14 ON FARLETON FEEL 
produce plant life on another world, then we may 
imagine a luxuriant vegetation on Venus. Whether 
such an assumption is reasonable is a very interesting 
and highly speculative question, which the present 
writer is not competent to discuss. But if one is in- 
clined to indulge in speculation, it may fairly be asked, 
Why should one limit the possibilities of life to the 
strict range of conditions under which it is mani- 
fested on our Earth? May not the inhabitants of the 
Sun, ensconced ninety million miles away in a com- 
fortable temperature of 6,500° Centigrade, have long 
since proved to their own complete satisfaction the 
impossibility of the existence of life under the appal- 
ling conditions of climate prevailing on the Earth? 
Who can say? There are more things in heaven and 
earth than are dreamed of in our philosophy. A 
quotation from one of the foremost of modern men 
of science helps us to put such flights of thought in 
their proper perspective. “One can hardly emerge 
from such thoughts,” writes Soddy,* in pointing out 
the remarkable adaptation of the human eye to the 
peculiarities of the Sun’s light, so as to make the best 
of that wave-length of which there is most, “without 
an intuition that, in spite of all, the universal Life 
Principle, which makes the world a teeming hive, may 
not be at the sport of every physical condition, may 
not be entirely confined to a temperature between 
freezing and boiling points, to an oxygen atmosphere, 
to the most favourably situated planet of a sun at the 
right degree of incandescence, as we are almost 
forced by our experience of life to conclude. Possibly 
the Great Organizer can operate, under conditions 
* F, Soppy: ‘‘ Matter and Energy,’’ 1912, p. 194. 
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