The Plurality of Worlds

5. Now the knowledge which man is capable, by the nature of his mental faculties, of acquiring, being thus blank and rudimentary at first, and only proceeding gradually, by the steps of a progress, numerous, slow, and often long interrupted, to that stage in which it is the basis of our present speculations; the view which we have just taken, of the nature of Intellect, as a faculty always of the same kind, always uniform in its operations, always consistent in its results, appears to require reconsideration; and especially with reference to the application which we made of that view, to the intelligent inhabitants of other planets and other worlds, if such inhabitants there be. For if we suppose that there are, in the Moon, or in Jupiter, creatures possessing intellectual faculties of the same kind as those of man; capable of apprehending the same abstract and general truths; able, like man, to attain to a knowledge of the scheme of the Universe; yet this supposition merely gives the capacity and the ability; and does not include any security, or even high probability, as it would seem, of the exercise of such capacity, or of the successful application of such ability. Even if the surface of the Moon be inhabited by creatures as intelligent as men, why must we suppose that they know anything more of the geometry and astronomy, than the great bulk of the less cultured inhabitants of the earth, who occupy, really, a space far larger than the surface of the Moon; and, all intelligent though they be, and in the full possession of mental faculties, are yet, on the subjects of geometry and astronomy, entirely ignorant;—their minds, as to such a knowledge, a blank? It does not follow, then, that even if there be such inhabitants in the Moon, or in the Planets, they have any sympathy with us, or any community of knowledge on the subjects of which we are now speaking. The surface of the Moon, or of Jupiter, or of Saturn, even if well peopled, may be peopled only with tribes as barbarous and ignorant as Tartars, or Esquimaux, or Australians; and therefore, by making such a supposition, we do little, even hypothetically, to extend the dominion of that intelligence, by means of which all intelligent beings have some community of thought with each other, and some suggestion of the working of the Divine and Universal Mind.

6. But, in fact, the view which we have given of the mode of existence of the human species upon the earth, as being a progressive existence, even in the development of the intellectual powers and their results, necessarily fastens down our thoughts and our speculations to the earth, and makes us feel how visionary and gratuitous it is to assume any similar kind of existence in any region occupied by other beings than man. As we have said, we have no insuperable difficulty in conceiving other parts of the Universe to be tenanted by animals. Animal life implies no progress in the species. Such as they are in one century, such are they in another. The conditions of their sustentation and generation being given, which no difference of physical circumstances can render incredible, the race may, so far as we can see, go on forever. But a race which makes a progress in the development of its faculties cannot thus, or at least cannot with the same ease, be conceived as existing through all time, and under all circumstances. Progress implies, or at least suggests, a beginning and an end. If the mere existence of a race imply a sustaining and preserving power in the Creator, the progress of a race implies a guiding and impelling power; a Governor and Director, as well as a Creator and Preserver. And progress, not merely in material conditions, not merely in the exercise of bodily faculties, but in the exercise of mental faculties, in the intellectual condition of a portion of the species, still more implies a special position and character of the race, which cannot, without great license of hypothesis, be extended to other races; and which, if so extended, becomes unmeaning, from the impossibility of our knowing what is progress in any other species;—from what and towards what it tends. The intellectual progress of the human species has been a progress in the use of thought, and in the knowledge which such use procures; it has been a progress from mere matter to mind; from the impressions of sense to ideas; from what in knowledge is casual, partial, temporary, to what is necessary, universal, and eternal. We can conceive no progress, of the nature of this, which is not identical with this; nothing like it, which is not the same. And, therefore, if we will people other planets with creatures, intelligent as man is intelligent, we must not only give to them the intelligence, but the intellectual history of the human species. They must have had their minds unfolded by steps similar to those by which the human mind has been unfolded; or at least, differing from them only as the intellectual history of one nation of the earth differs from that of another. They must have had their Pythagoras, their Plato, their Kepler, their Galileo, their Newton, if they know what we know. And thus, in order to conceive, on the Moon or on Jupiter, a race of beings intelligent like man, we must conceive, there, colonies of men, with histories resembling more or less the histories of human colonies; and indeed resembling the history of those nations whose knowledge we inherit, far more closely than the history of any other terrestrial nation resembles that part of terrestrial history. If we do this, we exercise an act of invention and imagination which may be as coherent as a fairy tale, but which, without further proof, must be as purely imaginary and arbitrary. But if we do not do this, we cannot conceive that those regions are occupied at all by intelligent beings. Intelligence, as we see in the human race, in order to have those characters which concern our argument, implies a history of intellectual development; and to assume arbitrarily a history of intellectual development for the inhabitants of a remote planet, as a ground of reasoning either for or against Religion, is a proceeding which we can hardly be expected either to assent to or to refute. If we are to form any opinions with regard to the condition of such bodies, and to trace any bearing of such opinions upon our religious views, we must proceed upon some ground which has more of reality than such a gratuitous assumption.

