58 Things not generally Known. 



inhabitants of the earth. This view is supported in Scientific 

 Certainties of Planetary Life, by T. C. Simon, who well treats one 

 point of the argument that mere distance of the planets from 

 the central sun does not determine the condition as to light 

 and heat, but that the density of the ethereal medium enters 

 largely into the calculation. Mr. Simon's general conclusion is, 

 that " neither on account of deficient or excessive heat, nor with 

 regard to the density of the materials, nor with regard to the force 

 of gravity on the surface, is there the slightest pretext for sup- 

 posing that all the planets of oar system are not inhabited by 

 intellectual creatures with animal bodies like ourselves, moral 

 beings, who know and love their great Maker, and who wait, 

 like the rest of His creation, upon His providence and upon His 

 care. " One of the leading points of Dr. WhewelFs Essay is, that 

 we should not elevate the conjectures of analogy into the rank 

 of scientific certainties; and that " the force of all the presump- 

 tions drawn from physical reasoning for the opinion of planets 

 and stars being either inhabited or uninhabited is so small, that 

 the belief of all thoughtful persons on this subject will be deter- 

 mined by moral, metaphysical, and theological considerations." 



WORLDS TO COME ABODES OF THE BLEST. 



Sir David Brewster, in his eloquent advocacy of the doc- 

 trine of " more worlds than one," thus argues for their peo- 

 pling : 



Man, in his future state of existence, is to consist, as at present, 

 of a spiritual nature residing in a corporeal frame. He must live, there- 

 fore, upon a material planet, subject to all the laws of matter, and per- 

 forming functions for which a material body is indispensable. We must 

 consequently find for the race of Adam, if not races that may have 

 preceded him, a material home upon which they may reside, or by 

 which they may travel, by means unknown to us, to other localities in 

 the universe. At the present hour, the inhabitants of the earth are nearly 

 a thousand millions ; and by whatever process we may compute the 

 numbers that have existed before the present generation, and estimate 

 those that are yet to inherit the earth, we shall obtain a population 

 which the habitable parts of our globe could not possibly accommodate. 

 If there is not room, then, on our earth for the millions of millions 

 of beings who have lived and died upon its surface, and who may yet 

 live and die during the period fixed for its occupation by man, we can 

 scarcely doubt that their future abode must be on some of the primary 

 or secondary planets of the solar system, whose inhabitants have ceased 

 to exist like those on the earth, or upon planets in our own or in other 

 systems which have been in a state of preparation, as our earth was, 

 for the advent of intellectual life. 



" GAUGING THE HEAVENS." 



Sir William Herschel, in 1785, conceived the happy idea 

 of counting the number of stars which passed at different 



