, or impressions of shells, and other remains of marine
animals. And these appearances are not few, limited, or partial. The
existence of such marine remains, in the solid substance of continents
and mountains, is a general, predominant, and almost universal fact, in
every part of the earth. Nor is any other way of accounting for this
fact admissible, than that those materials really have, at some time,
formed bottoms of seas. The various other conjectures and hypotheses,
which were put forward on this subject, when the amount, extent,
multiplicity, and coherence of the phenomena were not yet ascertained,
and when their natural history was not yet studied, cannot now be
considered as worthy of the smallest regard. That many of our highest
hills are formed of materials raised from the depths of ocean, is a
proposition which cannot be doubted, by any one, who fairly examines the
evidence which nature offers.

8. If we take this proposition only, we cannot immediately connect it
with our knowledge respecting the surface of the earth in its present
form. We learn that what is now land, has been sea; and we may suppose
(since it is natural to assume that the bulk of the sea has not much
changed) that what is now sea was formerly land. But, except we can
learn something of the manner in which this change took place, we cannot
make any use of our knowledge. Was the change sudden, or gradual;
abrupt, or successive; brief, or long-continuing?

9. To these questions, the further study of the facts enables us to
return answers with great confidence. The change or changes which
produced the effects of which we have spoken--the conversion of the
bottom of the ocean into the centre of our greatest continents and
highest mountains,--were undoubtedly gradual, successive, and long
continued. We must state very briefly the grounds on which we make this
assertion.

10. The masses which form our mountain-chains, offer evidence, as I have
said, that they were deposited as sediment at the bottom of a sea, and
then hardened. They consist of successive layers of such sediment,
making up the whole mass of the mountain. These layers are, of course,
to a certain extent, a measure of the time during which the deposition
of sediment took place. The thicker the mass of sediment, the more
numerous and varied its beds, and the longer period must we suppose to
have been requisite for its formation. Without making any attempt at
accurate or definite estimation, which would be to no purpose, it is
plain that a mass of sedimentary strata five thousand or ten thousand
feet thick, must have required, for its deposit, a long course of years,
or rather, a long course of ages.

11. But again: on further examination it is found, that we have not
merely one series of sedimentary deposits, thus forming our mountains.
There are a number of different series of such layers or strata, to be
found in different ranges of hills, and in the same range, one series
resting upon another. These different series of strata are
distinguishable from one another by their general structure and
appearance, besides more intimate characters, of which we shall shortly
have to speak. Each such series appears to have a certain consistency of
structure within itself; the layers of which it is composed being more
or less parallel, but the successive series are not thus always
parallel, the lower ones being often highly inclined and irregular,
while the upper ones are more level and continuous: as if the lower
strata had been broken up and thrown into disorder, and then a new
series of strata had been deposited horizontally on their fragments. But
in whatever way these different sedimentary series succeeded each other,
each series must have required, as we have seen, a long period for its
formation; and to estimate the length of the interval between the two
series, we have, at the present stage of our exposition, no evidence.

12. But the mechanical structure of the strata, the result, as it seems,
of aqueous sedimentary deposit, is not the only, nor the most important
evidence, with regard to the length of time occupied by the formation of
the rocky layers which now compose our mountains. As we have said, they
contain shells, and other remains of creatures which live in the sea.
These they contain, not in small numbers, scattered and detached, but in
vast abundance, as they are found in those parts of the ocean which is
most alive with them. There are the remains of oysters and other
shell-fish in layers, as they live at present in the seas near our
shores; of corals, in vast patches and beds, as they now occur in the
waters of the Pacific; of shoals of fishes, of many different kinds, in
immense abundance. Each of these beds of shells, of corals, and of
fishes, must have required many years, perhaps many centuries, for the
growth of the successive individuals and successive generations of which
it consists: as long a time, perhaps, as the present inhabitants of the
sea have lived therein: or many times longer, if there have been many
such successive changes. And thus, while the present condition of the
earth extends backwards to a period of vast but unknown antiquity; we
have, offered to our notice, the evidence of a series of other periods,
each of which, so far as we can judge, may have been as long or longer
than that during which the dry land has had its present form.

13. But the most remarkable feature in the evidence is yet to come. We
have spoken in general of the oysters, and corals, and fishes, which
occur in the strata of our hills; as if they were creatures of the same
kinds which we now designate by those names. But a more exact
examination of these remains of organized beings, shows that this is not
so. The tribes of animals which are found petrified in our rocks are
almost all different, so far as our best natural historians can
determine, from those which now live in our existing seas. They are
different species; different genera. The creatures which we find thus
embedded in our mountains, are not only dead as individuals, but extinct
as species. They belonged, not only to a terrestrial period, but to an
animal creation, which is now past away. The earth is, it seems, a
domicile which has outlasted more than one race of tenants.

14. It may seem rash and presumptuous in the natural historian to
pronounce thus peremptorily that certain forms of life are nowhere to be
found at present, even in the unfathomable and inaccessible depths of
the ocean. But even if this were so, the proposition that the earth has
changed its inhabitants, since the rocks were formed, of which our hills
consist, does not depend for its proof on this assumption. For in the
organic bodies which our strata contain, we find remains, not only of
marine animals, but of animals which inhabit the fresh waters, and the
land, and of plants. And the examination of such remains having been
pursued with great zeal, and with all the aids which natural history can
supply, the result has been, the proofs of a vast series of different
tribes of animals and plants, which have successively occupied the earth
and the seas; and of which the number, variety, multiplicity, and
strangeness, exceed, by far, everything which could have been previously
imagined. Thus Cuvier found, in the limestone strata on which Paris
stands, animals of the most curious forms, combining in the most
wonderful manner the qualities of different species of existing
quadrupeds. In another series of strata, the Lias, which runs as a band
across England from N. E. to S. W., we have the remains of lizards, or
lacertine animals, different from those which now exist, of immense size
and of extraordinary structure, some approaching to the form of fishes
(_ichthyosaurus_); others, with the neck of a serpent; others with
wings, like the fabled forms of dragons. Then beyond these, that is,
anterior to them in the series of time, we have the immense collection
of fossil plants, which occur in the Coal Strata; the shells and corals
of the Mountain Limestone; the peculiar fishes, different altogether
from existing fishes, of the Old Red Sandstone; and though, as we
descend lower and lower, the traces of organic life appear to be more
rare and more limited in kind, yet still we have, beneath these, in
slates and in beds of limestone, many fossil remains, still differing
from those which occur in the higher, and therefore, newer strata.

