SPECULATORS AMONG THE STARS.
Let us imagine one of our species, at an early period of its history, destitute of any artificial aid to the sense of sight, contemplating the aspect of things around him. He perceives that, somehow or other, he lives upon a Something—apparently a flat surface, of indefinite extent in all directions from the spot where he stands—consisting of land and water, alternately visited with light and darkness, heat and cold; with a regular succession of seasons, somehow or other connected with the growth of vegetables of various kinds, suitable and unsuitable for his purposes, with beautiful flowers and magnificent forests: while the air, water, and earth, teem with insects, birds, fishes, and animals, which seem almost altogether at his command. There are also winds, dews, showers, mists, frost, snow, hail, thunderstorms, volcanoes, and earthquakes. He himself, equally with the vegetables and animals, passes through divers gradations, from birth to decay—from life to death: but during life, alike alternately sleeping and waking, subject to vicissitudes of pain and pleasure, of health and disease.
If he look beyond the locality on which all this takes place, he beholds a blazing body alternately visible and invisible, at regular intervals, and to which he attributes both light and heat; another luminous body visible only at night, which it gently illuminates; and both these objects are occasionally subject to brief but portentous obscurations. During the night there also appear a great number of glittering white specks in the blue distance, which he calls stars; all he knows of them being, that they are beautiful objects in the dark; even contributing a little light, in the absence of the moon. Why all these things came to be as they are, he knows no more than the bird that is blithely singing on the branch above him, but for a certain Book, which tells him that God made him, and everything he sees about him; the sun, the moon, the stars, the earth, with all the arrangements securing night and day, light and darkness, seasons, days, and years; forminghim, inHis Image; giving him the earth for a dwelling, and dominion over everything that lives and breathes in it; and commanding him to be obedient to the will of his Maker. That the first man and woman placed on the earth became, nevertheless, almost immediately disobedient; whereby they incurred the anger of God, and their position on earth became woefully changed for the worse. That God, nevertheless, loved man, formed in His own image, after His likeness, with such tenderness, that He devised means for his restoration, if he chose, to the favour which he had forfeited; and Himself visited the earth, in the form of man; submitted to mockery, suffering, and death, on his behalf; rose again, and returned to Heaven with the body which He had assumed on earth. That though man’s body must die and decay, equally with that of every animal, his shall rise again, and be rejoined by its spirit, to stand before the judgment-seat of God, to be judged in respect of the deeds done in the body, and be eternally miserable or happy, according to the righteous judgment then pronounced. Moreover, this Book tells him, with reference to the locality in which he exists, that all things shall not always remain as they are; but that the earth, and all that is in it, shall be burned up; that it, and the Heaven, shall pass away witha great noise; that the elements shall melt with fervent heat; and for those on whom a favourable doom shall have been pronounced in the day of judgment, there shall be a new heaven, and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness. Believing all this, and his inner nature telling him that the law of action laid down in the Book is righteous, and conformable to that nature, he endeavours to regulate his conduct by it, and dies, as dies generation after generation, in calm and happy reliance on the Truth of that Book.
Ages pass away, and great discoveries appear to be made, by the exercise of man’s own thought and ingenuity, and quite independently of any revelations contained in his Great Book. Whereas he had thought the earth stationary, he finds it, the sun, and the moon, to be round bodies, each turning round on its own axis, the earth once in twenty-four hours; that the earth also goes round the sun once in every year, the moon accompanying it, and at the same time turning round it once in every month; and that these are the means by which are caused light and darkness, night and day, heat and cold, and the various changes of the seasons. The stars remain twinkling, the mere bright specks they ever appeared.
Let us now, however, suppose our thoughtful observer’s sight assisted by the aid of glass, in two ways—so as to place him on the one hand, nearer to distant objects, and on the other, reveal objects close to him, which he had never suspected. In the latter case, his microscope exhibits an astounding spectacle—almost every atom turned, as it were, into a world, peopled with exquisitely-organised animal forms, adapted perfectly to the elements in which they are seen disporting themselves. In the former case, his telescope makes equally astounding revelations in an opposite direction. The Heavens are swarming with splendid structures unseen to the naked eye: new planets are visible, with rings, belts, and moons, and the stars prove to be resplendent suns; the centres of so many systems peopling infinitude; and these, moreover, obeying laws of motion the same as those which exist in the system of which the earth forms part!
“Well,” says our overwhelmed observer, “it is certainly late in the day to make these sublime and awful discoveries; but here they are, unless my instruments play me false, so that I am the victim of mere optical delusion; the boundless, numberless realms of insect life being only imaginary; and the stars really no suns or worlds at all, but simply the glittering spots which alone mankind has hitherto believed them. But if my telescope tell me truly, the little speck on which I live is in fact but a grain of dark dust in the heavens, circling obscurely round a sun, itself a mere star, perhaps eclipsed in splendour by every other star in existence; each probably containing many more and greater planets circling about it than has our sun! And about these mattersThe Bookis silent.”
