minerals, and dissipate every metal in vapour; and whose light is so intolerably brilliant, that the most vivid flames disappear, ' and the most intensely ignited solids appear only as black 'spots on the disc of the sun, when held between it and the 'eye?'* If the temperature of the solid sphere or body of the sun be such as those phenomena imply, it must be the abode, if inhabited at all, of beings such as Sir Thomas Browne refers to, who can lie immortal in the arms of fire.' It is within possibility, however, that the body of the sun, is black as midnight and cold as death, so that as the eye sees all things but itself, he illuminates every sphere but his own, and is light to other stars, but darkness to his own gaze. Or the light and heat of his blazing envelope, may be so tempered, by the reflective clouds of his atmosphere, which throw them off into space, that an endless summer, a nightless summer-day, reigns on his globe. Such an unbroken summer, however, though pleasant to dream of, would be no boon to terrestrial creatures, to whom night is as essential as day, and darkness and rest as light and action. The probabilities are all in favour of the temperature of the sun's solid sphere being very high, nor will any reasonable hypothesis justify the belief that the economy of his system in relation to the distribution of light and heat can resemble ours.

We can assert this still more distinctly of the planets. We should be blinded with the glare and burnt up, if transported to Mercury, where the sun acts as if seven times hotter than on this earth; and we should shiver in the dark, and be frozen to death, if removed to Uranus, where the sun is three hundred times colder than he his felt to be by us. To pass from Uranus to Mercury, would be to undergo in the latter exposure to a temperature some two thousand times higher than we had experienced in the former, whilst on this earth the range of existence lies within some two hundred degrees of the Fahrenheit thermometer.

As for our satellite, Sir John Herschel says of it, 'The 'climate of the moon must be very extraordinary: the alternation "being that of unmitigated and burning sunshine, fiercer than an 'equatorial noon, continued for a whole fortnight, and the 'keenest severity of frost, far exceeding that of our polar 'winters, for an equal time." It would seem then, that though all else were equal, the variations in amount of light and heat, would alone necessitate the manifestation of a non-terrestrial life, upon the sun, and the spheres which accompany the earth in its revolutions around it. All else, however, is not equal.

* Herschel's Outlines of Astronomy, p. 236.

The intensity of gravity at the surfaces of the different heavenly bodies differs enormously. At the sun it is nearly twenty-eight times greater than at the earth. The efficacy of muscular power 'to overcome weight, is therefore proportionably nearly twenty'eight times less on the sun than on the earth. An ordinary 'man, for example, would not only be unable to sustain his own 'weight on the sun, but would literally be crushed to atoms 'under the load.'* Again, the intensity of gravity, or its efficacy ' in counteracting muscular power, and repressing animal activity 'on Jupiter, is nearly two and a half times that on the earth, on 'Mars is not more than one-half, on the moon one-sixth, and 'on the smaller planets probably not more than one-twentieth; 'giving a scale of which the extremes are in the proportion of sixty to one.'t

From this account it appears, that we should be literally mercurial in Mercury, and saturnine in Saturn, but anything but jovial in Jupiter, where we should be two and a half times heavier and duller than here. On the smaller planets we should feel like swimmers in the Dead Sea, or as if in a bath of quicksilver, where to sink is impossible. A man placed on one of 'them would spring with ease sixty feet high, and sustain no 'greater shock in his descent than he does on the earth from leaping a yard. On such planets giants might exist, and those 'enormous animals, which on earth require the buoyant power 'of water to counteract their weight, might there be denizens of 'the land.' If the fixed stars be suns, of what ponderous adamant must the beings be fashioned, which exist on their surfaces! Were it possible for us, clothed in some frigorific asbestos garment, to endure unscathed the flames of Sirius, it would only be to be crushed to powder against his enormous globe. Here, then, is a second point of diversity, of itself sufficient to forbid the development of the earth-life we see here, on any other of the heavenly bodies.

And we do not require to enlarge upon the third point of diversity-variation in the chemical composition of the spheres. The absence of an atmosphere from the moon, and the peculiar characters of that of Jupiter and of the sun, have already been referred to as forbidding the appearance of terrestrial life under their skies. The impossibility of its manifestation on meteor-planets such as have reached our earth has also been sufficiently dwelt upon.

In the face of the immense diversity which has thus been shown to prevail through space, it should seem impossible to hold the belief, that the stars are all but so many Earths. The Herschel's Outlines, p. 311.

† Ibid.

Ibid. p. 323.

author of the Vestiges,' however, in his blind zeal for the nebular hypothesis of a common physical origin of all worlds, and solicitous to save God the trouble of taking care of his own universe, thinks otherwise.

'We see,' says he, speaking as if the nebular hypothesis were an established fact, that matter has originally been diffused in ' one mass, of which the spheres are portions. Consequently, 'inorganic matter must be presumed to be everywhere the same, 'although probably with differences in the proportions of ingre'dients in different globes, and also some difference of con'ditions. Out of a certain number of the elements of inorganic matter are composed the elements of organic bodies, both vegetable and animal, such must be the rule in Jupiter and in 'Sirius as it is here. We are, therefore, all but certain that 'herbaceous and ligneous fibre, that flesh and blood, are the constituents of the organic beings of all those spheres which are as yet seats of life.'*

He proceeds a little further on to say, 'Where there is light, there will be eyes; and these, in other spheres, will be the same in all respects as the eyes of tellurian animals, with only 'such differences as may be necessary to accord with minor peculiarities of condition and of situation. It is,' he adds, 'but a small stretch of the argument to suppose that one conspicuous organ of a large portion of our animal kingdom 'being thus universal, a parity in all the other organs, species 'for species, class for class, kingdom for kingdom,—is highly likely, and that thus the inhabitants of all the other globes of space have not only a general but a particular resemblance to 'those of our own.'t How baseless this reasoning is, with its 'small stretch' at the close, we need not stop to demonstrate anew, but a few words may be added to enforce what has been stated already, in reference to the concluding argument concerning the relation of eyes to light.