15. We have no intention of instituting any definite calculation with
regard to the periods of time which this succession of forms of organic
life may have occupied. This, indeed, the boldest geological
speculators have not ventured to do. But the scientific discoveries thus
made, have a bearing upon the analogies of creation, quite as important
as the discoveries of astronomy. And therefore we may state briefly some
of the divisions of the series of terrestrial strata which have
suggested themselves to geological inquirers. At the outset of such
speculations, it was conceived that the lower rocks, composed of
granite, slate, and the like, had existed before the earth was peopled
with living things; and that these, being broken up into inclined
positions, there were deposited upon them, as the sediment of
superincumbent waters, strata more horizontal, containing organic
remains. The former were then called _Primitive_ or _Primary_, the
latter, _Secondary_ rocks. But it was soon found that this was too
sweeping and peremptory a division. Rocks which had been classed as
Primary, were found to contain traces of life; and hence, an
intermediate class of _Transition_ strata was spoken of. But this too
was soon seen to be too narrow a scheme of arrangement, to take in the
rapidly-accumulating mass of facts, organic and others, which the
geological record of the earth's history disclosed. It appeared that
among the fossil-bearing strata there might be discerned a long series
of Formations: the term _Formation_ being used to imply a collection of
successive strata, which, taking into account all the evidence, of
materials, position, relations, and organic remains, appears to have
been deposited during some one epoch or period; so as to form a natural
group, chronologically and physiologically distinct from the others. In
this way it appeared that, taking as the highest part of the Secondary
series, the beds of chalk, which, marked by characteristic fossils, run
through great tracts of Europe, with other beds, of sand and clay, which
generally accompany these; there was, below this _Cretaceous Formation_,
an _Oolitic Formation_, still more largely diffused, and still more
abundant in its peculiar organic remains. Below this, we have, in
England, the _New Red Sandstone Formation_, which, in other countries,
is accompanied by beds abundant in fossils, as the _Muschelkalk_ of
Germany. Below this again we have the _Coal Formation_, and the
_Mountain Limestone_, with their peculiar fossils. Below these, we have
the Old Red Sandstone or Devonian System, with its peculiar fishes and
other fossils. Beneath these, occur still numerous series of
distinguishable strata; which have been arranged by Sir Roderick
Murchison as the members of the _Silurian_ formation; the researches by
which it was established having been carried on, in the first place, in
South Wales, the ancient country of the Silures. Including the lower
part of this formation, and descending still lower in order, is the
_Cambrian_ formation of Professor Sedgwick. And since the races of
organic beings, as we thus descend through successive strata, seem to be
fewer and fewer in their general types, till at last they disappear;
these lower members of the geological series have been termed, according
to their succession, _Palaeozoic_, _Protozoic_, and _Hypozoic_ or
_Azoic_. The general impression on the minds of geologists has been,
that, as we descend in this long staircase of natural steps, we are
brought in view of a state of the earth in which life was scantily
manifested, so as to appear to be near its earliest stages.

16. Each of these formations is of great thickness. Several of the
members of each formation are hundreds, many of them thousands of feet
thick. Taken altogether, they afford an astounding record of the time
during which they must have been accumulating, and during which these
successive groups of animals must have been brought into being, lived,
and continued their kinds.

17. We must add, that over the Secondary strata there are found, in
patches, generally of more limited extent, another, and of course, newer
mass of strata, which have been termed _Tertiary Formations_. Of these,
the strata, near and under Paris, lying in a hollow of the subjacent
strata, and hence termed the _Paris Basin_, attracted prominent notice
in the first place. And these are found to contain an immense quantity
of remains of animals, which, being well preserved, and being subjected
to a careful and scientific scrutiny by the great naturalist George
Cuvier, had an eminent share in establishing in the minds of Geologists
the belief of the extinct character of fossil species, and of the
possibility of reconstructing, from such remains, the animals, different
from those which now live, which had formerly tenanted the earth.

18. We have, in this enumeration, a series of groups of strata, each of
which, speaking in a general way, has its own population of animals and
plants, and is separated, by the peculiarities of these, from the groups
below and above it. Each group may, in a general manner, be considered
as a separate creation of animal and vegetable forms--creatures which
have lived and died, as the races now existing upon the earth live and
die; and of which the living existence may, and according to all
appearance must, have occupied ages, and series of ages, such as have
been occupied by the present living generations of the earth. This
series of creations, or of successive periods of life, is, no doubt, a
very striking and startling fact, very different from anything which the
imagination of man, in previous stages of investigation of the earth's
condition, had conceived; but still, is established by evidence so
complete, drawn from an examination and knowledge of the structures of
living things so exact and careful, as to leave no doubt whatever of the
reality of the fact, on the minds of those who have attended to the
evidence; founded, as it is, upon the analogies, offices, anatomy, and
combinations of organic structures. The progress of human knowledge on
this subject has been carried on and established by the same
alternations of bold conjectures and felicitous confirmations of
them,--of minute researches and large generalizations,--which have given
reality and solidity to the other most certain portions of human
knowledge. That the strata of the earth, as we descend from the highest
to the lowest, are distinguished in general by characteristic or organic
fossils, and that these forms of organization are different from those
which now live on the earth, are truths as clearly and indisputably
established in the minds of those who have the requisite knowledge of
geology and natural history, as that the planets revolve round the sun,
and satellites round the planets. That these epochs of creation are
something quite different from anything which we now see taking place on
the earth, no more disturbs the belief of those facts, which scientific
explorers entertain, than the seemingly obvious difference between the
nebulae which are regarded as yet unformed planetary systems, and the
solar system to which our earth belongs, disturbs the belief of
astronomers, that such nebulae, as well as our system, really exist.
Indeed we may say, as we shall hereafter see, that the fact of our earth
having passed through the series of periods of organic life which
geologists recognize, is, hitherto, incomparably better established,
than the fact that the nebulae, or any of them, are passing through a
series of changes, such as may lead to a system like ours; as some
eminent astronomers in modern times have held. In this respect, the
history of the world, and its place in the universe, are far more
clearly learnt from geology than from astronomy.

19. But with regard to this series of Organic _Creations_, if, for the
sake of brevity, we may call them so; we may naturally ask, in what
manner, by what agencies, at what intervals, they succeeded each other
on the earth? Now, do the researches of geologists give us any
information on these points, which may be brought to bear upon our
present speculations? If we ask these questions, we receive, from
different classes of geologists, different answers. A little while ago,
most geologists held, probably the greater number still hold, that the
transitions from one of these periods of organic life to another, were
accompanied generally by seasons of violent disruption and mutation of
the surface of the earth, exceeding anything which has taken place since
the surface assumed its present general form; in the same proportion as
the changes of its organic population go beyond any such changes which
we can discern to be at present in operation. And there were found to be
changes of other kinds, which seemed to show that these epochs of
organic transition had also been epochs of mechanical violence, upon a
vast and wonderful scale. It appeared that, at some of these epochs at
least, the strata previously deposited, as if in comparative
tranquillity, had been broken, thrust up from below, or drawn or cast
downwards; so that strata which must at first have been nearly level,
were thrown into positions highly inclined, fractured, set on edge,
contorted, even inverted. Over the broken edges of these strata, thus
disturbed and fractured, were found vast accumulations of the fragments
which such rude treatment might naturally produce; these fragmentary
ruins being spread in beds comparatively level, over the bristling edges
of the subjacent rocks, as if deposited in the fluid which had
overwhelmed the previous structure; and with few or no traces of life
appearing in this mass of ruins; while, in the strata which lay over
them, and which appeared to have been the result of quieter times, new
forms of organic life made their appearance in vast abundance. Such is,
for example, the relation of the coal strata in a great part of
England; broken into innumerable basins, ridges, valleys, strips, and
shreds, lying in all positions; and then filled into a sort of level, by
the conglomerate of the magnesian limestone, and the superincumbent red
sandstone and oolites. In other cases it appeared as if there were the
means of tracing, in these dislocations, the agency of igneous stony
matter, which had been injected from below, so as to form
mountain-chains, or the cores of such; and in which the period of the
convulsion could be traced, by the strata to which the disturbance
extended; _those_ strata being supposed to have been deposited before
the eruption, which were thrust upwards by it into highly-inclined
positions; while those strata which, though near to these scenes of
mechanical violence, were still comparatively horizontal, as they had
been originally deposited, were naturally inferred to have been formed
in the waters, after the catastrophe had passed away. By such reasonings
as these, M. Elie de Beaumont has conceived that he can ascertain the
relative ages (according to the vast and loose measurements of age which
belong to this subject) of the principal ranges of mountains of the
earth's surface.