Pondering these discoveries, and assuming them to be real, our observer echoes the inquiry of our greatest living astronomer—“Now,for what purposeare we to suppose such magnificent bodies scattered through the abyss of space?”[14]And at length the grander one occurs—Are there human beings, or beings similar to myself, anywhere else than on this earth? On the sun, moon, planets, and their satellites? Nay, on all the other inconceivably numerous suns, planets, and satellites in existence? He pauses, as though in a spasm of awe. But he may next, and very rationally, ask, If it be so,how does all this affect me? Has it any practical bearing on the condition of a denizen of this earth?
If our bewildered inquirer unfortunately had at his elbow Thomas Paine, he would hear this blasphemous whisper: “The system of a plurality of worlds rendersthe Christian faithat once little and ridiculous, and scatters it in the mind, like feathers in the air. The two beliefs cannot be held together in the same mind; and he who thinks he believes both has thought but little ofeither.”[15]By this impious drivel is meant, that if this infinitude of systems be made by one God, who has peopled every orb as our own is peopled, with rational and moral beings, it is absurd to suppose that He has such a special regard for us, as the Scriptures assure us He has—thatHe was made flesh, and dwelt among us—lived with us, died for us, rose again for us; us, the insignificant occupants of this insignificant speck amidst the resplendent magnificence of the infinite universe. Now, that such a notion is equally irreligious and unphilosophical we trust no intelligent reader of ours requires to be persuaded; but that there are both friends and enemies of the Christian Faith, who fear or believe otherwise, may be assumed; and hence the unspeakable importance of viewing the matter soberly, by such light as we have,—as God has been pleased to vouchsafe to us. If we have little, we cannot help it, but must gratefully and reverently make the best use we can of it; assuring ourselves that there must be wise reasons for our omniscient Creator’s having given us just as much as we have, and no more. He might have endowed us with faculties nearly akin to His own; but He has thought proper to act otherwise.
The attention of scientific persons, and those of a speculative character in religion, physics, and morals, has recently been recalled to the question,—whether there are grounds for believing the heavenly bodies to be inhabited by rational beings,—by the publication, eleven months ago, of a thin octavo volume of 279 pages, bearing no author’s name, and entitled,Of the Plurality of Worlds, an Essay. Internal evidence seemed to point to a distinguished person at Cambridge as the author—a gentleman of great eminence as a mathematician, a logician, a divine, and a moralist—in short, to the Reverend Dr Whewell, the Master of Trinity College. The work was divided into numbered paragraphs, as is usual with that gentleman; peculiarities of spelling—e. g., “offense,” instead of “offence”—and of style and expression, are common to theEssayand the other works of the suspected author. We are not aware that up to the present time he has repudiated the work thus attributed to him. On the contrary, he has just published aDialogue, by way of supplement to it, in which he and various classes of objectors are speakers; and on one of them telling him that one of his critics “repeatedly tries to connect his speculations with those of the author ofVestiges of Creation,” a wild work of an infidel character, he answers, “If he were to try to connect me with ananswerto that work, which went through two editions, under the title ofIndications of the Creator, he would be nearer the mark; at least, I adopt the sentiments of this latter book.” Now, this latter book was published, certainly not with Dr Whewell’s name on the title-page, but by the publisher of all his other works, and entitledIndications of the Creator; Theological Extracts from Dr Whewell’s History and Philosophy of Inductive Science. But whereas theEssayin question is written by the present highly-gifted Master of Trinity, with the design of showing that “the belief of the planets and stars being inhabited is ill-founded—a notion taken up on insufficient grounds, and that the most recent astronomical discoveries point the other way”—the author declaring that these “views have long been in his mind, the convictions which they involve growing gradually deeper, through the effect of various trains of speculation;” it will be found, on referring to Dr Whewell’sBridgewater Treatise, published in 1833, that these views seem not then to have been entertained by him. In book iii. chap. 2, we find him speaking thus: “The earth, the globular body thus covered with life, is not the only globe in the universe. There are circling about our own sun six others, so far as we can judge, perfectly analogous in their nature, besides our moon, and other bodies analogous to it. No one can resist the temptation to conjecture that these globes, someof them much larger than our own, are not dead and barren; that they are, like ours, occupied with life, organisation, intelligence. To conjecture is all that we can do; yet even by the perception of such a possibility, our view of the domain of nature is enlarged and elevated.” Speaking again of the stars, and supposing them suns, with planets revolving round them, he adds, “And these may, like our planet, be the seats of vegetable, animal, and rational life. We may thus have in the universe, worlds, no one knows how many, no one can guess how varied.” And, finally, in the ensuing chapter, “On man’s place in the Universe,” he says: “We thus find that a few of the shining spots which we see scattered on the face of the sky in such profusion, appear to be of