130 KANSAS CITY REVIEW OF SCIENCE. 



ASTRONOMY. 



HABITABILITY OF OTHER WORLDS. 



PROF. ALEXANDER WINCHELL, LL.D. 



The habitability of other worlds is a question on which a vast amount of 

 speculation has been expended. It has been the general belief that many other 

 worlds are inhabited. Dr. Lardner argued the habitability of the Moon and all 

 the planets. Dr. Brewster held similar views. Some have even maintained. that 

 the physical condition of the body of the Sun may be such as to produce a state 

 of habitability. Sir William Herschel is said to have conjectured that the solar 

 spots are the highest points — some 600 miles high— of a cool and habitable globe. 



On the contrary, the habitability of other worlds has been denied on the theo- 

 logical grounds. It was formerly a common theological belief that the biblical 

 teaching is incompatible with the doctrine of other worlds of beings.' Dr. Whe- 

 well disputed the plurality of worlds by appeal to scientific evidence. 



The question of the habitability of other worlds has generally been discussed 

 from the assumption that all other corporeal beings must be clothed in flesh and 

 bones similar to those of terrestrial animals, and must be adapted to a similar 

 physical environment. But it is manifest, on a moment's consideration, that cor- 

 poreality may exist under very divergent conditions. It is not at all improbable 

 that substances of a refractory nature might be so mixed with other substances, 

 known or unknown to us, as to be capable of enduring vastly greater vicissitudes 

 of heat and cold than is possible with terrestrial organisms. The tissues of ter- 

 restrial animals are simply suited to terrestrial conditions. Yet even here we find 

 different types and species of animals adapted to the trials of extremely dissimilar 

 situations. 



Nor is it to be supposed that the plans of structure of animals on other habit- 

 able planets bear necessarily any analogy to organic plans on the earth. That 

 an animal should be a quadruped or a biped is something not depending on the 

 necessities of organization, or instinct, or intelligence. That an animal should 

 possess just five senses is not a necessity of percipient existence. There may 

 be animals on the earth which neither smell ner taste. There may be beings on 

 other worlds, and even on this, who possess more numerous senses than we. 

 The possibility of this is apparent when we consider the high probability that 

 other properties and other modes of existence lie among the resources of the 

 cosmos, and even of terrestrial matter. 



There are animals which subsist where rational men would perish — in the 

 soil, in the river and the sea. No reason can be assigned why aquatic respira- 

 tion should be confined to brute animals. On a planet without land, like Uranus, 