20. Such estimations of age can, indeed, as we have intimated, be only
of the widest and loosest kind; yet they all concur in assigning very
great and gigantic periods of time, as having been occupied by the
events which have formed the earth's strata, and brought them into their
present position. For not only must there have been long ages employed,
as we have said, while the successive generations of each group of
animals lived, and died, and were entombed in the abraded fragments of
the then existing earth; but the other operations which intervened
between these apparently more tranquil processes, must also have
occupied, it would seem, long ages at each interval. The dislocation,
disruption, and contortion of the vast masses of previously existing
mountains, by which their framework was broken up, and its ruins covered
with beds of its own rubbish, many thousand feet thick, and gradually
becoming less coarse and smoother, as the higher beds were deposited
upon the lower, could hardly take place, it would seem, except in
hundreds and thousands of years. And then again, all these processes of
deposition, thus arranging loose masses of material into level beds,
must have taken place in the bottom of deep oceans; and the beds of
these oceans must have been elevated into the position of mountain
ridges which they now occupy, by some mighty operation of nature, which
must have been comparatively tranquil, since it has not much disturbed
those more level beds; and which, therefore, must have been
comparatively long continued. If we accept, as so many eminent
geologists have done, this evidence of a vast series of successive
periods of alternate violence and repose, we must assign to each such
period a duration which cannot but be immense, compared with the periods
of time with which we are commonly conversant. In the periods of
comparative quiet, such as now exist on the earth's surface, and such as
seem to be alone consistent with continued life and successive
generation, deposits at the bottom of lakes and seas take place, it
would seem, only at the rate of a few feet in a year, or perhaps, in a
century. When, therefore, we find strata, bearing evidence of such a
mode of deposit, and piled up to the amount of thousands and tens of
thousands of feet, we are naturally led to regard them as the production
of myriads of years; and to add new myriads, as often as, in the
prosecution of geological research, we are brought to new masses of
strata of the like kind; and again, to interpolate new periods of the
same order, to allow for the transition from one such group to another.

21. Nor is there anything which need startle us, in the necessity of
assuming such vast intervals of time, when we have once brought
ourselves to deal with the question of the antiquity of the earth upon
scientific evidence alone. For if geology thus carries us far backwards
through thousands, it may be, millions of years, astronomy does not
offer the smallest argument to check this regressive supposition. On the
contrary, all the most subtle and profound investigations of astronomers
have led them to the conviction, that the motions of the earth may have
gone on, as they now go on, for an indefinite period of past time. There
is no tendency to derangement in the mechanism of the solar system, so
for as science has explored it. Minute inequalities in the movements
exist, too small to produce any perceptible effect on the condition of
the earth's surface; and even these inequalities, after growing up
through long cycles of ages, to an amount barely capable of being
detected by astronomical scrutiny, reach a maximum; and, diminishing by
the same slow degrees by which they increased, correct themselves, and
disappear. The solar system, and the earth as part of it, constitute, so
for as we can discover, a Perpetual Motion.

22. There is therefore nothing, in what we know of the Cosmical
conditions of our globe, to contradict the Terrestrial evidence for its
vast antiquity, as the seat of organic life. If for the sake of giving
definiteness to our notions, we were to assume that the numbers which
express the antiquity of these four Periods;--the Present organic
condition of the earth; the Tertiary Period of geologists, which
preceded that; the Secondary Period, which was anterior to that; and the
Primary Period which preceded the Secondary; were on the same scale as
the numbers which express these four magnitudes:--the magnitude of the
Earth; that of the Solar System compared with the Earth; the distance
of the nearest Fixed Stars compared with the solar system; and the
distance of the most remote Nebulae compared with the nearest fixed
stars; there is, in the evidence which geological science offers,
nothing to contradict such an assumption.

23. And as the infinite extent which we necessarily ascribe to space,
allows us to find room, without any mental difficulty, for the vast
distances which astronomy reveals, and even leaves us rather embarrassed
with the infinite extent which lies beyond our farthest explorations; so
the infinite duration which we, in like manner, necessarily ascribe to
past time, makes it easy for us, so far as our powers of intellect are
concerned, to go millions of millions of years backwards, in order to
trace the beginning of the earth's existence,--the first step of
terrestrial creation. It is as easy for the mind of man to reason
respecting a system which is billions or trillions of miles in extent,
and has endured through the like number of years, or centuries, as it is
to reason about a system (the earth, for instance,) which is forty
million feet in extent, and has endured for a hundred thousand million
of seconds, that is, a few thousand years.

24. This statement is amply sufficient for the argument which we have to
found upon it; but before I proceed to do that, I will give another view
which has recently been adopted by some geologists, of the mode in which
the successive periods of creation, which geological research discloses
to us, have passed into one another. According to this new view, we find
no sufficient reason to believe that the history of the earth, as read
by us in the organic and mechanical phenomena of its superficial parts,
has consisted of such an alternation of periods of violence and of
repose, as we have just attempted to describe. According to these
theorists, strata have succeeded strata, one group of animals and
plants has followed another, through a season of uniform change; with no
greater paroxysm or catastrophe, it may be, than has occurred during the
time that man has been an observer of the earth. It may be asked, how is
this consistent with the phenomena which we have described;--with the
vast masses of ruin, which mark the end of one period and the beginning
of another, as is the case in passing from the coal measures of England
to the superincumbent beds;--with the highly-inclined strata of the
central masses, and the level beds of the upper formations which have
been described as marking the mountain ranges of Europe? To these
questions, a reply is furnished, we are told, by a more extensive and
careful examination of the strata. It may be, that in certain
localities, in certain districts, the transition, from the mountain
limestone and the coal, to the superjacent sandstones and oolites, is
abrupt and seemingly violent; marked by _unconformable_ positions of the
upper upon the lower strata, by beds of conglomerate, by the absence of
organic remains in certain of these beds. But if we follow these very
strata into other parts of the world, or even into other parts of this
island, we find that this abruptness and incongruity between the lower
and the higher strata disappears. Between the mountain-limestone and the
red sandstone which lies over it, certain new beds are found, which fill
up the incoherent interval; which offer the same evidence as the strata
below and above them, of having been produced tranquilly; and which do
not violently differ in position from either group. The appearance of
incoherence in the series arose from the occurrence, in the region first
examined, of a gap, which is here filled up,--a blank which is here
supplied. Hence it is inferred, that whatever of violence and extreme
disturbance is indicated by the dislocations and ruins there observed,
was local and partial only; and that, at the very time when these
fragmentary beds, void of organized beings, were forming in one place,
there were, at the same time, going on, in another part of the earth's
surface, not far removed, the processes of the life, death and imbedding
of species, as tranquilly as at any other period. And the same assertion
is made with regard to the more general fact, before described, of the
stratigraphical constitution of mountain chains. It is asserted that the
unconformable relation of the strata which compose the different parts
of those chains, is a local occurrence only; and that the same strata,
if followed into other regions, are found conformable to each other; or
are reduced to a virtually continuous scheme, by the interpolation of
other strata, which make a transition, in which no evidence of
exceptional violence appears.

