a bout with him-lies in a brief compass. In the first place, the assumption is not that of religion, but entirely that of the objector. If the multiplicity of worlds leads him into difficulties, let him remember that that doctrine, however probable, is only an assumption when used as the basis for an argument. In the next place, we may freely admit that such a further assumption,' as is here imputed to religion, would be absurd, and is not one which religion requires us to assume.' It might be added, by way of retort, that there are religious considerations, as we have before suggested, which seem rather to discountenance than to support the notion, that the earth is the centre of the moral and religious universe.'

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But, instead of proceeding in any such fashion, the author of the essay deals with the objectors very much as ill-natured people say we have been dealing with our Russian foes. One would think this imaginary sceptic was a friend of forty years' standing!' 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.' And then, like a fighter who has shaken hands with his antagonist on entering the lists, he proceeds to contest the difficulty. But how? In the following chapter, by alleging an argument which, so far forth as it is an argument, can only strengthen it; and in the rest of an elaborate, learned, but ill-arranged essay, by advancing various considerations and many arbitrary speculations, with the single purpose of cutting away from the objector the ground on which he built his objection; the position, assumed or granted as true,' of the existence of a multiplicity of worlds.

In all this there is a marvellous confusion of purpose and design--not to say a generally deficient apprehension of the subject-matter. Or the plurality of worlds, this essay does indeed dispute, albeit in a roundabout manner. But the introduction of Chalmers, and the imaginary sceptic, and the 'friend to religion,' is ovdèv πpòs AtóvvGov. It is worse, for it is not Διόνυσον. simply otiose; it embarrasses and perplexes the argument. We have to complain, then, not merely of a careless arrangement and inelegant style, but, (1.) That the objection proposed is non-existent or unimportant. (2.) That the objection is not summarily disposed of, as it obviously might be, by the plea that it is based on an assumption- the multiplicity of worlds, assumed or granted as true.' (3.) Nor yet is it met by showing that such assumption is perfectly consistent with religious

The punctuation, we take leave to observe, is not our own.

truth. (4.) But it is transmogrified from an inimical objection into a friendly difficulty.' (5.) And it is met by adducing microscopical researches, which do but enhance it. (6.) And it is made the ground for a dissertation on a perfectly distinct, though deeply interesting question, whether the assumption be probably correct.

Truly a most clumsy and confused way of entering upon what is really the subject-matter of the book! As clumsy as the following sentences, and as confused as the ideas which induced their writer to embody identical propositions in so elaborate and unwieldy a form. Of course,' says our author, at the close of his chapter on the objection, 'Of course it is ⚫ natural that the views which are used by unbelievers as argu'ments 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 argu'ments, considered as infidel arguments, would operate to remove the difficulties which believers entertain on such grounds.'Of course!

We have asserted that the answer which the microscope is supposed to furnish to the difficulty, is no answer at all. This point deserves some elucidation.

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, 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. 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. * * ** 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.'

And

It would surely be a very poor way of explaining to a learner his difficulty in conceiving how the branch of a parabola above the axis can be constantly bending towards it, yet ever receding from it, and that to an indefinite distance, if you told him that

1 Before leaving this chapter it deserves notice that the learned author appears to have made an error in stating the relative positions of the two exterior orbits of our system. 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, &c.' Now Bode's celebrated law asserted the intervals between each successive pair of orbits to be about double of the preceding interval. And this law is remarkably violated in the case of Neptune, as indeed our author has himself observed elsewhere.

the same thing occurs in the branch below the axis, and 'that infinity in one direction is balanced by infinity in the other.' The obvious deduction from the revelations of the microscope is this; that there is no such mean limit as man has been accustomed to place to his Creator's power and providence ; that what is ever more and more discovered in miniature may very probably have its counterpart in giant forms; that the discovery of new worlds close to us, renders nugatory any à priori objections against the existence of new worlds at vast distances from us; and that among the foolish thoughts which might naturally arise in men's minds,' the above-stated was one of the most foolish. Such would be the conclusion deduced by a man free from the alleged difficulty. But to a man who sincerely felt it, the discovery of microscopic worlds could only enhance and multiply it; in proportion as fresh worlds' were brought under the management of the Governor of the Universe to interfere with that care which, till then, natural religion, &c.' Yet our author concludes, The discovery of new worlds at vast distances from us, was accompanied by the 'discovery of new worlds close to us; and was thus rendered 'ineffective to disturb the belief of those who had regarded the world as having God for its Governor. This is a striking ' reflexion.'

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Chiefly so from its extremely illogical conclusion. Wherefore we cannot but wish, for the credit of our writer, and the comfort and clearness of thought of his readers, that he had proceeded to his real subject without all this verbose introduction on astronomical discoveries, astronomical objections, and microscopical answers; more especially as the difficulty he raises has, after all, no great force. For, as he himself concludes, in a sentence whereof the readers will (in obedience to the old rule) count one at each comma: 'It is not likely that any one, who ' had formed his conceptions of the Divine Mind from its mani'festations 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.'