the same nature as the earth; and may, perhaps, as analogy would suggest, be, like the earth, the habitations of organised beings.” Undoubtedly these remarks are penned in a cautious and philosophic spirit; and upwards of twenty years’ subsequent reflection, by the light of various splendid astronomical discoveries during that interval, is now announced to have so far shaken Dr Whewell’s faith in such “conjectures,” as to induce him, “in all sincerity and simplicity,” to submit “to the public the arguments, strong or weak,” which had occurred to him on the subject; “and which, when he proceeded to write theEssay, assumed, by being fully unfolded, greater strength than he had expected.” He is now disposed to regard a belief in the plurality of worlds “to have been really produced by a guess, lightly made at first, quite unsupported by subsequent discoveries, and discountenanced by the most recent observations, though too remote from knowledge to be either proved or disproved.” And further, he thus indicates the grand scope of the entire inquiry: “I do not attempt to disprove the plurality of worlds, by taking for granted the truths of Revealed Religion; but I say that the teaching of Religion may, to a candid inquirer, suggest the wisdom of not taking for granted the Plurality of Worlds. Religion seems, at first sight at least, to represent Man’s history and position as unique. Astronomy, some think, suggests the contrary. I examine the force of this latter suggestion, and it seems to me to amount to little or nothing.” In the tenth and eleventh chapters of theEssay, Dr Whewell thus speaks, in two passages (§§ 12, 20), which appear to us to indicate at once the spirit in which he offers his speculations, and his apprehension as to the reception with which they might meet. In the former, he owns that his “views are so different from those hitherto generally entertained, and considered as having a sort of religious dignity belonging to them, that we may fear, at first at least, they will appear to many rash and fanciful, and almost, as we have said, irreverent.” In the latter he speaks thus:—
“It is not to be denied that there may be a regret and disturbance naturally felt at having to give up our belief that the planets and the stars probably contain servants and worshippers of God. It must always be a matter of pain and trouble, to be urged with tenderness, and to be performed in time, to untwine our reverential religious sentiments from erroneous views of the constitution of the Universe with which they have been involved. But the change once made, it is found that religion is uninjured, and reverence undiminished. And therefore we trust that the reader will receive with candour and patience the argument which we have to offer with reference to this view, or, rather, this sentiment.”
In this tone of manly modesty is expressed the whole of this really remarkable work; but all competent readers will also be struck by the dignified consciousness of power associated with that modesty. These two characteristics have invested this book with a certain charm, in our eyes, which we cannot but thus avow, after having given hisEssay, and theDialogue, in which he deals with various objectors to hisEssay, due consideration. A calm perusal of thatDialoguemay suggest to shrewd opponents the necessity of approaching the writer of it with caution.
Here, then, we have a man of first-rate intellectual power, a practised and skilful dialectician, formidably familiar with almost every department of physical science, in its latestand highest development; an eminent moral writer and academical teacher, and an orthodox clergyman in the Church of England, coming forward deliberately to commit himself to opinions which he acknowledges he does not publish “without some fear of giving offense:”—opinions at variance with those not only popularly held, but maintained by perhaps three-fourths of even scientific persons who have bestowed attention on the subject. Who can doubt hisrightto do so, especially in a calm and temperate spirit, as contradistinguished to one of arrogance and dogmatism? None but a fool would rush angrily forward, to encounter such an author with harsh and heated language, or derogatory and uncharitable insinuations and imputations. A philosophical and duly qualified opponent would act differently. He would say, In this age of free inquiry, no matter how bold and serious the attack on preconceptions and long-established opinion and belief, if it be made in a grave and manly spirit of inquiry and argument, and especially by one whose eminent character, qualifications, and position, entitle his suggestions and speculations to deliberate consideration, that deliberate consideration they must have. “I have presented,” says the writer of theEssay, in theDialogue, “gravely and calmly, the views and arguments which occurred to my mind, on a question which many persons think an interesting one; and if any one will introduce any other temper into the discussion of this question, with him I will hold no argument; if he write in a vehement and angry strain, I will have nothing to say to him.” The author is here alluding to Sir David Brewster, the author of the second of the three works placed at the head of this article. If, on the other hand, a man of great authority and reputation be unwise enough to run counter to opinions universally received, and that by persons of high scientific and literary reputation, merely as a sort of gladiatorial exercise, disturbing views rightly associated with religion and science, and with levity shaking the confidence of mankind in conclusions arrived at by the profoundest masters of science, he must take the consequences of being deemed presumptuous and trifling, and encounter the stern rebuke of those whom he is not entitled to treat with disrespect.