25. We shall not attempt (it is not at all necessary for us to do so) to
decide between the doctrines of the two geological schools which thus
stand in this opposition to each other. But it will be useful to our
argument to state somewhat further the opinions of this latter school on
one main point. We must explain the view which these geologists take of
the mode of succession of one group of _organized_ beings to another; by
which, as we have said, the different successive strata are
characterized. Such a phenomenon, it would at first seem, cannot be
brought within the ordinary rules of the existing state of things. The
species of plants and animals which inhabit the earth, do not change
from age to age; they are the same in modern times, as they were in the
most remote antiquity, of which we have any record. The dogs and horses,
sheep and cattle, lions and wolves, eagles and swallows, corn and vines,
oaks and cedars, which occupy the earth now, are not, we have the
strongest reasons to believe, essentially different now from what they
were in the earliest ages. At least, if one or two species have
disappeared, no new species have come into existence. We cannot conceive
a greater violation of the known laws of nature, than that such an event
as the appearance of a new species should have occurred. Even those who
hold the uniformity of the mechanical changes of the earth, and of the
rate of change, from age to age, and from one geological period to
another; must still, it would seem, allow that the zoological and
phytological changes of which geology gives her testimony, are complete
exceptions to what is now taking place. The formation of strata at the
bottom of the ocean from the ruin of existing continents, may be going
on at present. Even the elevation of the bed of the ocean in certain
places, as a process imperceptibly slow, may be in action at this
moment, as these theorists hold that it is. But still, even when the
beds thus formed are elevated into mountain chains, if that should
happen, in the course of myriads of years, (according to the supposition
it cannot be effected in a less period,) the strata of such mountain
chains will still contain only the species of such creatures as now
inhabit the waters; and we shall have, even then, no succession of
organic epochs, such as geology discovers in the existing mountains of
the earth.

26. The answer which is made to this objection appears to me to involve
a license of assumption on the part of the _uniformitarian_ geologist,
(as such theorists have been termed,) which goes quite beyond the bounds
of natural philosophy: but I wish to state it; partly, in order to show
that the most ingenious men, stimulated by the exigencies of a theory,
which requires some hypothesis concerning the succession of species, to
make it coherent and complete, have still found it impossible to bring
the creation of species of plants and animals within the domain of
natural science; and partly, to show how easily and readily geological
theorists are led to assume periods of time, even of a higher order than
those which I have ventured to suggest.

27. It must, however, be first stated, as a fact on which the assumption
is founded which I have to notice, that the organic groups by which
these successive strata are characterized, are not so distinct and
separate, as it was convenient, for the sake of explanation, to describe
them in the first instance. Although each body of strata is marked by
predominant groups of genera and species, yet it is not true, that all
the species of each formation disappear, when we proceed to the next.
Some species and genera endure through several successive groups of
strata; while others disappear, and new forms come into view, as we
ascend. And thus, the change from one set of organic forms to another,
as we advance in time, is made, not altogether by abrupt transitions,
but in part continuously. The uniformitarian, in the case of organic, as
in the case of mechanical change, obliterates or weakens the evidence of
sudden and catastrophic leaps, by interposing intermediate steps, which
involve, partly the phenomena of the preceding, and partly those of the
subsequent condition. As he allows no universal transition from one
deposit to a succeeding discrepant and unconformable deposit, so he
allows no abrupt and complete transition from one collection of organic
beings,--one creation, as we may call it,--to another. If creation must
needs be an act out of the region of natural science, he will have it to
be at least an act not exercised at distant intervals, and on peculiar
occasions; but constantly going on, and producing its effects, as much
at one time in the geological history of the world, as at another.

28. And this he holds, not only with regard to the geological periods
which have preceded the existing condition of the earth, but also with
regard to the transition from those previous periods to that in which we
live. The present population of the earth is not one in which all
previous forms are extinct. The past population of the earth was not one
in which there are found no creatures still living. On the contrary, he
finds that there exists a vast mass of strata, superior to the secondary
strata, which are characterized by extinct forms, and are yet inferior
to those deposits which are now going on by the agency of obvious
causes. These masses of strata contain a population of creatures, partly
extinct species, and partly such species as are still living on our land
and in our waters. The proportion in which the old and the new species
occur in such strata, is various; and the strata are so numerous, so
rich in organic remains, so different from each other, and have been so
well explored, that they have been classified and named according to the
proportion of new and of old species which they contain. Those which
contain the largest proportion of species still living, have been termed
_Pliocene_, as containing a _greater_ number of _new_ or recent species.
Below these, are strata which are termed _Miocene_, implying a _smaller_
number of _new_ species. Below these again, are others which have been
termed _Eocene_, as containing few new species indeed, but yet enough to
mark the _dawn_, the _Eos_, of the existing state of the organic world.
These strata are, in many places, of very considerable thickness; and
their number, their succession, and the great amount of extinct species
which they contain, shows, in a manner which cannot be questioned, (if
the evidence of geology is accepted at all,) in what a gradual manner, a
portion at least, of the existing forms of organic life have taken the
place of a different population previously existing on the surface of
the globe.

29. And thus the uniformitarian is led to consider the facts which
geology brings to light, as indicating a slow and almost imperceptible,
but, upon the whole, constant series of changes, not only in the
position of the earth's materials, but in its animal and vegetable
population. Land becomes sea and sea becomes land; the beds of oceans
are elevated into mountain regions, carrying with them the remains of
their inhabitants; sheets of lava pour from volcanic vents and overwhelm
the seats of life; and these, again, become fields of vegetation; or, it
may be, descend to the depths of the sea, and are overgrown with groves
of coral; lakes are filled with sediment, imbedding the remains of land
animals, and form the museums of future zoologists; the deltas of mighty
rivers become the centres of continents, and are excavated as
coal-fields by men in remote ages. And yet all this time, so slow is the
change, that man is unaware such changes are going on. He knows that the
mountains of Scandinavia are rising out of the Baltic at the rate of a
few feet in a century; he knows that the fertile slope of Etna has been
growing for thousands of years by the addition of lava streams and
parasitic volcanos; he knows that the delta of the Mississippi
accumulates hundreds of miles of vegetable matter every generation; he
knows that the shores of Europe are yielding to the sea; but all these
appear to him minute items, not worth summing; infinitesimal quantities,
which he cannot integrate. And so, in truth, they are, for him. His
ephemeral existence does not allow him to form a just conception, in any
ordinary state of mind, of the effects of this constant agency of
change, working through countless thousands of years. But Time,
inexhausted and unremitting, sums the series, integrates the formula of
change; and thus passes, with sure though noiseless progress, from one
geological epoch to another.

