UNDER THE APPLE-TREES 



life must everywhere be essentially the same, and 

 hence that life is not possible on the major and minor 

 planets unless, or until, conditions upon them are 

 similar to those upon the earth. But what astro- 

 nomic significance would the fact have if life never 

 appeared upon any of the other planets, nor upon 

 any of the bodies that swarm in celestial space? 

 None whatever. The vast celestial mechanism 

 would know it not. Doubtless there are untold 

 worlds where life has never appeared and never will 

 appear, and other untold worlds upon which it has 

 appeared and has run its course, or is now in full 

 career. 



The natural philosophers tell us that under a cer- 

 tain size a planet cannot retain an atmosphere; it 

 drifts away to the larger and more powerful bodies. 

 Probably our moon has never had an atmosphere. 

 They also tell us that a world with a very small par- 

 ticle of radium in its rocky interior, two parts in a 

 million million parts, like our earth, must inevi- 

 tably, in the course of time or of eternity, explode. 

 This may be what happened to the body of which 

 the four hundred asteroids are fragments. 



What a comfort, a sort of cosmic comfort, it 

 would be to us dwellers upon this astronomic mote, 

 to have positive proof that there were beings like 

 ourselves upon other astronomic motes in the heav- 

 ens around us, even if we had to know that millions 

 of them were trying desperately to exterminate each 

 128 