Now, a careful and unprejudiced perusal of thisEssayhas satisfied us concerning several things. It is written with uncommon ability. The author has an easy mastery of the English language, and these pages abound in vigorous and beautifully-exact expressions. From beginning to end, also, may be seen indications of a subtle and guarded logic; a felicitous and masterly disposition of his subject; a thorough familiarity with the heights and depths of physics, divinity, and morals; and, above and infinitely beyond all, a reverent regard for the truths of revealed religion, and an earnest desire to advance its interests, by removing what, in his opinion, many deem a serious stumblingblock in the way of the devout Christian. That stumblingblock may be seen indicated in the audacious language which we have quoted from Thomas Paine. If this be the object which Dr Whewell has had in view—and who will doubt it?—his title to respectful consideration is greatly enhanced. He must be given credit for having deliberately counted the cost of what he was about to do—the amount of censure, ridicule, and contempt which he might provoke. It seems that he has felt himself strong enough to make the experiment; and here he sees a distinguished contemporary, Sir David Brewster, quickly ascribing “his theories and speculations to no better feeling than a love of notoriety;”[16]who again stigmatises an argument of the Essayist as “the most ingenious though shallow piece of sophistry which we have ever encountered in modern dialectics.”[17]
That Dr Whewell offers us, in hisEssayandDialogue, his real views and opinions, and that they have been long and deeply considered, we implicitly believe, on his own statement that such is the case. It may nevertheless be, that he is the unconsciousvictim of an invincible love of paradox; and indeed Sir David Brewster unceremoniously characterises the Essayist’s conjectures concerning the fixed stars as “insulting to Astronomy,” and “ascribable only to some morbid condition of the mental powers, which feeds upon paradox, and delights in doing violence to sentiments deeply cherished, and to opinions universally believed;”[18]that having once conceived what he regards as a happy idea on a great question, he dwells upon it with such an eager fondness as warps his judgment; that having committed himself to what he has seen to be a false position, he defends it desperately, with consummate logical skill. Or he may believe himself entitled to the credit of having demolished bold and vast theories, and plucked up by the roots an enormous fallacy. It may be so, or it may not; but Dr Whewell’s is certainly a very bold attempt to swim against the splendid stream of modern astronomical speculation. He would say, however, Is it not as boldto people, as todepopulatethe starry structures? It is on you that the burthen of proof rests: you cannot see, or hear, inhabitants in other spheres; the Bible tells us nothing about them; and where, therefore, is theEVIDENCEon which you found your assertion, and would coerce me into a concurrence in your conclusions? I long for the production of sufficient evidence of so awful a fact as that God has created all the starry bodies for the purpose of placing upon them beings in any degree like man—moral, intellectual, accountable beings, of equal, higher, or lower degree of intelligence—consisting of that wondrous combination of matter and mind, body and soul, which constitutesman, existing in similar relations to the external world. The mere suggestion startles me, both as a man of science and a Christian believer, on account of certain difficulties which appear to me greater than perhaps even you may have taken into account. But, however this may be, I call upon you for proofs of so vast a fact as you allege to exist, or the best kind and greatest degree of evidence which may justify me in assenting to the existence of such a fact. We are dealing with facts, probabilities, improbabilities; and I repudiate any intrusion of sentiment or fancy. If God has told me that the fact exists, I receive it with reverence; and wonder at finding myself a member of so immense a family, from all communication with which He has been pleased to cut me off in my present stage of existence. But if God has not told me the fact directly—and I feel no religious obligation to hold the fact to exist or not to exist—I will regard the question as one both curious and interesting, and weigh carefully the reasons which you offer me in support of your assertion. But will you, in return, weigh carefully the reasons I offer for asserting a fact which appears to me, however you may think erroneously, of incalculably greater personal moment to me as a member of the human family—namely, that “man’s history and position are unique;—that the earth is really the largest planetary body in the solar system—its domestic hearth, and the onlyWORLDin the universe?” I am quite as much startled at having to receive your notion, as you may be to receive mine. My great engine of proof, says his opponent, is analogy: well, replies the other, there I will meet you; and the first grand point to settle is, whether there is an analogy;[19]when that shall have been settled in the affirmative, we will, as carefully as possible, weigh theamountof it.
This is the point at issue between Dr Whewell and Sir David Brewster; who resolutely undertakes to demonstrate “More Worlds than One” to be “thecreedof the philosopher, and thehopeof the Christian.” It is to be seen whether this eminent member of the scientific world, also a firm believer in the Christian religion, has undertaken a task to which he is equal. He must present such an amount of proof as will require the plurality of worlds to be accepted as hisCREED, by aPhilosopher; that is, by aBaconian—one accustomed to exact and patient investigation of facts, and inferences deducible from them; who rigorously rejects, as disturbing forces, all appeals to our hopes or wishes, our feelings or fancy.