30. And in the meanwhile, to complete the view thus taken by the
uniformitarian of the geological history of the earth, by some constant
but inscrutable law, creative agency is perpetually at work, to
introduce, into this progressive system of things, new species of
vegetable and animal life. Organic forms, ever and ever new ones, are
brought into being, and left, visible footsteps, as it were, of the
progress which Time has made;--marks placed between the rocky leaves of
the book of creation; by which man, when his time comes, may turn back
and read the past history of his habitation. But the point for us to
remark is, the immeasurable, the inconceivable length of time, if any
length of time could be inconceivable, which is required of our
thoughts, by this new assumption of the constant production of new
species, as a law of creation. We might feel ourselves well nigh
overwhelmed, when, by looking at processes which we see producing only a
few feet of height or breadth or depth during the life of man, we are
called upon to imagine the construction of Alps and Andes,--when we have
to imagine a world made a few inches in a century. But there, at least,
we had _something_ to start from: the element of change was small, but
there _was_ an element of change: we had to expand, but we had not to
originate. But in conceiving that all the myriads of successive species,
which we find in the earth's strata, have come into being by a law which
is now operating, we have _nothing_ to start from. We have seen, and
know of, no such change; all sober and skilful naturalists reject it, as
a fact not belonging to our time. We have here to build a theory without
materials;--to sum a series of which every term, so far as we know, is
nothing;--to introduce into our scientific reasonings an assumption
contrary to all scientific knowledge.

31. This appears to me to be the real character of the assumption of
the constant creation of new species. But, as I have said, it is not my
business here, to pronounce upon the value or truth of this assumption.
The only use which I wish to make of it is this:--If any persons, who
have adopted the geological view which I have just been explaining,
should feel any interest in the speculations here offered to their
notice, they must needs be (as I have no doubt they will be) even more
willing than other geologists, to grant to our argument a scale of time
for geological succession, corresponding in magnitude to the scale of
distances which astronomy teaches us, as those which measure the
relation of the universe to the earth.

This being supposed to be granted, I am prepared to proceed with my
argument.




CHAPTER VI.

THE ARGUMENT FROM GEOLOGY.


1. I have endeavored to explain that, according to the discoveries of
geologists, the masses of which the surface of the earth is composed,
exhibit indisputable evidence that, at different successive periods, the
land and the waters which occupy it, have been inhabited by successive
races of plants and animals; which, when taken in large groups,
according to the ascending or descending order of the strata, consist of
species different from those above and below them. Many of these groups
of species are of forms so different from any living things which now
exist, as to give to the life of those ancient periods an aspect
strangely diverse from that which life now displays, and to transfer us,
in thought, to a creation remote in its predominant forms from that
among which we live. I have shown also, that the life and successive
generations of these groups of species, and the events by which the
rocks which contain these remains have been brought into their present
situation and condition, must have occupied immense intervals of
time;--intervals so large that they deserve to be compared, in their
numerical expression, with the intervals of space which separate the
planets and stars from each other. It has been seen, also, that the best
geologists and natural historians have not been able to devise any
hypothesis to account for the successive introduction of these new
species into the earth's population; except the exercise of a series of
acts of creation, by which they have been brought into being; either in
groups at once, or in a perpetual succession of one or a few species,
which the course of long intervals of time might accumulate into groups
of species. It is true, that some speculators have held that by the
agency of natural causes, such as operate upon organic forms, one
species might be transmuted into another; external conditions of
climate, food, and the like, being supposed to conspire with internal
impulses and tendencies, so as to produce this effect. This supposition
is, however, on a more exact examination of the laws of animal life,
found to be destitute of proof; and the doctrine of the successive
creation of species remains firmly established among geologists. That
the _extinction_ of species, and of groups of species, may be accounted
for by natural causes, is a proposition much more plausible, and to a
certain extent, probable; for we have good reason to believe that, even
within the time of human history, some few species have ceased to exist
upon the earth. But whether the extinction of such vast groups of
species as the ancient strata present to our notice, can be accounted
for in this way, at least without assuming the occurrence of great
catastrophes, which must for a time, have destroyed all forms of life in
the district in which they occurred, appears to be more doubtful. The
decision of these questions, however, is not essential to our purpose.
What is important is, that immense numbers of tribes of animals have
tenanted the earth for countless ages, before the present state of
things began to be.

2. The present state of things is that to which the existence and the
history of MAN belong; and the remark which I now have to make is, that
the existence and the history of Man are facts of an entirely different
order from any which existed in any of the previous states of the earth;
and that this history has occupied a series of years which, compared
with geological periods, may be regarded as very brief and limited.

3. The remains of man are nowhere found in the strata which contain the
records of former states of the earth. Skeletons of vast varieties of
creatures have been disinterred from their rocky tombs; but these
cemeteries of nature supply no portion of a human skeleton. In earlier
periods of natural science, when comparative anatomy was as yet very
imperfectly understood, no doubt, many fossil bones were supposed to be
human bones. The remains of giants and of antediluvians were frequent in
museums. But a further knowledge of anatomy has made it appear that such
bones all belong to animals, of one kind or another; often, to animals
utterly different, in their form and skeleton, from man. Also some
bones, really human, have been found petrified in situations in which
petrification has gone on in recent times, and is still going on. Human
skeletons, imbedded in rocks by this process, have been found in the
island of Guadaloupe, and elsewhere. But this phenomenon is easily
distinguishable from the petrified bones of other animals, which are
found in rocks belonging to really geological periods; and does not at
all obliterate the distinction between the geological and the historical
periods.

4. Indeed not bones only, but objects of art, produced by human
workmanship, are found fossilized and petrified by the like processes;
and these, of course, belong to the historical period. Human bones, and
human works, are found in such deposits as morasses, sand-banks,
lava-streams, mounds of volcanic ashes; and many of them may be of
unknown, and, compared with the duration of a few generations, of very
great antiquity; but such deposits are distinguishable, generally
without difficulty, from the strata in which the geologist reads the
records of former creations. It has been truly said, that the geologist
is an _Antiquary_; for, like the antiquary, he traces a past condition
of things in the remains and effects of it which still subsist; but it
has also been truly said, at the same time, that he is an antiquary _of
a new Order_; for the remains which he studies are those which
illustrate the history of the earth, not of man. The geologist's
antiquity is not that of ornaments and arms, utensils and habiliments,
walls and mounds; but of species and of genera, of seas and of
mountains. It is true, that the geologist may have to study the works of
man, in order to trace the effects of causes which produce the results
which he investigates; as when he examines the pholad-pierced pillars of
Pateoli, to prove the rise and the fall of the ground on which they
stand; or notes the anchoring-rings in the wall of some Roman edifice,
once a maritime fort, but now a ruin remote from the sea; or when he
remarks the streets in the towns of Scania, which are now below the
level of the Baltic,[1] and therefore show that the land has sunk since
these pavements were laid. But in studying such objects, the geologist
considers the hand of man as only one among many agencies. Man is to him
only one of the natural causes of change.

5. And if, with the illustrious author to whom we have just referred,[2]
we liken the fossil remains, by which the geologist determines the age
of his strata, to the Medals and Coins in which the antiquary finds the
record of reigns and dynasties; we must still recollect that a _Coin_
really discloses a vast body of characteristics of man, to which there
is nothing approaching in the previous condition of the world. For how
much does a Coin or Medal indicate? Property; exchange; government; a
standard of value; the arts of mining, assaying, coining, drawing, and
sculpture; language, writing, and reckoning; historical recollections,
and the wish to be remembered by future ages. All this is involved in
that small human work, a Coin. If the fossil remains of animals may (as
has been said) be termed Medals struck by Nature to record the epochs of
her history; Medals must be said to be, not merely, like fossil remains,
records of material things; they are the records of thought, purpose,
society, long continued, long improved, supplied with multiplied aids
and helps; they are the permanent results, in a minute compass, of a
vast progress, extending through all the ramifications of human life.

