Note on "Life Conditions in other Worlds." 197 



NOTE ON AN ARTICLE ENTITLED "LIFE CONDI- 

 TIONS IN OTHER WORLDS." 



Contained in the " Intellectual Observer" eor March, 1865. 

 BY GEORGE E. ROBERTS, E.G.S., HON. SEC. A.S.L. 



We are familiar with many subjects said to be, in the common 

 parlance of the day, of " world-wide import," but it so rarely 

 happens that an inquiry is introduced in a liberal philoso- 

 phical spirit, which soars beyond our mundane economy, that 

 it appears to me highly desirable that the subject upon which 

 I offer a " Note," one illustrated by so many cautiously-chosen 

 facts and excellent suggestions, should not at once be lost 

 sight of amid the crowd of natural history papers which enrich 

 the Intellectual Observer. We have been so much accus- 

 tomed to limit the cause, or the extension, or the working of 

 a natural law to the earth and its surrounding atmosphere, 

 when reasoning upon geological or biological subjects, that 

 many of our theories, derived from such a limited reading of 

 the book of nature, have had to be abandoned, and others 

 modified as the area traversed by our intellectual perception 

 became more extended. And now that it may reasonably be 

 surmised that no element in the physical construction of the 

 earth, or law which governs it, is confined either in existence 

 or operation to our globe, it becomes more than ever certain 

 that many of our conclusions and deductions will have to be 

 re-examined under the light of a broader philosophy, and more 

 than ever imperative that the utmost caution should be exer- 

 cised in propounding any theory. If, as it appears most 

 probable, this world and all it containeth of animate life is to 

 be expressed merely in mathematical formulas, as a term of a 

 connected series, which, varying in value each from the other, 

 together make up the perfected scheme, it will assuredly lead 

 to a more large-minded method of studying the higher and 

 more complex branches of natural research, and give a better 

 moral tone to the work. 



Studies in comparative natural philosophy, as e. g. between 

 the earth's atmosphere, chemically or otherwise, and that of 

 Mars or Jupiter, will be more extensively made ; and who can 

 say how many remarkable relationships with, or divergences 

 from, the standard we have until lately set up from examina- 

 tion of the earth alone, as one common to the universe, may 

 not be discovered? And although we may never by any means 

 of research make out with certainty the actual existence of life 

 on any one of the planets, yet after discovering the conditions 

 which they may possess favourable for its existence, we shall 