There are two questions before us; to which we shall add, on our own account, a third. The first is that asked in 1686 by the gifted and sprightly Fontenelle (whom Voltaire pronounced the most universal genius which the age of Louis XIV. produced), and echoed in 1854 by Sir David Brewster:Pourquoi non?Why should therenotbe a plurality of worlds? The second is that asked by Dr Whewell: Whyshouldthere be? “I do not pretend to disprove a plurality of worlds; but I ask in vain for any argument that makes the doctrine probable.”[20]The third, is our own.And what if there be?—a question of a directly practical tendency. We shall take the second question first, because it will bring Dr Whewell first on the field, as it was he who has so suddenly mooted this singular question. But we would at the outset entreat our readers, at all events our younger ones, to remember that we are dealing with a purely speculative subject, respecting which zealous partisans are apt to draw on their imaginations—to assert or deny the existence of analogy, on insufficient grounds; to overstrain or underrate its force; and lend to bare probabilities, or even pure possibilities, somewhat of the air of facts, wherefactsthere are absolutely none.
I.Why should there bemore worlds than one? “Astronomy,” says Dr Whewell, “no more reveals to us extra-terrestrial moral agents, than religion reveals to us extra-terrestrial plans of Divine government;” and to remedy the assumption of moral agents in other worlds, by the assumption of some operation of the Divine plan in other worlds, is unauthorised and fanciful, and a violation of the humility, submission of mind, and spirit of reverence, which religion requires.[21]He considers Dr Chalmers’s allowance of astronomy’s offering strong analogies in favour of such opinions as “more than rash:” he regards such “analogies” as, “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.” We have seen Dr Whewell, in 1833, expressing an opinion very doubtfully, with a “perhaps, that, as analogy would suggest, a few of the heavenly bodies appearing to be of the same nature as the earth,maybe, like it, the seats of organised beings.” He is now disposed to annihilate those analogies, so far as they are deemed sufficient to warrant such an immense conclusion. But that to which he is now disposed to come is equally immense. He says, “That the earth is inhabited, is not a reason for believing that the other planets are so, but for believing that they arenotso.”[22]Her orbit “is the temperate zone of the solar system, where only is the play of hot and cold, moist and dry, possible.... The earth is really the largest planetary body in the solar system; its domestic hearth; adjusted between the hot and fiery haze on one side, the cold and watery vapour on the other. This region only is fit to be a domestic hearth, a seat of habitation; in this region is placed the largestsolidglobe of our system; and on this globe, by a series ofcreativeoperations, entirely different from any of those which separated the solid from the vaporous, the cold from the hot, the moist from the dry, have been established, in succession, plants, and animals, andMAN. So that the habitations have been occupied; the domestic hearth has been surrounded by its family; the fitnesses so wonderfully combined have been employed; and the earth alone, of all the parts of the frame which revolve round the sun, has become aWORLD.”[23]Now, let us here cite two or three passages of Scripture, one of them very remarkable. “The heaven, even the heavens, are the Lord’s;but the earth hath he given to the children of men.”[24]“Thus saith God the Lord, he that createdthe heavens, and stretched them out; he that spread forth the earth, and that which cometh out of it; he that giveth breath unto the peopleupon it, and spirit to them that walktherein:[25]... I have made the earth, and created manupon it; I, even my hands, have stretched out the heavens, and all their host have I commanded.... Thus saith the Lord, that created the heavens; God himself, that formed the earth, and made it; he hath established it, he created it not in vain, he formedITto be inhabited: I am the Lord; and there is none else.”[26]Here the Psalmist speaks of both the heaven and the earth, saying of the latter that he hasgiven itto the children of men; while the inspired prophet repeatedly speaks of the heavens and the earth, saying that God had given breath to the people uponit, and spirit to them that walktherein; that he had created man uponit; that he had created the earth notin vain, but formed “it,” to be inhabited. It is not said that he formed the heavens to be inhabited, but the earth. This passage Sir David Brewster has quoted as “a distinct declaration from the inspired prophet, that the earth would have been createdIN VAIN, if it had not been formed to be inhabited; and hence we draw the conclusion, that as the Creator cannot be supposed to have made the worlds of our system, and those in the sidereal universe, in vain,theymust have been formedto be inhabited.”[27]Is not this a huge “conclusion” to draw from these premises? And do not the words tend rather the other way—to show thatthe earth, with its wondrous adaptations, would have been created in vain, if not to be inhabited; but that the heavens may be created for other purposes, of which man, in the present stage of existence, has not, nor can have, any conception?
We have spoken of Sir David Brewster’s drawing a huge conclusion from a passage of Scripture in support of his views of the question before us; but we have to present a still huger conclusion, drawn by him from another glorious passage: “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?” “This,” says Sir David, “is a positive argument for a plurality of worlds! We cannot doubt that inspiration revealed to the Hebrew poet the magnitude, the distances, and the final cause of the glorious spheres which fixed his admiration.... He doubtless viewed these worlds asteeming with life, physical and intellectual; as globes which may have required millions of years for their preparation, exhibiting new forms of beings,new powers of mind, new conditions in the past, and new glories in the future!” In hisDialogueDr Whewell thus drily dismisses this extraordinary flight of his opponent: “That the Hebrew poet knew, or thought about, the plurality of worlds, is a fact hitherto unnoticed by the historians of astronomy; to their consideration I leave it.”