6. Not a coin merely, but any, the rudest work of human art, carries us
far beyond the domain of mere animal life. There is no transition from
man to animals. No doubt, there are races of men very degraded,
barbarous, and brutish. No doubt there are kinds of animals which are
very intelligent and sagacious; and some which are exceedingly disposed
to and adapted to companionship with man. But by elevating the
intelligence of the brute, we do not make it become the intelligence of
the man. By making man barbarous, we do not make him cease to be a man.
Animals have their especial capacities, which may be carried very far,
and may approach near to human sagacity, or may even go beyond it; but
the capacity of man is of a different kind. It is a capacity, not for
becoming sagacious, but for becoming rational; or rather it is a
capacity which he has in virtue of being rational. It is a capacity of
progress. In animals, however sagacious, however well trained, the
progress in skill and knowledge is limited, and very narrowly limited.
The creature soon reaches a boundary, beyond which it cannot pass; and
even if the acquired habits be transmitted by descent to another
generation, (which happens in the case of dogs and several other
animals,) still the race soon comes to a stand in its accomplishments.
But in man, the possible progress from generation to generation, in
intelligence and knowledge, and we may also say, in power, is
indefinite; or if this be doubted, it is at least so vast, that compared
with animals, his capacity is infinite. And this capacity extends to all
races of men its characterizing efficacy: for we have good reason to
believe that there is no race of human beings who may not, by a due
course of culture, continued through generations, be brought into a
community of intelligence and power with the most intelligent and the
most powerful races. This seems to be well established, for instance,
with regard to the African negroes; so long regarded by most, by some
probably regarded still, as a race inferior to Europeans. It has been
found that they are abundantly capable of taking a share in the arts,
literature, morality and religion of European peoples. And we cannot
doubt that, in the same manner, the native Australians, or the Bushmen
of the Cape of Good Hope, have human faculties and human capacities;
however difficult it might be to unfold these, in one or two
generations, into a form of intelligence and civilization in any
considerable degree resembling our own.

7. It is not requisite for us, and it might lead to unnecessary
difficulties, to fix upon any one attribute of man, as peculiarly
characteristic, and distinguishing him from brutes. Yet it would not be
too much to say that man is, in truth, universally and specifically
characterized by the possession of _Language_. It will not be questioned
that language, in its highest forms, is a wonderful vehicle and a
striking evidence of the intelligence of man. His bodily organs can, by
a few scarcely perceptible motions, shape the air into sounds which
express the kinds, properties, actions and relations of things, under
thousands of aspects, in forms infinitely more general and recondite
than those in which they present themselves to his senses;--and he can,
by means of these forms, aided by the use of his senses, explore the
boundless regions of space, the far recesses of past time, the order of
nature, the working of the Author of nature. This man does, by the
exercise of his Reason, and by the use of Language, a necessary
implement of his Reason for such purposes.

8. That language, in such a stage, is a special character of man, will
not be doubted. But it may be thought, there is little resemblance
between Language in this exalted degree of perfection, and the seemingly
senseless gibberish of the most barbarous tribes. Such an opinion,
however, might easily be carried too far. All human language has in it
the elements of indefinite intellectual activity, and the germs of
indefinite development. Even the rudest kind of speech, used by savages,
denotes objects by their kinds, their attributes, their relations, with
a degree of generality derived from the intellect, not from the senses.
The generality may be very limited; the relations which the human
intellect is capable of apprehending may be imperfectly conveyed. But to
denote kinds and attributes and actions and relations _at all_, is a
beginning of generalization and abstraction;--or rather, is far more
than a beginning. It is the work of a faculty which can generalize and
abstract; and these mental processes once begun, the field of progress
which is open to them is indefinite. Undoubtedly it may happen that weak
and barbarous tribes are, for many generations, so hard pressed by
circumstances, and their faculties so entirely absorbed in providing for
the bare wants of the poorest life, that their thoughts may never travel
to anything beyond these, and their language may not be extended so as
to be applicable to any other purposes. But this is not the standard
condition of mankind. It is not, by such cases, that man, or that human
nature, is to be judged. The normal condition of man is one of an
advance beyond the mere means of subsistence, to the arts of life, and
the exercise of thought in a general form. To some extent, such an
advance has taken place in almost every region of the earth and in every
age.

9. Perhaps we may often have a tendency to think more meanly than they
deserve, of so-called barbarous tribes, and of those whose intellectual
habits differ much from our own. We may be prone to regard ourselves as
standing at the summit of civilization; and all other nations and ages,
as not only occupying inferior positions, but positions on a slope which
descends till it sinks into the nature of brutes. And yet how little
does an examination of the history of mankind justify this view! The
different stages of civilization, and of intellectual culture, which
have prevailed among them, have had no appearance of belonging to one
single series, in which the cases differed only as higher or lower. On
the contrary, there have been many very different kinds of civilization,
accompanied by different forms of art and of thought; showing how
universally the human mind tends to such habits, and how rich it is in
the modes of manifesting its innate powers. How different have been the
forms of civilization among the Chinese, the Indians, the Egyptians, the
Babylonians, the Mexicans, the Peruvians! Yet in all, how much was
displayed of sagacity and skill, of perseverance and progress, of mental
activity and grasp, of thoughtfulness and power. Are we, in thinking of
these manifestations of human capacity, to think of them as only a stage
between us and brutes? or are we to think so, even of the stoical Red
Indians of North America, or the energetic New Zealanders, and Caffres?
And if not, why of the African Negroes, or the Australians, or the
Bushmen? We may call their Language a jargon. Very probable it would, in
its present form, be unable to express a great deal of what we are in
the habit of putting into language. But can we refuse to believe that,
with regard to matters with which they are familiar, and on occasions
where they are interested, they would be to each other intelligible and
clear? And if we suppose cases in which their affections and emotions
are strongly excited, (and affections and emotions at least we cannot
deny them,) can we not believe that they would be eloquent and
impressive? Do we not know, in fact, that almost all nations which we
call savage, are, on such occasions, eloquent in their own language? And
since this is so, must not their language, after all, be a wonderful
instrument as well as ours? Since it can convey one man's thoughts and
emotions to many, clothed in the form which they assume in his mind;
giving to things, it may be, an aspect quite different from that which
they would have if presented to their own senses; guiding their
conviction, warming their hearts, impelling their purposes;--can
language, even in such cases, be otherwise than a wonderful produce of
man's internal, of his mental, that is, of his peculiarly _human_
faculties? And is not language, therefore, even in what we regard as its
lowest forms, an endowment which completely separates man from animals
which have no such faculty?--which cannot regard, or which cannot
convey, the impressions of the individual in any such general and
abstract form? Probably we should find, as those who have studied the
language of savages always have found, that every such language contains
a number of curious and subtle practices,--_contrivances_, we cannot
help calling them,--for marking the relations, bearings and connections
of words; contrivances quite different from those of the languages
which we think of as more perfect; but yet, in the mouths of those who
use such speech, answering their purpose with great precision. But
without going into such details, the use of any _articulate_ language
is, as the oldest Greeks spoke of it, a special and complete distinction
of man as man.

