that divine intelligence of which they are here but a feeble emanation?

Under the influence of such views, may we not conceive also the archetype of a world, the rudiments of which, imperfectly developed in our own globe, may have all its modifications exhausted in the planetary and sidereal domains? The uniformity in the general design of the bodies of animals, which Sir Isaac Newton compares with that "wonderful uniformity of the planetary system, which is the effect of choice," being thus compatible with an almost infinite diversity of parts, there may be the same numerous deviations from the archetype in the planetary world. "It may be allowed," says Sir Isaac Newton, "that God is able to create particles of matter of several sizes and figures, and in several proportions to space, and perhaps of different densities and forces, and thereby to vary the laws of Nature, and make worlds of several sorts in several parts of the universe." If all the structures of created things are

"Parts and proportions of a wondrous whole,"

that whole is the sidereal universe, and those parts and proportions are the inhabited planets, satellites, and suns of which it is composed.

1 Optics, edit. 1721, pp. 378, 379.

CHAPTER V.

THE SUN, MOON, AND SATELLITES.

So strong has been the belief that the Sun can

not be a habitable world, that a scientific gentleman' was pronounced by his medical attendant to be insane, because he had sent a paper to the Royal Society, in which he maintained "that the light of the sun proceeds from a dense and universal aurora which may afford ample light to the inhabitants of the surface beneath, and yet be at such a distance aloft, as not to annoy them ;”—that “ vegetation may obtain there as well as with us," that "there may be water and dry land there, hills and dales, riin, and fair weather,"-and that "as the light and the seasons must be eternal," the "sun

1 This gentleman was a Dr. Elliott, who was tried at the Old Bailey for shooting Miss Boydell. Her medical attendant was Dr. Simmons, through whom he sent the paper for the Royal Society, and who referred the Court to the passage we have given as a proof of insanity. See Edinburgh Encyclopædia, Art. Astronomy, vol. ii. p. 616, or Gentleman's Magazine for 1787, p. 636.

may easily be conceived to be by far the most blissful habitation of the whole system." About half a century before this opinion was given by Dr. Elliott, a pious and distinguished individual, Lord President Forbes of Culloden, stated it as his opinion, that if the planets were inhabited, "the inhabitants must be of a texture very different from those of the earth,” and that "we cannot deem it impossible that beings may have been made, fit to reside, to act, and to think in the very centre, as well as on the surface of the sun."1 And in less than ten years after this apparently extravagant notion had been considered a proof of insanity, it was maintained by Sir William Herschel as a rational and probable opinion, which might be deduced from his own observations on the structure of the sun.

It is by no means necessary that those who believe in a plurality of worlds within the limits of our own system, should adopt the opinion that the Sun which lights it, and the many satellites which light the primary planets, should be inhabited worlds. They form an entirely different class of bodies, and the arguments employed to shew that they may be inhabited are of a different nature from those andogies

1 Reflections on the sources of Incredulity with regard to Religion, p. 3. Edinburgh, 1750.

which so strongly apply to the primary planets. The Sun has a great function to perform in controlling the movements of the whole system. It is the mainspring of the great planetary chronometers, without which they would stop, and rush into destructive collision. It is the lamp which yields. them the light without which life would perish. It is the furnace which supplies the fuel without which organic nature would be destroyed. Created for such noble purposes, we are led by no analogy to assign to it an additional function. The very same remark may be applied to our moon, and to all the satellites of the system. They are the domestic lamps which light the primary planets in the absence of the sun, and all of them, as well as our own, may exercise the other office of producing the tides of their oceans. It is quite otherwise with the primary planets: They have no conceivable function to perform but that of supporting inhabitants, unless we give them the additional one which they are all fit for performing, and which they perform so well, of becoming gigantic lamps to their satellites; and if we invest them with this function, we obtain an argument in favour of the satellites themselves being inhabited.

We are willing therefore to admit that analogy

would fail us, were we to attempt by its processes to people the sun and the satellites with inhabitants. But analogy is not our only guide in such inquiries. The creations of the material world, whether they be of colossal or atomic magnitude, may have various and apparently contradictory purposes to answer; and when we find that other purposes, not cognizable by our senses, or not demonstrable by our reason, may be promoted by such objects, we cannot resist the admission that such additional objects may have been contemplated in their creation. The great masses of ironstone in our earth, while they are a necessary part of its framework, and are intended mainly to supply man with the tools of civilisation, may have the secondary or the tertiary purpose of giving life to the needle of the compass, or of contributing to those great electrical and magnetical arrangements which exist on our globe. Though the sun then and the satellites are primarily intended for the great purposes which they so obviously subserve, it is not unreasonable to suppose that they may also be the seats of life and intelligence.

After a skilful examination of the solar spots, Sir William Herschel has made it highly probable, if not certain, that the light of the sun issues from an outer stratum of self-luminous or phosphoric