Let us now, however, follow Dr Whewell in the development of his idea, bearing in mind his own impressive statement, in his preface, that, “while some of his philosophical conclusions appear to him to 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.”
“The two doctrines which we have here to weigh against each other,” says Dr Whewell, “are thepluralityof worlds, and theunityof the world;” and he “includes, as a necessary part of the conception of a ‘WORLD,’ a collection of intelligent creatures, where reside intelligence, perception of truth, recognition of moral law, and reverence for a Divine Creator and Governor.”[28]HisEssaybranches into three great divisions, in disposing of the conjectural plurality of worlds,and suggesting the reality of the unity of the world. First, he considers the constitution of man: secondly, that of the earth which he inhabits, its adaptation, structure, and position: lastly, its neighbours in the heavens—the solar system to which it belongs, the fixed stars, and the nebulæ; and as to these, he declares that “a closer inquiry,with increased means of observation, gives no confirmation to the conjecture which certain aspects of the universe at first sight suggested to man, that there may be other bodies, like the earth, tenanted by other creatures like man,—some characters of whose nature seem to remove or lessen the difficulties we may at first feel in regarding the earth as, in aunique and special manner, the field of God’s providence and government.”[29]This is not the order in which Dr Whewell proceeds, but it is that which we shall observe, in giving our readers such a brief and intelligible account as we can of this singularly boldEssay. He himself commences with a beautiful sketch of the state of “Astronomical Discoveries,” with which Dr Chalmers dealt in his celebrated Discourses; by no means understating the amount of them, with reference principally to the number of the heavenly bodies—“a countless host of worlds, arranged in planetary systems, having years and seasons, days and nights, as we have;” as to which, “it is at least a likely suggestion that they have also inhabitants—intelligent beings, who can reckon those days and years—who subsist on the fruits which the seasons bring forth, and have their daily and yearly occupations, according to their faculties.”[30]“Ifthis world be merely one of innumerable other worlds, all, like it, the workmanship of God,—all the seats of life—like it, occupied by intelligent creatures, capable of will, law, obedience, disobedience, as man is,—to hold that it alone should have been the scene of God’s care and kindness, and still more, of His special interposition, communication, and personal dealings with its individual inhabitants, in the way which religion teaches, is, the objector is conceived to maintain, in the highest degree extravagant, incredible, and absurd.”[31]Such is, as we have seen, the assertion of Thomas Paine; and Dr Whewell proposes to discuss this vastspeculativequestion, “not as an objection urged by an opponent, but rather as a difficulty felt by a friend of religion;”—“to examine rather how we can quiet the troubled and perplexed believer, than how we can triumph over the dogmatical and self-satisfied infidel.”[32]But letourreader note well, at starting, the above mighty “IF:” which he may regard as the comet’s nucleus, drawing after it an enormous and dismaying train of consequences, sweeping into annihilation man’s hopes equally with his fears.
Dr Whewell gives a lucid and terse account of the scope of Dr Chalmers’s eloquent declamation, his ingenious suggestions, and hisastronomicalorphilosophicalarguments, which he deems “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 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.”[33]
But “WHAT IS MAN?” is the pregnant question of the royal Psalmist; and Dr Whewell gives an account of man, at once ennobling and solemnising; in strict accordance, moreover, with revelation, and with those views of his moral and intellectual nature universally entertained by the believers in revealed religion. We know of no man living entitled to speak with more authority on such subjects than Dr Whewell; and we think it impossible for any thoughtful person to read the portions of hisEssayrelating to this subject, without feelingsof awe and reverence towards our Maker. Not that any new conditions of human nature are suggested, or any peculiarly original views of it presented; but our knowledge on the subject is, as it were, condensed into a focus, and then brought to bear upon the question, What is man, that his Maker should be mindful of him, and visit him? and thereby render the earth, in a unique and special manner, the field of God’s providence and government. Lord Bolingbroke objected to the Mosaic account of the creation, and “that man is made by Moses as the final end, if not of the whole creation, yet at least of our system:” but let us remember, that Moses also tells us that God determined to “makeman in Our image, after Our likeness;” that God did, accordingly, create man in His own image—with special significance twice asserting the fact thatin the image of God created He him; and he tells us that, after the flood, God assigned this as a reason for visiting the crime of murder with death—Whoso sheddeth man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed; for in the image of God made He man. The full import of that awful and mysterious expression, the image and likeness of God, man, in his fallen state, may never know. Adam possibly knew originally; and his descendants believe that it consists in their Intellectual and Moral nature. The former is, in some measure, of the same nature as the Divine mind of the Creator:[34]the laws which man discovers in the creation must be laws known to God; those which man sees to be true—those of geometry, for instance—God also must see to be true. That there were, from the beginning, in the Creator’s mind creative thoughts, is a doctrine involved in every intelligent view of creation—a doctrine which has recently received splendid illustration by a living “great discoverer in the field of natural knowledge.”[35]Law implies a lawgiver, even when we do not see the object of the law; even as design implies a designer, when we do not see the object of the design. The laws of nature are the indications of the operation of the Divine mind, and are revealed to us, as such, by the operations of our mind, by which we come to discover them. They are the utterances of the Creator, delivered in language which we can understand; and being thusLanguage, they are the utterances of an Intelligent Spirit.[36]
