132 GALILEO AND HIS JUDGES. 



if such creatures, intelligent beings like ourselves, 

 lived upon this Earth, and nowhere besides. 



I know not how far thoughts and speculations of 

 this nature passed through the minds of the ecclesi- 

 astics, and other men of religious feeling, in the age 

 of Galileo. They have since then been sifted more or 

 less by scientific men, and various opinions have been 

 suggested. Some went so far as to think it possible 

 that the Sun was inhabited. So able an astronomer 

 as Arago, to say nothing of others, thought such 

 might be the fact. No one thinks so now. The 

 tendency of modern thought, strictly speaking modern 

 (that is, the most recent), is rather to discredit such 

 imaginations. The various observations made upon 

 the Sun, including those made by the use of the 

 spectroscope, have shown that the supposition of his 

 being inhabited is simply incredible. For other 

 reasons the same result has been reached with regard 

 to the Moon. Then as to the planets, although there 

 are no such cogent reasons, we may fairly say that 

 the probability is against any one of them being at 

 the present moment fitted for the habitation of such 

 a creature as man. Some persons would make an 

 exception in favour of Mars, where a recent French 

 observer imagines he has detected signs of work as if 

 by human hands a stretch indeed of imagination. 



But the planets are probably not all in the same 

 stage of what may be termed geological history. 

 Some may very possibly be in the same state in 

 which the Earth was a few millions of years ago, long 



