C. B. WARRING. 03-(33) 



ARE OTHER WORLDS INHABITED ? 



BY C. B. WARRING PH. D. 



So long as the sun and moon were regarded as insig- 

 nificant in comparison with the earth, and the stars as 

 mere specks of light, no question arose as to their being 

 inhabited. But when their true size began to be known, 

 the belief sprang up that those vast worlds which fill the 

 heavens were not silent and uninhabited, but teemed 

 with a population essentially such as lives on the earth 

 but differing, it may be, in stature and strength, perhaps 

 in their mode of locomotion, or possibly in the number 

 of their senses. It was thought incredible that God 

 should have peopled this, one of the smallest of worlds, 

 and have left unoccupied those so inconceivably greater. 

 This belief was strengthened by the discovery that the 

 planets resembled the earth in certain particulars which 

 to us are of the greatest importance. Several of the 

 planets have moons, and all revolve on axes more or less 

 inclined to the planes of their orbits, thus having not 

 only days and nights but also a succession of seasons. 

 To most persons even now this reason seems conclusive. 



The argument from vastness applies with far greater 

 force to the sun. The area of all the planets is in round 

 numbers forty-six billion three hundred million square 

 miles, while the sun is so immensely larger that all these 

 billions of miles might be spread upon its surface, and 

 scarcely affect its light or heat. Ninty-eight per cent. 

 would remain uncovered. 



We instinctively shrink from the thought that such 

 immense worlds are uninhabited. It seems unfitting, 

 and therefore it is not so, is the argument in its briefest 

 form. But our ideas of fitness are very unsafe tests of 

 the truth of a proposition. That must be determined by 

 the study of nil the facts which bear upon it. This I 

 propose to do this evening, and to lay before you all the 

 facts, so far as known, which may aid us in making up 

 our minds whether other worlds are inhabited, inhab- 

 ited. I mean, by corporeal beings with bodies of fiesh and 

 blood, creatures that drink water, breathe air, eat food. 

 are burned by fire, and frozen bv cold. 