“If man, when he attains to a knowledge of such laws, is really admitted, in some degree, to the view with which the Creator himself beholds his creation; if we can gather, from the conditions of such knowledge, that his intellect partakes of the nature of the Divine intellect; if his mind, in its clearest and largest contemplation, harmonises with the Divine mind,—we have in this a reason which may well seem to us very powerful, why, even if the earth alone be the habitation of intelligent beings, still the great work of creation is not wasted. If God have placed on the earth a creature who can so far sympathise with Him (if we may venture upon the expression), who can raise his intellect into some accordance with the creative intellect; and that not once only, nor by few steps, but through an indefinite gradation of discoveries more and more comprehensive, more and more profound, each an advance, however slight, towards a Divine Insight; then, so far as intellect alone, of which alone we are here speaking, can make man a worthy object of all the vast magnificence of creative power, we can hardly shrink from believing that he is so.”[37]
Again: The earth is a scene ofMORAL TRIAL. Man is subject to a moral law; and this moral law is a law of which God is the legislator—a law which man has the power of discovering, by the use of the faculties which God has given him. Now, the existence of a body of creatures, capable of such a law, of such a trial, and of such an elevation, as man is the subject and has the power of—that is, of rising from one stage of virtue to another, by a gradual and successive purification and elevation of the desires, affections, and habits, in a degree, so far as we know, without limit—is, according to all we can conceive, infinitely more worthy of the Divine Power and Wisdom, in the creation of the universe, than any number of planets occupied by creatures having no such lot, no such law, no such capacities, and no such responsibilities.However imperfectly the moral law may be obeyed; however ill the greater part of mankind may respond to the appointment which places them here in a state of moral probation; however few there may be who use the capacities and means of their moral purification and elevation; stillthat there issuch a plan in the creation, and thatanyrespond to its appointments, is really a view of the universe which we can conceive to be suitable to the nature of God, because we can approve it, in virtue of the moral nature which He has given us. One school of moral discipline, one theatre of moral action, one arena of moral contests for the highest prizes, is a sufficient centre for innumerable hosts of stars and planets, globes of fire and earth, water and air, whether or not tenanted by corals and madrepores, fishes and creeping things. So great and majestic are those names ofRIGHTandGOOD,DUTYandVIRTUE, that all mere material or animal existence is worthless in the comparison.... Man’s moral progress is a progress towards a likeness with God; and such a progress, even more than a progress towards an intellectual likeness with God, may be conceived as making the soul of man fit to endure for ever with God, and therefore, as making this earth a preparatory stage of human souls, to fit them for eternity—a nursery of plants which are to be fully unfolded in a celestial garden. And if this moral life be really only the commencement of an infinite Divine plan beginning upon earth, and destined to endure for endless ages after our earthly life, we need no array of other worlds in the universe, to give sufficient dignity and majesty to the scheme of the Creator.
The author of theEssaythen ascends to an infinitely greater and grander altitude:—
“If by any act of the Divine government the number of those men should be much increased, who raise themselves towards the moral standard which God has appointed, and thus towards a likeness to God, and a prospect of a future eternal union with him; such an act of Divine government would do far more towards making the universe a scene in which God’s goodness and greatness were largely displayed, than could be done by any amount of peopling of planets with creatures who were incapable of moral agency, or with creatures whose capacity for the development of their moral faculties was small, and would continue to be small, till such an act of Divine government was performed. The interposition of God, in the history of man, to remedy man’s feebleness in moral and spiritual tasks, and to enable those who profit by the interposition to ascend towards a union with God, is an event entirely out of the range of those natural courses of events which belong to our subject: and to such an interposition, therefore, we must refer with great reserve;using great caution that we do not mix up speculations and conjectures of our own with what has been revealed to man concerning such an interposition. But this, it would seem, we may say, that such a Divine interposition for the moral and spiritual elevation of the human race, and for the encouragement and aid of those who seek the purification and elevation of their nature, and an eternal union with God, is far more suitable to the idea of a God of infinite goodness, purity, and greatness, than any supposed multiplication of a population, on our own planet, or on any other, not provided withsuchmeans of moral and spiritual progress. And if we were, instead of such a supposition, to imagine to ourselves, in other regions of the universe, a moral population purified and elevated without the aid, or need, of any such Divine interposition, the supposed possibility of such a moral race would make the sin and misery, which deform and sadden the aspect of our earth, appear more dark and dismal still. We should, therefore, it would seem, find no theological congruity, and no religious consolation, in the assumption of a plurality of worlds of moral beings; while, to place the seats of those worlds in the stars and the planets would be, as we have already shown, a step discountenanced by physical reasons; and discountenanced the more, the more the light of science is thrown upon it.”[38]