Yes, here we are at last; brought, no doubt, to the right result, though by a most crooked path, and at last by floundering through a perfect shingle of commas! What is our consternation on turning the page to meet with a further statement of the difficulty!' We shall not weary our readers with any lengthy disquisition of this extraordinary chapter.

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2

1

Starting with a grotesque and clumsy hypothesis that '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,' -as if, even on the supposition of there being human beings in the moon, it were not pre-eminently absurd to imagine that their selenometry must be at all analogous to our geometry, or that if they have Euclids with I. xlvii. all complete, that proposition must needs claim for them the admiration which we concede it; -the writer on the plurality of worlds discusses, in a rambling sort of a way, the general theory and conditions of intellectual progress. Advance is shown to be a necessary attribute of mental and moral existences. And all this in order to dilate on the self-evident proposition that: Even if there be intelligent inhabitants in the moon, or in the planets, it does not follow 'that they have any sympathy with us, or any community of knowledge:' a proposition which, so far from seeming to us to discredit the theory of a plurality of worlds, is, on the contrary, one of the most probable features in it. If science told us nothing of other spheres, how eminently unphilosophical would be the assumption that their tenants were modelled, physically or intellectually, upon one type! How does every branch of positive science demonstrate that such a conjecture would be not only unsafe, but improbable. It may be hard to imagine to ourselves the forms and qualities of moral and intellectual creatures distinct from mankind; but it would have been equally hard for angels, or other beings, to conceive of man before the Creator had modelled him, after His own image, and not upon any external type. It is necessarily impossible to picture to ourselves any object upon which none of our natural senses can be brought to bear; because, as Victor Cousin has so admirably shown, in his critique on Locke's Philosophy, the mind possesses its latent ideas all undeveloped and unexpressed until the operation of sensible impressions fertilises the womb of thought; and calls out into actuality and activity the ideas which lay dormant there. Hence the difficulty of imagining to oneself, or explaining to others, any object of mere abstract thought. The terms we use, when we employ language for the purpose, are all borrowed from the domain of sense; and thus

This strange and monstrous conception is, we believe, due to the originality of the gallant and eccentric Col. Thompson. He proposed to carve the figures above-described, in gigantic proportions upon Salisbury Plain, in the hope to elicit a response from the dwellers in the moon.

2 Of course the established relations of space are absolutely true everywhere, in the moon as well as in the earth. But her mathematical appliances may as far transcend our geometry and trigonometry, as these do the old arts of the Nilometricians [not however that we think it even probable the moon is a peopled world.]

the very vehicle and medium of our thought reminds us of the great disadvantages under which we labour, in attempting to discourse definitely about what is not the object of palpable

sensation.

But were we never so fertile and happy in our imaginings, how wild and visionary it would be to presume to people other worlds with creatures of our own imagination! We may, if we like to be absurd, people another planet with sentient and intelligent forms--we can scarcely call them men-that shall combine all the hideous devices of ancient Indian, Egyptian, and Grecian mythologies—or we may devise new shapes, beings with three legs, and possessed each of two minds, one of which is active, while the other takes its sleep. But, even if our notions were not necessarily and painfully grotesque, a well disciplined mind would at once recoil from any arbitrary assumptions of the kind, as unphilosophical. The problem is one in which the number of equations is utterly insufficient for the evaluation of all the unknown relations of the quantities involved. And even if the conditions were all ascertained, it by no means follows that we could solve a single one of them.

But the fact is, that modern science has told us a great deal about other worlds; and her intelligence furnishes us with a certain number of conditions which we can exhibit in, at any rate, an approximately explicit form. It is true that the information they afford us is negative. They only strip the possible inhabitants of other worlds of certain habits, or forms, or enjoyments, which obtain among ourselves. They supply no positive intelligence as to their actual mode of existence. They merely restrict it, in certain respects, within certain limits. Thus:

'When we consider the physical peculiarities and probable condition of the several planets, so far as the former are known by observation, or the latter rest on probable grounds of conjecture, three features principally strike us as necessarily productive of extraordinary diversity in the provisions by which, if they be like our earth inhabited, animal life must be supported. These are-first, the difference in their respective supplies of light and heat from the sun; secondly, the difference in the intensities of the gravitating forces which must subsist at their surfaces, or the different ratios, which, on their several globes, the inertia of bodies must bear to their weights; and, thirdly, the difference in the nature of the materials of which, from what we know of their mean density, we have every reason to believe they consist. The intensity of solar radiation is nearly seven times greater on Mercury than on the earth, and on Uranus 330 times less the proportion between the two extremes being that of upwards of 2,000 to one. Let any one figure to himself the condition of our globe, were the sun to be septupled, to say nothing of the greater ratio! or were it diminished to a seventh, or to a 300th of its actual power. Again, the

1 Herschel, Outlines of Astronomy, p. 310.