10. It would be an obscure and useless labor, to speculate upon the
question whether animals have among themselves anything which can
properly be called _Language_. That they have anything which can be
termed Language, in the sense in which we here speak of it, as admitting
of general expressions, abstractions, address to numbers, eloquence, is
utterly at variance with any interpretation which we can put upon their
proceedings. The broad distinction of Instinct and Reason, however
obscure it may be, yet seems to be most simply described, by saying,
that animals do not apprehend their impressions under general forms, and
that man does. Resemblance, and consequent association of impressions,
may often show like generalization; but yet it is different. There is,
in man's mind, a germ of general thoughts, suggested by resemblances,
which is evolved and fixed in language; and by the aid of such an
addition to the impressions of sense, man has thousands of intellectual
pathways from object to object, from effect to cause, from fact to
inference. His impressions are projected on a sphere of thought of which
the radii can be prolonged into the farthest regions of the universe.
Animals, on the contrary, are shut up in their sphere of
sensation,--passing from one impression to another by various
associations, established by circumstances; but still, having access to
no wider intellectual region, through which lie lines of transition
purely abstract and mental. That they have their modes of communicating
their impressions and associations, their affections and emotions, we
know; but these modes of communication do not make a language; nor do
they disturb the assignment of Language as a special character of man;
nor the belief that man differs in his Kind, and we may say, using a
larger phrase, in his Order, from all other creatures.

11. We may sometimes be led to assign much of the development of man's
peculiar powers, to the influence of external circumstances. And that
the development of those powers is so influenced, we cannot doubt; but
their development only, not their existence. We have already said that
savages, living a precarious and miserable life, occupied incessantly
with providing for their mere bodily wants, are not likely to possess
language, or any other characteristic of humanity, in any but a stunted
and imperfect form. But, that manhood is debased and degraded under such
adverse conditions, does not make man cease to be man. Even from such an
abject race, if a child be taken and brought up among the comforts and
means of development which civilized life supplies, he does not fail to
show that he possesses, perhaps in an eminent degree, the powers which
specially belong to man. The evidences of human tendencies, human
thoughts, human capacities, human affections and sympathies, appear
conspicuously, in cases in which there has been no time for external
circumstances to operate in any great degree, so as to unfold any
difference between the man and the brute; or in which the influence of
the most general of external agencies, the impressions of several of the
senses, have been intercepted. Who that sees a lively child, looking
with eager and curious eyes at every object, uttering cries that express
every variety of elementary human emotion in the most vivacious manner,
exchanging looks and gestures, and inarticulate sounds, with his nurse,
can doubt that already he possesses the germs of human feeling, thought
and knowledge? that already, before he can form or understand a single
articulate word, he has within him the materials of an infinite
exuberance of utterance, and an impulse to find the language into which
such utterance is to be moulded by the law of his human nature? And
perhaps it may have happened to others, as it has to me, to know a child
who had been both deaf, dumb, and blind, from a very early age. Yet she,
as years went on, disclosed a perpetually growing sympathy with the
other children of the family in all their actions, with which of course
she could only acquaint herself by the sense of touch. She sat, dressed,
walked, as they did; even imitated them in holding a book in her hand
when they read, and in kneeling when they prayed. No one could look at
the change which came over her sightless countenance, when a known hand
touched hers, and doubt that there was a human soul within the frame.
The human soul seemed not only to be there, but to have been fully
developed; though the means by which it could receive such
communications as generally constitute human education, were thus cut
off. And such modes of communication with her companions as had been
taught her, or as she had herself invented, well bore out the belief,
that her mind was the constant dwelling-place, not only of human
affections, but of human thoughts. So plainly does it appear that human
thought is not produced or occasioned by external circumstances only;
but has a special and indestructible germ in human nature.

12. I have been endeavoring to illustrate the doctrine that man's nature
is different from the nature of other animals; as subsidiary to the
doctrine that the Human Epoch of the earth's history is different from
all the preceding Epochs. But in truth, this subsidiary proposition is
not by any means necessary to my main purpose. Even if barbarous and
savage tribes, even if men under unfavorable circumstances, be little
better than the brutes, still no one will doubt that the most civilized
races of mankind, that man under the most favorable circumstances, is
far, is, indeed, immeasurably elevated above the brutes. The history of
man includes not only the history of Scythians and Barbarians,
Australians and Negroes, but of ancient Greeks and of modern Europeans;
and therefore there can be no doubt that the period of the Earth's
history, which includes the history of man, is very different indeed
from any period which preceded that. To illustrate the peculiarity, the
elevation, the dignity, the wonderful endowments of man, we might refer
to the achievements, the recorded thoughts and actions, of the most
eminent among those nations;--to their arts, their poetry, their
eloquence; their philosophers, their mathematicians, their astronomers;
to the acts of virtue and devotion, of patriotism, generosity,
obedience, truthfulness, love, which took place among them;--to their
piety, their reverence for the deity, their resignation to his will,
their hope of immortality. Such characteristic traits of man as man,
(which all examples of intelligence, virtue, and religion, are,) might
serve to show that man is, in a sense quite different from other
creatures, "fearfully and wonderfully made;" but I need not go into such
details. It is sufficient for my purpose to sum up the result in the
expressions which I have already used; that man is an intellectual,
moral, religious, and spiritual being.

13. But the existence of man upon the earth being thus an event of an
order quite different from any previous part of the earth's history, the
question occurs, how long has this state of things endured? What period
has elapsed since this creature, with these high powers and faculties,
was placed upon the earth? How far must we go backward in time, to find
the beginning of his wonderful history?--so utterly wonderful compared
with anything which had previously occurred. For as to that point, we
cannot feel any doubt. The wildest imagination cannot suggest that
corals and madrepores, oysters and sepias, fishes and lizards, may have
been rational and moral creatures; nor even those creatures which come
nearer to human organization; megatheriums and mastodons, extinct deer
and elephants. Undoubtedly the earth, till the existence of man, was a
world of mere brute creatures. How long then has it been otherwise? How
long has it been the habitation of a rational, reflective, progressive
race? Can we by any evidence, geological or other, approximate to the
beginning of the Human History?

14. This is a large and curious question, and one on which a precise
answer may not be within our reach. But an answer not precise, an
approximation, as we have suggested, may suffice for our purpose. If we
can determine, in some measure, the order and scale of the period during
which man has occupied the earth, the determination may serve to support
the analogy which we wish to establish.

15. The geological evidence with regard to the existence of man is
altogether negative. Previous to the deposits and changes which we can
trace as belonging obviously to the present state of the earth's
surface, and the operation of causes now existing, there is no vestige
of the existence of man, or of his works. As was long ago observed,[3]
we do not find, among the shells and bones which are so abundant in the
older strata, any weapons, medals, implements, structures, which speak
to us of the hand of man, the workman. If we look forwards ten or twenty
thousand years, and suppose the existing works of man to have been, by
that time, ruined and covered up by masses of rubbish, inundations,
morasses, lava-streams, earthquakes; still, when the future inhabitant
of the earth digs into and explores these coverings, he will discover
innumerable monuments that man existed so long ago. The materials of
many of his works, and the traces of his own mind, which he stamps upon
them, are as indestructible as the shells and bones which give language
to the oldest work. Indeed, in many cases the oldest fossil remains are
the results of objects of seemingly the most frail and perishable
material;--of the most delicate and tender animal and vegetable tissues
and filaments. That no such remains of textures and forms, moulded by
the hand of man, are anywhere found among these, must be accepted as
indisputable evidence that man did not exist, so as to be contemporary
with the plants and animals thus commemorated. According to geological
evidence, the race of man is a novelty upon the earth;--something which
has succeeded to all the great geological changes.

