Curiosities of Science. 



Fontenelle was the first individual who wrote a treatise on the 

 Plurality of Worlds, which appeared in 1685, the year before the 

 publication of Newton's Principia. Fontenelle's work consists 

 of five chapters: 1. The earth is a planet which turns round 

 its axis, and also round the sun. 2. The moon is a habitable 

 world. 3. Particulars concerning the world in the moon, and 

 that the other planets are also inhabited. 4. Particulars of the 

 worlds of Venus, Mercury, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn. 5. The 

 fixed stars are as many suns, each of which illuminates a world. 

 In a future edition, 1719, Fontenelle added, 6. New thoughts 

 which confirm those in the preceding conversations, and the 

 latest discoveries which have been made in the heavens. The 

 next work on the subject was the Theory of the Universe, or 

 Conjectures concerning the Celestial Bodies and their Inhabitants, 

 1698, by Christian Huygens, the contemporary of Newton. 



The doctrine is maintained by almost all the distinguished 

 astronomers and writers who have flourished since the true 

 figure of the earth was determined. Giordano Bruna of Nola, 

 Kepler, and Tycho Brahe, believed in it; and Cardinal Cusa 

 and Bruno, before the discovery of binary systems among the 

 stars, believed also that the stars were inhabited. Sir Isaac 

 Newton likewise adopted the belief; and Dr. Bentley, Master 

 of Trinity College, Cambridge, in his eighth sermon on the Con- 

 futation of Atheism from the origin and frame of the world, 

 has ably maintained the same doctrine. In our own day we 

 may number among its supporters the distinguished names of 

 the Marquis de la Place, Sir William and Sir John Herschel, 

 Dr. Chalmers, Isaac Taylor, and M. Arago. Dr. Chalmers main- 

 tains the doctrine in his Astronomical Discourses, which one 

 Alexander Maxwell (who did not believe in the grand truths of 

 astronomy) attempted to controvert, in 1820, in a chapter of a 

 volume entitled Plurality of Worlds. 



Next appeared Of a Plurality of Worlds, attributed to the 

 Rev. Dr.Whewell, Master of Trinity College, Cambridge; urging 

 the theological not less than the scientific reasons for believing 

 in the old tradition of a single world, and maintaining that " the 

 earth is really the largest planetary body in the solar system, 

 its domestic hearth, and the only world in the universe." " I 

 do not pretend," says Dr. Whewell, " to disprove the plurality of 

 worlds ; but I ask in vain for any argument which makes the 

 doctrine probable." " It is too remote from knowledge to be 

 either proved or disproved." Sir David Brewster has replied 

 to Dr. Whewell's Essay, in More Worlds than One, the Creed 

 of the Philosopher and the Hope of the Christian, emphatically 

 maintaining that analogy strongly countenances the idea of all 

 the solar planets, if not all worlds in the universe, being peo- 

 pled with creatures not dissimilar in being and nature to the 



