266 INHABITED WORLDS. 



stances of human nature. Our race first found 

 itself born and bred upon an apparently flat and 

 limitless world, with sun, moon, and stars dancing 

 attendance over it to illumine it, or lieat it, and 

 occui)ying, so far as natural vision could tell us, 

 the very centre of the entire universe. And, 

 when slowly we began as a race to discover that 

 the world was s[)herical instead of flat, that it 

 went round the sun, instead of having the sun to 

 run round it daily, that it was one of the least 

 among the members of the solar system, instead 

 of the greatest of all things, and that the solar 

 system itself was but a tiny speck in a vastly 

 wider galaxy of suns and star-clouds — when we 

 began to discover all these disconcerting and un- 

 pleasant facts, bringing home to us forcibly our 

 own smallness, feebleness, and slight importance, 

 it was no wonder that we should take refuge in 

 speculations as to the possibility of human life ex- 

 tending into other planets and other systems. We 

 salved our disgust at our own humiliation by pro- 

 jecting ourselves, as it were, into the rest of the 

 universe. 



Gradually, as the now accepted nebular theory 

 of the origin of our sun and planets gained 

 ground, astronomers recognized more and more 

 fully the improbability of life extending to other 

 orbs. According to that theory, the material 

 which at present composes the sun, the earth, the 