16. And in this, almost all geologists are agreed. Even those who hold
that, in other ways, the course of change has been uniform;--that even
the introduction of man, as a new species of animal, is only an event of
the same kind as myriads of like events which have occurred in the
history of the earth;--still allow that the introduction of man, as a
moral being, is an event entirely different from any which had taken
place before; and that event is, geologically speaking, recent. The
changes of which we have spoken, as studied by the geologist in
connection with the works of man, the destruction of buildings on
sea-coasts by the incursions of the ocean, the removal of the shore many
miles away from ancient harbors, the overwhelming of cities by
earthquakes or volcanic eruptions; however great when compared with the
changes which take place in one or two generations; are minute and
infinitesimal, when put in comparison with the changes by which ranges
of mountains and continents have been brought into being, one after
another, each of them filled with the remains of different organic
creations.

17. Further than this, geology does not go on this question. She has no
chronometer which can tell us when the first buildings were erected,
when man first dwelt in cities, first used implements or arms; still
less, language and reflection. Geology is compelled to give over the
question to History. The external evidences of the antiquity of the
species fail us, and we must have recourse to the internal. Nature can
tell us so little of the age of man, that we must inquire what he can
tell us himself.

18. What man can tell us of his own age--what history can say of the
beginning of history--is necessarily very obscure and imperfect. We know
how difficult it is to trace to its origin the History of any single
Nation: how much more, the History of all Nations! We know that all such
particular histories carry us back to periods of the migrations of
tribes, confused mixtures of populations, perplexed and contradictory
genealogies of races; and as we follow these further and further
backwards, they become more and more obscure and uncertain; at least in
the histories which remain to us of most nations. Still, the obscurity
is not such as to lead us to the conviction that research is useless and
unprofitable. It is an obscurity such as naturally arises from the lapse
of time, and the complexity of the subject. The aspect of the world,
however far we go back, is still historical and human; historical and
human, in as high a degree, as it is at the present day. Men, as
described in the records of the oldest times, are of the same nature,
act with the same views, are governed by the same motives, as at
present. At all points, we see thought, purpose, law, religion,
progress. If we do not find a beginning, we find at least evidence that,
in approaching the beginning, the condition of man does not, in any way,
cease to be that of an intellectual, moral, and religious creature.

19. There are, indeed, some histories which speak to us of the beginning
of man's existence upon earth; and one such history in particular, which
comes to us recommended by indisputable evidence of its own great
antiquity, by numerous and striking confirmations from other histories,
and from facts still current, and by its connection with that religious
view of man's condition, which appears to thoughtful men to be
absolutely requisite to give a meaning and purpose to man's faculties
and endowments. I speak, of course, of the Hebrew Scriptures. This
history professes to inform us how man was placed upon the earth; and
how, from one centre, the human family spread itself in various branches
into all parts of the world. This genealogy of the human race is
accompanied by a chronology, from which it results that the antiquity of
the human race does not exceed a few thousand years. Even if we accept
this history as true and authoritative, it would not be wise to be
rigidly tenacious of the chronology, as to its minute exactness. For, in
the first place, of three different forms in which this history appears,
the chronology is different in all the three: I mean the Hebrew, the
Samaritan, and the Septuagint versions of the Old Testament. And even if
this were not so, since this chronology is put in the form of
genealogies, of which many of the steps may very probably have a meaning
different from the simple succession of generations in a family, (as
some of them certainly have,) it would be unwise to consider ourselves
bound to the exact number of years stated, in any of the three versions,
or even in all. It makes no difference to our argument, nor to any,
purpose in which we can suppose this narrative to have a bearing,
whether we accept six thousand or ten thousand years, or even a longer
period, as the interval which has now elapsed since the creation of man
took place, and the peopling of the earth began.

20. And, in our speculations at least, it will be well for us to take
into account the view which is given us of the antiquity of the human
race, by other histories as well as by this. A satisfactory result of
such an investigation would be attained if, looking at all these
histories, weighing their value, interpreting their expressions fairly,
discovering their sources of error, and of misrepresentation, we should
find them all converge to one point; all give a consistent and
harmonious view of the earliest stages of man's history; of the times
and places in which he first appeared as man. If all nations of men are
branches of the same family, it cannot but interest us, to find all the
family traditions tending upwards towards the same quarter; indicating a
divergence from the same point; exhibiting a recollection of the
original domicile, or of the same original family circle.

21. To a certain extent at least, this appears to be the result of the
historical investigations which have been pursued relative to this
subject. A certain group of nations is brought before us by these
researches which, a few thousands of years ago, were possessed of arts,
and manners, and habits, and belief, which make them conspicuous, and
which we can easily believe to have been contemporaneous successors of a
common, though, it may be even then, remote stock. Such are the Jews,
Egyptians, Chaldeans, and Assyrians. The histories of these nations are
connected with and confirm each other. Their languages, or most of them,
have certain affinities, which glossologists, on independent grounds,
have regarded as affinities implying an original connection. Their
chronologies, though in many respects discrepant, are not incapable of
being reduced into an harmony by very probable suppositions. Here we
have a very early view of the condition of a portion of the earth as the
habitation of man, and perhaps a suggestion of a condition earlier
still.

22. It is true, that there are other nations also, which claim an
antiquity for their civilization equal to or greater than that which we
can ascribe to these. Such are the Indians and the Chinese. But while we
do not question that these nations were at a remote period in possession
of arts, knowledge, and regular polity, in a very eminent degree, we are
not at all called upon to assent to the immense numbers, tens of
thousands and hundreds of thousands of years, by which such nations, in
their histories, express their antiquity. For, in the first place, such
numbers are easily devised and transferred to the obscure early stages
of tradition, when the art of numeration is once become familiar. These
vast intervals, applied to series of blank genealogies, or idle fables,
gratify the popular appetite for numerical wonders, but have little
claim on critical conviction.

23. And in the next place, we discover that not enumeration only, but a
more recondite art, had a great share in the fabrication of these
gigantic numbers of years. Some of the nations of whom we have thus
spoken, the Indians, for example, had, at an early period, possessed
themselves of a large share of astronomical knowledge. They had observed
and examined the motions of the Sun, the Moon, the Planets, and the
Stars, till they had discovered Cycles, in which, after long and
seemingly irregular wanderings in the skies, the heavenly bodies came
round again to known and regular positions. They had thus detected the
order that reigns in the seeming disorder; and had, by this means,
enabled themselves to know beforehand when certain astronomical events
would occur; certain configurations of the Planets, for instance, and
eclipses; and knowing how such events would occur in future, they were
also able to calculate how the like events had occurred in the past.
They could thus determine what eclipses and what planetary
configurations had occurred, in thousands and tens of thousands of years
of past time; and could, if they were disposed to falsify their early
histories, and to confirm the falsification by astronomical evidence, do
so with a very near approximation to astronomical truth. Such
astronomical confirmation of their assertions, so incapable in any
common apprehension of being derived from any other source than actual
observation of the fact, naturally produced a great effect upon common
minds; and still more, on those who examined the as

Showing first 200,000 characters. Full text: gutenberg.org/ebooks/36288