Should it be urged, that if the creation ofoneworld of such creatures as man exalts so highly our views of the dignity and importance of the plan of creation, the belief in many such worlds must elevate still more our sentiments of admiration and reverence of the greatness and goodness of the Creator; and must be a belief,on that account, to be accepted and cherished by pious minds, Dr Whewell replies in the following weighty passage:—
“We cannot think ourselves authorised to assert cosmological doctrines,selected arbitrarily by ourselves, on the ground of their exalting our sentiments of admiration and reverence for the Deity,when the weight of all the evidence which we can obtain respecting the constitution of the universe, is against them. It appears to me, that to discover one great scheme of moral and religious government, which is the spiritual centre of the universe, may well suffice for the religious sentiments of men in the present age; as in former ages, such a view of creation was sufficient to overwhelm men with feelings of awe, and gratitude, and love, and to make them confess, in the most emphatic language, that all such feelings were an inadequate response to the view of the scheme of Divine Providence which was revealed to them. The thousands of millions of inhabitants of the earth, to whom the effects of the Divine love extend, will not seem, to the greater part of religious persons, to need the addition of more, in order to fill our minds with vast and affecting contemplations, so far as we are capable of pursuing such contemplations. The possible extension of God’s spiritual kingdom upon the earth will probably appear to them a far more interesting field of devout meditation than the possible addition to it of the inhabitants of distant stars, connected, in some inscrutable manner, with the Divine Plan.”[39]
“In this state of our knowledge,” Dr Whewell subsequently adds, after recapitulating the whole course of the argument indicated by the lines above placed in italics, “and with such grounds of belief, to dwell upon the plurality of worlds of intellectual and moral creatures as a highly probable doctrine, must, we think, be held to be eminently rash and unphilosophical. On such a subject, where the evidences are so imperfect, and our power of estimating analogies so small, far be it from us to speak positively and dogmatically. And if any one holds the opinion, onwhateverevidence, that there are other spheres of the Divine government than this earth, other spheres in which God has subjects and servants, other beings who do his will, and who, it may be, are connected with the moral and religious interests of man, we do not breathe a syllable against such a belief, but, on the contrary, regard it with a ready and respectful sympathy: it is a belief which finds an echo in pious and benevolent hearts, and is of itself an evidence of that religious and spiritual character in man, which is one of the points of our argument.... But it would be very rash, and unadvised—a proceeding unwarranted, we think, by religion, and certainly at variance with all that science teaches—to place those other extra-human spheres of Divine government in the planets and in the stars. With regard to these bodies, if we reason at all, we must reason onphysicalgrounds; we must suppose, as to a great extent we can prove, that the law and properties of terrestrial matter and motion apply to them also. On such grounds it is as improbable that visitants from Jupiter, or from Sirius, can come to the earth, as that men can pass to those stars—as unlikely that inhabitants of those stars know and take an interest in human affairs, as that we can learn what they are doing. A belief in the Divine government of other races of spiritual creatures, besides the human race, and in Divine ministrations committed to such beings, cannot be connected with our physical and astronomical views of the nature of the stars and planets, without making a mixture altogether incongruous and incoherent—a mixture of what is material, and what is spiritual, adverse alike to sound religion and to sound philosophy.”[40]
Those possessing a competent acquaintance with the doctrines of theology, and ethical and metaphysical discussions, cannot, we think, read this necessarily faint and imperfect outline of what Dr Whewell has thus far advanced on the subject, without appreciating the caution and discretion with which he handles the subject which he here discusses—one of a critical character—in all its aspects and bearings. It is deeply suggestive to reflecting minds, who may be disposed to note with satisfaction how closely his doctrine, as thus far developed, quadrates with those of the Christian system. He has well reminded us, in theDialogue, of a saying of Kant—that two things impressed him with awe: the starry heaven without him, andthe Moral Principle within; and the current of his reflections tends towards that awful passage in the New Testament,—wordswhich fell from the lips of the Saviour of mankind: “For what is a man profited, if he shall gainthe whole world, and lose his own soul? Or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?” “Forthe Son of Man shall come in the glory of his Father, with his angels, and then he shall reward every man according to his works.”[41]These two questions (to say nothing of the significance of the expression with reference to the subject now under discussion, “the whole world”), and the reason which is proposed to those who would answer the question, as that which should govern the choice between their own soul and the whole world, justify our attaching the highest conceivable value and importance to man, as a rational, a moral, an accountable being.
In theDialogue, an objector suggests, “But in your inclination to make man the centre of creation, and the object of all the rest of the universe, are you not forgetting the admonitions of those who warn us against this tendency of self-glorification? You will recollect how much of this warning there is in theEssay on Man:—