7. Thus the condition of man upon the earth, as a condition of intellectual progress, implies such a special guidance and government exercised over the race by the Author of his being, as produces progress; and we have not, so far as we yet perceive, any reason for supposing that He exercises a like guidance and government over any of the other bodies with which the researches of astronomers have made us acquainted. The earth and its inhabitants are under the care of God in a special manner; and we are utterly destitute of any reason for believing that other planets and other systems are under the care of God in the same manner. If we regarded merely the existence of unprogressive races of animals upon our globe, we might easily suppose that other globes also are similarly tenanted; and we might infer, that the Creator and Upholder of animal life was active on those globes, in the same manner as upon ours. But when we come to a progressive creature, whose condition implies a beginning, and therefore suggests an end, we form a peculiar judgment with respect to God's care of that creature, which we have not as yet seen the slightest grounds to extend to other possible fields of existence, where we discern no indication of progress, of beginning, or of end. So far as we can judge, God is mindful of man, and has launched and guided his course in a certain path which makes his lot and state different from that of all other creatures.

8. Now when we have arrived at this result, we have, I conceive, reached one of the points at which the difficulties which astronomical discovery puts in the way of religious conviction begin to appear. The Earth and its human inhabitants are, as far as we yet know, in an especial manner the subjects of God's care and government, for the race is progressive. Now can this be? Is it not difficult to believe that it is so? The earth, so small a speck, only one among so many, so many thousands, so many millions of other bodies, all, probably, of the same nature with itself, wherefore should it draw to it the special regards of the Creator of all, and occupy his care in an especial manner? The teaching of the history of the human race, as intellectually progressive, agrees with the teaching of Religion, in impressing upon us that God is mindful of man; that he does regard him; but still, there naturally arises in our minds a feeling of perplexity and bewilderment, which expresses itself in the words already so often quoted, What is man, that this should be so? Can it be true that this province is thus singled out for a special and peculiar administration by the Lord of the Universal Empire?