It is a hasty and unwarrantable conclusion, that every illuminated globe must contain living eyes. On our own earth, there are many animals without organs of vision; so that we cannot conclude that eyes are a necessary reaction of light and life upon each other. Worlds may be supplied with light for other reasons than to endow their inhabitants with the faculty of sight. Our sun is a centre of many influences. We know at least three which may be separated from each other-light, heat, and what has been called actinic or chemical force; but probably electricity and magnetism also radiate from his orb. Terrestrial plants and animals are powerfully affected by most, * Page 171. Page 172.

probably by all of those; but the inhabitants of other spheres may not have organs enabling them to take advantage of more than some, perhaps only of one of the forces in question. On the other hand, the sun may be the source of agencies of which we know nothing, which are about us and yet do not affect us, because we have no channels or senses by which they can find access to us. The dwellers in other planets may have organs of which we have no conception, enabling them to enjoy these, either as substitutes for the influences which affect us, or in addition to them.

Our sun, it is true, sends light to his several planets and their moons, but that they all make the same use of it is in no degree probable. They may, some of them at least, be 'old in rayless blindness,' yet not like Schiller's Proserpine, 'aching for the gold-bright light in vain.' They may have 'knowledge at one entrance quite shut out;' but so likely enough have we, and at more entrances, perhaps, than one. The sun may impartially distribute the same gifts, though in unequal quantities, to his family; but it depends on each member of the circle what improvement is made of them. Mercury, who receives Benjamin's portion, may well be expected to show a different result from the newly-discovered, scantily-endowed Neptune, who has so long and so mysteriously tempted Uranus from his course. We would liken the different planets and satellites of our system to so many pieces of stained glass in a cathedral window; on every one, the same seventinted light falls, but the chemical composition, and molecular arrangement of each transparent sheet determines whether it turns to account the whole seven, and gleams white, or profits only by certain of them, and shows, in consequence, green or red, blue, purple, or yellow. If some tiny fly, whose dominion was limited to the inside of a single pane, should suppose that, as its kingdom was bathed in unchanging red, every other sheet of glass must be 'vermeil tinctured' also, because it knew that on every one the same light fell, it would greatly err, as we are wise enough to know. But we who are crushed before the moth,' probably err as widely, if we affirm that each of the planets is a mirror reflecting the sun in the same way. He is probably like a fountain, sending forth a river charged with many dissimilar substances, and each of the planets resembles a filter, separating from it what its construction enables it to retain, and what was intended and is fitted to be appropriated by it.

Even, however, if we should concede to our author that wherever there is light there will be eyes, surely a few more

data are necessary, before a whole animal can be assumed. Can we infer that lungs or other breathing organs exist, unless we make it probable that there is an atmosphere to breathe? Can we take for granted wings of birds or of insects, unless we show that there is air to fan? or, may we count on the 'hearing ear' before we establish that there is a gaseous or aqueous medium to transmit the undulations of sound? If there be no water, will there be paddles of whales or of turtles, or fins of fishes? If no carbon, will there be leaf or stem of flower or tree? If no lime, bone or skeleton of any animal? The existence of all these organs cannot be assumed merely because there is light. But, in truth, as little can organs of vision. For if there be no water, there can be no blood; and if no blood, then not even eyes, at least earthly eyes, however constant and brilliant the light may be.

The unequivocal testimony, then, of physical science, as it seems to us, is against the doctrine that life, as it appears on the stars, must be terrestrial in its nature, though we are far from wishing to affirm that planets closely resembling the earth may not occur in space. It is enough for our argument to show that there are myriads of stars, which, for the reasons already given, are altogether non-terrestrial in their characters.

It remains, then, to inquire, whether we are to come to the conclusion, that the stars are uninhabited, inasmuch as terrestrial life is the only possible one, or to believe that there exists a diversified astral life which is manifested on them. Abstaining from anything like an attempt to define positively the probable characteristics of the latter, if it exist, we may say this much on the matter. There are fewer characters of universality in terrestrial life than in terrestrial chemistry. There is a plant-life and an animal-life, which are quite separable, and may exist apart, and there are different kinds of each. To mention but one example: the egg of the butterfly has one life, and the caterpillar which springs from it has another; and the chrysalis into which the caterpillar changes has a third, and the butterfly which rises from the chrysalis has a fourth; and so there may be worlds which know only a germinal, or a caterpillar, a chrysalis, or a butterfly life.

Further, in this world we see plants and the lowest animals possessing only the sense of touch, if the former can be said to be endowed even with that. Gradually as we ascend in the animal scale, additional senses are manifested, till four more appear in the highest animals. But who shall tell us that these five are the only possible, or even the only existing channels of communication with the outer world? We might, besides the