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    paper has traeed the resemblance with great skill . The article " Geology " is ' a well-deserved exposure of a book which is a type of a class of vicious books trying to discredit science , because science discredits orthodoxy ; the book exposed is Mr . E : lfe Tayler's Geology : its Facts and its Fictions . " A Memoir of Colonel Butler "—a name familiar to readers of Scmiii . BB ' s Wallenstein—must not be passed over ; nor an erudite discursive paper on " Ethnology , Religion , and Politics . " Altogether we pass a wet day very cozily over these Magazines , and still leave several unread !

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    THE PLURALITY OF WORLDS . Essays on the Spirit of the Inductive Philosophy , the Unity of Worlds , and the Philosophy of Creation . By the Rev . Baden Powell . Longman . Worlds beyond the Earth . By Montagu Lyon Phillips . Bentley . ( second article . ) Imagine a microscopic Animalcule moving amidst the vast spaces extending between those mountainous masses , called grains of sand by men , and , in its wanderings , meeting with another Animalcule of a speculative turn of mind , who forthwith commences an eloquent discourse respecting the worlds beyond their world , spaces vast and inaccessible , in comparison with which all spaces known to Animalcular experience are but as pin points , spaces peopled by beings of gigantic stature , whose modes of life are various and astounding . Our unspeculative Animalcule would be considerably

    r * 1-l rwrrX nr \ Ttvr £ »¦» " ¦ *~ CV \ c \ •*•* - » ¦»!•/ a 1 O < " 1 *"»* - ! "Pfil » 1- » HTkt ! T \ Ck Wni t I / l / lOTlir if" , fl I t' . CXCTfVt' fl < " > V _ r £ * Y" — puzzled by such a revelation . Perhaps he would deny it altogether . Perhaps he would qualify it , by declaring that even if such spaces existed , they were probably not peopled ; and if peopled , certainly not blessed with the high and peculiar civilisation of Animalcules , certainly not capable of Animalcular " large discourse of reason , looking before and after . " These beings can onty be of a pulpy or gravelly kind , he would say , huge amorp hous absurdities , quite unworthy of comparison with us , " for whom the world was obviously made , " with us to whom all other forms of life are subservient , with us who have the benefit they cannot have , the benefit of a

    Dispensation . Very much like this is the position of the author of the Essay on the Plurality of Worlds . But even more ludicrous is the position of the author of More Worlds than One , the Hope of a Christian and Creed of a Philosopher . The former takes his stand upon our earth very much , as the Rev . Baden Powell observes , like the Chinese geographers , who cover the greater part of the map with the Celestial Empire , and confine the wretched inhabitants of Europe and America to insignificant outskirts . The latter is more cosmopolitan , but more absurd . Ranging on either side are two classes of combatants , profusely illogical and copiously rhetorical . The question has become fashionable ; and the Rev . Baden Powell , in the second essay of the work under review , holds the balance between the two parties , pointing out with great felicity their abiding disregard of true inductive principles , and their abiding error of theological confusion : —

    Viewed simply as a question of philosophical conjecture , or rational probability , without reference to any ulterior consideration , the argument must * be based on an extension of inductive analogies , a generalisation ( so far as we can legitimately pursue it ) upon the acknowledged relations of animated existence with physical conditions and cosmical arrangements adapted to it . As he says , the question is one which must ever remain in uncertainty , and the only position a philosopher can occupy in such a discussion is to see that the question be discussed on proper grounds . For our own parts , while in no sense wishing to circumscribe the wide and p leasant fields of conjecture and fanciful speculation , we desire that it should be distinctly understood ' that all argument on this matter is necessarily and eternally vitiated by the impossibility of ascertaining the primary basis of fact . We cannot know whether the planets are inhabited by organic beings . We are left to conjecture , and our conjectures are based upon analogies , which analogies themselves want confirmation . . Reasoning on what is known , there are two positions which may be occupied with equal legitimacy . human

    First , that the planets cannot be regarded as inhabited by beings , unless it can be proved that these planets are identical with our own in composition , and in development . By this is meant , that it must be proved that Mercury , for example , not only contains the same chemical elementary composition as our planet—the same gases in the same proportions—but also the same immediate composition , i . e ., the same combination of elements ; for if there be more carbonic acid in the atmosphere there can be no human being to live in it . Now this state of immediate composition is part of the history of the planet ; and unless all the episodes of the history have been like our own , the result will not be like our own . The development of Life on our planet is a part of the history of our planet ; nay , it has been suggested by ' German philosophers that the planet is itself an organism Sassing through the same phases of development as the egg ( see Leader , 5 th Iay ) . ° The most ordinary knowledge of embryology suffices for the conviction that any variation in the conditions which will perturb the regular succession of these phases , produces a variety , a monster , or a creature

    incapable of living . It is quite clear that we cannot prove , —that we cannot even plausibly conjecture—how far the planets arc identical in elementary composition , m immediate composition , or in development . Wanting this proof , we cannot argue for the existence of human beings . Such presumption as there is , 13 against the existence of human beings . But now , taking up the other position , the philosopher may say : Go-anted there are no human beings elsewhere than on our planet , because human beings arc products of a peculiar scries of developments not presumable ; to have taken place in the mme serial order elsewhere ; but the question of Inhabitants is not necessarily limited to the genus Homo . Other forms of life will exist , oven if the peculiar forms known to us do not exist . What those forms are we cannot know . We cannot even imiigino them , for our imagination is restricted within the limits of our knowledge ; wo can only combine known atamnntit . There is not even evidence to show that these forms ol

    life will display themselves in the modes known to us—viz ., as active , sentient , reflective . There may be intelligence in the other planets , even under conditions totally unlike those known by us . And there may not . Taking the analogy of organic beings , we must first say , Not ; for , as fax a * our knowledge extends , intelligence is never found except connected with nervous tissue ; and-, as nervous tissue is a peculiar , special combination of the elements , rare even on our globe , we cannot assume that nervous tissue will be found elsewhere . Yet this argument , seemingly so conclusive , can be met , and met by arguments drawn from the circle of known analogies . One may answer it thus : True , on our globe neurine alone has the property of sensibility ; but on another globe , under other conditions , sensibility may be the property of some other combination of matter . To deny this absolutely would be as unjustifiable as to deny that a nation could possibly have fire-arms because they had no nitre , and having no nitre they could have no gunpowder ; the truth , perhaps , being that this nation had gun-cotton , or some other explosive material . What gun-cotton is to gunpowder , an unknown x may be to neurine . May be ; one cannot say , it is .