9. Before I make any attempt to answer these questions, I must pursue the difficulty somewhat further, and look at it in other forms. As I have said, the history of Man has been, in certain nations, a history of intellectual progress, from the earliest times up to our own day. But intellectual progress has been, as I have also said, in a great measure confined to certain nations thus especially favored. The greater part of the earth's inhabitants have shared very scantily in that wealth of knowledge to which the brightest and happiest intellects among men have thus been led. But though the bulk of mankind have thus had little share in the grand treasures of science which are open to the race, their life has still been very different from that of other animals. Many nations, though they may not have been conspicuous in the history of intellectual progress, have yet not been without their place in progress of other kinds—in arts, in arms, and, above all, in morals—in the recognition of the distinction of right and wrong in human actions, and in the practical application of this distinction. Such a progress as this has been far more extensively aimed at, than a progress in abstract and general knowledge; and, we may venture to say, has been, in many nations and in a very great measure, really effected. No doubt the imperfection of this progress, and the constant recurrence of events which appear to counteract and reverse it, are so obvious and so common as to fill with grief and indignation the minds of those who regard such a progress as the great business of the human race; but yet still, looking at the whole history of the human race, the progress is visible; and even the grief and the indignation of which we have spoken are a part of its evidences. There has been, upon the whole, a moral government of the human race. The moral law, the distinction of right and wrong, has been established in every nation; and penalties have been established for wrong-doing. The notion of right and wrong has been extended, from mere outward acts, to the springs of action, to affection, desire, and will. The course of human affairs has generally been such, that the just, the truthful, the kind, the chaste, the orderly portion of mankind have been happier than the violent and wicked. External wrong has been commonly punished by the act of human society. Internal sins, impure and dishonest designs, falsehood, cruelty, have very often led to their own punishment, by their effect upon the guilty mind itself. We do not say that the moral government which has prevailed among men has been such, that we can consider it complete and final in its visible form. We see that the aspect of things is much the contrary; and we think we see reasons why it may be expected to be so. But still, there has existed upon earth a moral government of the human race, exercised, as we must needs hold, by the Creator of man; partly through the direct operation of man's faculties, affections, and emotions; and partly through the authorities which, in all ages and nations, the nature of man has led him to establish. Now this moral progress and moral government of the human race is one of the leading facts on which Natural Religion is founded. We are thus led to regard God as the Moral Governor of man; not only his Creator and Preserver, but his Lawgiver and his Judge. And the grounds on which we entertain this belief are peculiarly the human faculties of man, and their operation in history and in society. The belief is derived from the whole complex nature of man—the working of his Affections, Desires, Convictions, Reason, Conscience, and whatever else enters into the production of human action and its consequences. God is seen to be the Moral Governor of man by evidence which is especially derived from the character of Man, and which we could not attempt to apply to any other creature than man without making our words altogether unmeaning. But would it not be too bold an assumption to speak of the Conscience of an inhabitant of Jupiter? Would it not be a rash philosophy to assume the operation of Remorse or Self-approval on the planet, in order that we may extend to it the moral government of God? Except we can point out something more solid than this to reason from, on such subjects, there is no use in our attempting to reason at all. Our doctrines must be mere results of invention and imagination. Here then, again, we are brought to the conviction that God is, so far as we yet see, in an especial and peculiar manner, the Governor of the earth and of its human inhabitants, in such a way that the like government cannot be conceived to be extended to other planets, and other systems, without arbitrary and fanciful assumptions; assumptions either of unintelligible differences with incomprehensible results, or of beings in all respects human, inhabiting the most remote regions of the universe. And here, again, therefore, we are led to the same difficulty which we have already encountered: Can the earth, a small globe among so many millions, have been selected as the scene of this especially Divine Government?

10. That when we attempt to extend our sympathies to the inhabitants of other planets and other worlds, and to regard them as living, like us, under a moral government, we are driven to suppose them to be, in all essential respects, human beings like ourselves, we have proof, in all the attempts which have been made, with whatever license of hypothesis and fancy, to present to us descriptions and representations of the inhabitants of other parts of the universe. Such representations, though purposely made as unlike human beings as the imagination of man can frame them, still are merely combinations, slightly varied, of the elements of human being; and thus show us that not only our reason, but even our imagination, cannot conceive creatures subjected to the same government to which man is subjected, without conceiving them as being men of one kind or other. A mere animal life, with no interest but animal enjoyment, we may conceive as assuming forms different from those which appear in existing animal races; though even here, there are, as we shall hereafter attempt to show, certain general principles which run through all animal life. But when in addition to mere animal impulses, we assume or suppose moral and intellectual interests, we conceive them as the moral and intellectual interests of man. Truth and falsehood, right and wrong, law and transgression, happiness and misery, reward and punishment, are the necessary elements of all that can interest us—of all that we can call Government. To transfer these to Jupiter or to Sirius, is merely to imagine those bodies to be a sort of island of Formosa, or new Atlantis, or Utopia, or Platonic Polity, or something of the like kind. The boldest and most resolute attempts to devise some life different from human life, have not produced anything more different than romance-writers and political theorists have devised as a form of human life. And this being so, there is no more wisdom or philosophy in believing such assemblages of beings to exist in Jupiter or Sirius, without evidence, than in believing them to exist in the island of Formosa, with the like absence of evidence.

