Rensselaer Union, Volume 8, Number 10, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 25 November 1875 — Is There Life in Other Worlds? [ARTICLE]

Is There Life in Other Worlds?

The subject of a recent lecture in Boston by Prof. Proctor was the probability of the existence of life in other worlds than ours. Modern science, he said, does not object as many suppose to the idea of a scheme in the universe, but to the theory that that scheme is one which men can understand. Formerly if a choice lay between two interpretations of observed facts, and one seemed 1 to accord well the other ill with conceptions entertained respecting the ways of God, the former was accepted unhesitatingly, even though the balance of evidence might be in favor of the latter. Thus in astronomy it was assumed that the celestial bodies had been all created either to .support life as the sun does or to subserve the wants of living creatures as the moon does, or like our own earth, to be actually the abode of living creatures. He said that in studying the heavens We have to face a seeming mystery of nature, namely: the apparent wastefulness of the plan of creation. In illustration of this lie said: “ All the planets together receive less than the .0002:50 part of the heat and light which, the sun is constantly emitting. In each second he* emits as much heat as would result, from the burning of 11,(500,000,000 of millions of tons of coal, and of all this amazing amount of energy but one part in 230 millions falls on the members of the sun’s planetary family. Wlnit is true of the sun is doubtless true of his fellow- suns, the stars. All the thousands of stars we see, all the millions revealed by the telescope, and millions! of limes as many which no telescope yet made by man can reveal, are suns similarly pouring heat and light into space, and similarly wasting, according to our conceptions, the energy which they possess. The energy wasted seems, in fact, nearly the whole of the inconceivable amount expended. But it is not necessary to leave the study of our earth to find evidences of seeming waste. How many seeds are scattered over the face of the.l earth to no visible purpose, for each one that grows to perfection! How many creatures are brought to life that perish before they reach maturity! This is true of man as of other races. True of individual men; it is true of nations, of races. Looking back at the past history of our earth, we find even more abundant evidence of seeming waste, until we reach a time when the ; whole mass of the earth appears as a mere waste. For millions of years the whole terrestrial globe was the scene of processes of tremendous activity, yet utterly unfit to be the abode of life. So, also, if we look forward. In a period incomparably exceeding in dura: ion the life period of her history she will circle around the central sun, bearing only the records and memories of former life, but to our conceptions a useless, desert scene. But if we could see the whole plan instead of the minutest portion ; if we could scan the whole space instead of the merest corner;. if all time were before us, instead of space, we might indeed pronounce judgment. But knowing as we do how little we really can perceive, with any clearness,we may admit the truth of all that science teaches, that the scheme 61 nature appears imperfect only because it is seen but in part.” Coming to the question of life in other spheres lie said: ”It is conceivable, indeed, that many, if not most, of the orbs which have come into being may not have supported life in the past, nor will support life hereafter. If many seeds tire to our view wasted for each one that grows and bears fruit, so may it be with planets. It is only our own minuteness which makes the'scale of the planet seem so infinitely to transcend the scale of the seed; but to Him in whose thoughts one day is as a thousand years and a thousand years as one day, the great and the small are alike, the planet is no worthier than the mustardseed, the seed no worthier than the piauet. Even assuming, however, that each planet, satellite, asteroid, meteorite, or (passing in the other direction) each sun, | sun system and galaxy was intended to support life or to be the abode of life, it remains equally certain, from what we know of the oast history of our own earth, planet .is-hutas a-uio-ment compared with the existence ot the planet itself, and it is utterly improbable that the life-era of the earth synchronizes with the life-era of any other planet of the solar system. * •• “ The very argument froth probability which leads us to regard any given piapet, or even any given sun, as * not the center of a scheme in which at this moment there is life forces upon us the conclusion that among the millions on millions, nay, the millions of millions, of suns which people space, millions have orbs circling round them which arc at this moment the abode of living creatures. If the chance is one in a thousand in the case of each particular star, then in the whole number of stars (practically infinite) one in _a thousand rules over a system in which there is life; and what is this but saying that millions of stars are life-supporting orbs ? There is, then, an infinity of life around us, although we recognize infinity of time, as well as infinity °i space, in the existence of life in the universe. And, though remembering that life in each individual is finite, in each. planet finite, in each solar system finite, in each system of suns finite, so (to speak of no higher orders) the infinity of life itself demonstrates the infinity ot death, the infinity ot inhabited worlds implies the infinity of worlds not yet habitable or which have long since passed the pcjitid of inhabitability.”