    We have thus argued pro and con . to show that argument is vain . The subject lies bej ^ oml real argument . On either side men are forced to begin and to end with assumptions which they have no means of proving . __ Yet , in this field of gratuitous assumption each combatant alights , like Virgil ' s crow , Sicca secum spatiatur arena , ready to accuse his adversary of ignorance , if not of Atheism , and ready before all things to make his assumptions " proofs" of a tremulous orthodoxy . The Rev . Baden Powell , whose truly philosophic position in all these questions is nowhere more strikingly exhibited than in his rebukes to the Theologians—rebukes which come with tenfold force from a clergyman—has an admirable passage on this point : — -

    The desire whether for peopling or for dispeopling planetary or sidereal -worlds on theological grounds , appears to arise from the same fundamental misconception or disregard of the proper provinces and limits of philosophy and of theology which has led , in so many other cases , to an unhappy and incongruous mixture of the t-wo , — producing nothing , as Bacon has so justly observed , but " a fantastical and superstitious philosophy and a heretical religion . " Of this mode of procedure we have had abundant instances in all stages of scientific advance . Without recurring to more ignorant ages , and the speculations of the schoolmen , we trace the very same spirit in later times in the formation of such systems as that of Tycho , founded on the idea of reconciling astronomy and Scripture ; in the vortices of Descartes , deduced by reasoning on theological grounds from the perfections of the Deity ; in the cosmical theories of the Hutchinsonians , or what they termed " Moses ' Principia , " founded on the Hebrew Scriptures , in opposition to Newton ' s ; and in our own times in the various schemes of the Bible geologists , each in succession presenting but some new shade or modification of the same radical misconception to take the place of its exploded predecessor .

    It is worth while to dwell on this last instance as very mstructive in its consequences , especially to those who have not antecedently taken more general views . Even at the present day there are not wanting occasional attempts to keep up the hopeless chimera of erecting theories of geology on the Mosaic narrative . It is needless to observe that , as all notion of an accommodation of the facts to the text haa long since been given up by all sane inquirers , these attempts are now merely directed to explaining away the sense of the text ; in which they no doubt succeed by such principles of verbal Interpretation as , if fairly applied to other parts , would readily enable us to put on any given passage any required construction . All inquirers , possessing at once a sound knowledge of geology , and capable of perceiving the undeniable sense of a plain circumstantial narrative , now acknowledge the whole tenor of geology is in entire contradiction to the cosmogony delivered from Sinai ; a contradiction which no philological -refinements can remove or diminish ; a case which no detailed interpretations can meet , and which can only be dealt with as a whole .

    Mr . Powell is for giving unto Science the things which are scientific , ami to Theology the things which are theological ; in this he is true to Bacon ' s energetic and admirable advice ; in this he is true to the spirit of inductive philosophy . Quitting generalities , and coming to the Essay under review , we have to commend it for its tone , and for some incidental remarks . It is , however , less an Essay on the Plurality of Worlds than philosophical reflections on the mode in which that topic has been treated . Well worth reading , it brings no new arguments of importance towards an elucidation of the question : Are the Planets Inhabited ? He inclines to believe they are , and the following ingenious remark must be cited : —

    At any rate , when we reflect on the extremely varied forma of animated life on our own globe , on the diversified structures of different classes of animals , and the marvellous adaptations of their respiratory and circulatory functions to the conditions of their existence under the most varied circumstances , yet all preserving the most recondite relations to analogy and unity of composition , we conceive there can exist no difficulty in imagining the possibility of living beings constructed with bodies of greater or less specific gravity , suited to the most widely different conditions of gravitation or atmospheric pressure in which they might be destined to live , and with respiratory , muscular , digestive , or locomotive powers and capacities developed in infinitely varied degrees , according to the different conditions under which they might subsist , and the media in which they might have to move—yet always preserving an unbroken analogy with sovie grand and universal scheme of uniformity , of which we enjoy only partial glimpses ; while under nny such variety of external form or condition , tney may bo equally capable with ourselves of being the recipients of higher principles 01

    intellectual , moral , or spiritual life . On this we venture a comment . The unity of composition Mr . 1 owoll invokes h traced within a circle of conditions which arc nnijorm . J hat is to sav , zoophyte , mollusc , and mammal , however various , have a cor am ^ uniformity prevailing amid variety , because there is an equivalent uniformity prevailing ninid " the variety of conditions . Hut on another tWre- „ another world—the conditions arc assumed to be dillerent from those in this world . Thus all marine animals differ from all land animals in th « points where the difference of conditions are constant ; and in proportion to the diffcrences between the elementary and immediate compos * ion of o « j- globe and other clobes would be the absence of uniformity in the forms of life . Wo lmvo loft ourselves no space to consider Mr Powell s Essay on the Vessel ? anc ] I must trespass on the reader ' s patience for another article .

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    June 2 , 1855 . ] THE LEADER . & % *¦

• Citation
  • Leader (1850-1860), June 2, 1855, page 521, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2093/page/17/