11. Any examination of what has been written on this subject would show that, in speculating about moral and intellectual beings in other regions of the universe, we merely make them to be men in another place. With regard to the plants and animals of other planets, fancy has freer play; but man cannot conceive any moral creature who is not man. Thus Fontenelle, in his Dialogues on the Plurality of Worlds, makes the inhabitants of Venus possess, in an exaggerated degree, the characteristics of the men of the warm climates of the earth. They are like the Moors of Grenada; or rather, the Moors of Grenada would be to them as cold as Greenlanders and Laplanders to us. And the inhabitants of Mercury have so much vivacity, that they would pass with us for insane. "Enfin c'est dans Mercure que sont les Petites-Maisons de l'Univers." The inhabitants of Jupiter and Saturn are immensely slow and phlegmatic. And though he and other writers attempt to make these inhabitants of remote regions in some respects superior to man, telling us that instead of only five senses, they may have six, or ten, or a hundred, still these are mere words which convey no meaning; and the great astronomer Bessel had reason to say, that those who imagined inhabitants in the Moon and Planets, supposed them, in spite of all their protestations, as like to men as one egg to another.3

12. But there is one step more, which we still have to make, in order to bring out this difficulty in its full force. As we have said, the moral law has been, to a certain extent, established, developed, and enforced among men. But, as I have also said, looking carefully at the law, and at the degree of man's obedience to it, and at the operation of the sanctions by which it is supported, we cannot help seeing, that man's knowledge of the law is imperfect, his conviction of its authority feeble, his transgressions habitual, their punishment and consequences obscure. When, therefore, we regard God, as the Lawgiver and Judge of man, it will not appear strange to us, that he should have taken some mode of promulgating his Law, and announcing his Judgments, in addition to that ordinary operation of the faculties of man, of which we have spoken. Revealed Religion teaches us that he has done so: that from the first placing of the race of man upon the earth, it was his purpose to do so: that by his dealing with the race of man in the earlier times, and at various intervals, he made preparation for the mission of a special Messenger, whom, in the fulness of time, he sent upon the earth in the form of a man; and who both taught men the Law of God in a purer and clearer form than any in which it had yet been given; and revealed His purpose, of rewards for obedience, and punishments for disobedience, to be executed in a state of being to which this human life is only an introduction; and established the means by which the spirit of man, when alienated from God by transgression, may be again reconciled to Him. The arrival of this especial Messenger of Holiness, Judgment, and Redemption, forms the great event in the history of the earth, considered in a religious view, as the abode of God's servants. It was attended with the sufferings and cruel death of the Divine Messenger thus sent; was preceded by prophetic announcements of his coming; and the history of the world, for the two thousand years that have since elapsed, has been in a great measure occupied with the consequences of that advent. Such a proceeding shows, of course, that God has an especial care for the race of man. The earth, thus selected as the theatre of such a scheme of Teaching and of Redemption, cannot, in the eyes of any one who accepts this Christian faith, be regarded as being on a level with any other domiciles. It is the Stage of the great Drama of God's Mercy and Man's Salvation; the Sanctuary of the Universe; the Holy Land of Creation; the Royal Abode, for a time at least, of the Eternal King. This being the character which has thus been conferred upon it, how can we assent to the assertions of Astronomers, when they tell us that it is only one among millions of similar habitations, not distinguishable from them, except that it is smaller than most of them that we can measure; confused and rude in its materials like them? Or if we believe the Astronomers, will not such a belief lead us to doubt the truth of the great scheme of Christianity, which thus makes the earth the scene of a special dispensation.

13. This is the form in which Chalmers has taken up the argument. This is the difficulty which he proposes to solve; or rather, (such being as I have said the mode in which he presents the subject,) the objection which he proposes to refute. It is the bearing of the Astronomical discoveries of modern times, not upon the doctrines of Natural Religion, but upon the scheme of Christianity, which he discusses. And the question which he supposes his opponent to propound, as an objection to the Christian scheme, is:—How is it consistent with the dignity, the impartiality, the comprehensiveness, the analogy of God's proceedings, that he should make so special and pre-eminent a provision for the salvation of the inhabitants of this Earth, where there are such myriads of other worlds, all of which may require the like provision, and all of which have an equal claim to their Creator's care?

14. The answer which Chalmers gives to this objection, is one drawn, in the first instance, from our ignorance. He urges that, when the objector asserts that other worlds may have the like need with our own, of a special provision for the rescue of their inhabitants from the consequences of the transgression of God's laws, he is really making an assertion without the slightest foundation. Not only does Science not give us any information on such subjects, but the whole spirit of the scientific procedure, which has led to the knowledge which we possess, concerning other planets and other systems, is utterly opposed to our making such assumptions, respecting other worlds, as the objection involves. Modern Science, in proportion as she is confident when she has good grounds of proof, however strange may be the doctrines proved, is not only diffident, but is utterly silent, and abstains even from guessing, when she has no grounds of proof. Chalmers takes Newton's reasoning, as offering a special example of this mixed temper, of courage in following the evidence, and temperance in not advancing when there is no evidence. He puts, in opposition to this, the example of the true philosophical temper,—a supposed rash theorist, who should make unwarranted suppositions and assumptions, concerning matters to which our scientific evidence does not reach;—the animals and plants, for instance, which are to be found in the planet Jupiter. No one, he says, would more utterly reject and condemn such speculations than Newton, who first rightly explained the motion of Jupiter and of his attendant satellites, about which Science can pronounce her truths. And thus, nothing can be more opposite to the real spirit of modern science, and astronomy in particular, than arguments, such as we have stated, professing to be drawn from science and from astronomy. Since we know nothing about the inhabitants of Jupiter, true science requires that we say and suppose nothing about them; still more requires that we should not, on the ground of assumptions made with regard to them, and other supposed groups of living creatures, reject a belief, founded on direct and positive proofs, such as is the belief in the truths of Natural and of Revealed Religion.

15. To this argument of Chalmers, we may not only give our full assent, but we may venture to suggest, in accordance with what we have already said, that the argument, when so put, is not stated in all its legitimate force. The assertion that the inhabitants of Jupiter have the same need as we have, of a special dispensation for their preservation from moral ruin, is not only as merely arbitrary an assumption, as any assertion could be, founded on a supposed knowledge of an analogy between the botany of Jupiter, and the botany of the earth; but it is a great deal more so. There may be circumstances which may afford some reason to believe that something of the nature of vegetables grows on the surface of Jupiter; for instance, if we find that he is a solid globe surrounded by an atmosphere, vapor, clouds, showers. But, as we have already said, there is an immeasurable distance between the existence of unprogressive tribes of organized creatures, plants, or even animals, and the existence of a progressive creature, which can pass through the conditions of receiving, discerning, disobeying, and obeying a moral law; which can be estranged from God, and then reconciled to him. To assume, without further proof, that there are, in Jupiter, creatures of such a nature that these descriptions apply to them, is a far bolder and more unphilosophical assumption, than any that the objector could make concerning the botany of Jupiter; and therefore, the objection thus supposed to be drawn from our supposed knowledge, is very properly answered by an appeal to our really utter ignorance, as to the points on which the argument rests.