The Plurality of Worlds

12. But further: let us consider what is this moral progress of which we have spoken;—this purification and elevation of man's inner being. Man's intellectual progress, his advance in the knowledge of the general laws of the Universe, we found reason to believe that we were not describing unfitly, when we spoke of it as bringing us nearer to God;—as making our thoughts, in some degree, resemble His thoughts;—as enabling us to see things as He sees them. And on that account, we held that the placing man, with his intellectual powers, in a condition in which he was impelled, and enabled, to seek such knowledge, was of itself a great thing, and tended much to give to the Creation a worthy end. Now the moral elevation of man's being is the elevation of his sentiments and affections towards a standard or idea, which God, by his Law, has indicated as that point towards which man ought to tend. We do not ascribe Virtue to God, adapting to Him our notions taken from man's attributes, as we do when we ascribe Knowledge to God: for Virtue implies the control and direction of human springs of action;—implies human efforts and human habits. But we ascribe to God infinite Goodness, Justice, and Truth, as well as infinite Wisdom and Power; and Goodness, Justice, Truth, form elements of the character at which man also is, by the Moral Law, directed to aim. So far, therefore, man's moral progress is a progress towards a likeness with God; and such a progress, even more than a progress towards an intellectual likeness with God, may be conceived as making the soul of man fit to endure forever with God; and therefore, as making this earth a prefatory stage of human souls, to fit them for eternity;—a nursery of plants which are to be fully unfolded in a celestial garden.

13. And to this, we must add that, on other accounts also, as well as on account of the capacity of the human soul for moral and intellectual progress, thoughtful men have always been disposed, on grounds supplied by the light of nature, to believe in the existence of human souls after this present earthly life is past. Such a belief has been cherished in all ages and nations, as the mode in which we naturally conceive that which is apparently imperfect and deficient in the moral government of the world, to be completed and perfected. And if this mortal life be thus really only the commencement of an infinite Divine Plan, beginning upon earth and destined to endure for endless ages after our earthly life; we need no array of other worlds in the universe to give sufficient dignity and majesty to the scheme of the Creation.

14. We may make another remark which may have an important bearing upon our estimate of the value of the moral scheme of the world which occupies the earth. If, by any act of the Divine Government, the number of those men should be much increased, who raise themselves towards the moral standard which God has appointed, and thus, towards a likeness to God, and a prospect of a future eternal union with him;—such an act of Divine Government would do far more towards making the Universe a scene in which God's goodness and greatness were largely displayed, than could be done by any amount of peopling of planets with creatures who were incapable of moral agency; or with creatures whose capacity for the development of their moral faculties was small, and would continue to be small till such an act of Divine Government were performed. The Interposition of God, in the history of man, to remedy man's feebleness in moral and spiritual tasks, and to enable those who profit by the Interposition, to ascend towards a union with God, is an event entirely out of the range of those natural courses of events which belong to our subject; and to such an Interposition, therefore, we must refer with great reserve; using great caution that we do not mix up speculations and conjectures of our own, with what has been revealed to man concerning such an Interposition. But this, it would seem, we may say:—that such a Divine Interposition for the moral and spiritual elevation of the human race, and for the encouragement and aid of those who seek the purification and elevation of their nature, and an eternal union with God, is far more suitable to the Idea of a God of Infinite Goodness, Purity, and Greatness, than any supposed multiplication of a population, (on our planet or on any other,) not provided with such means of moral and spiritual progress.

15. And if we were, instead of such a supposition, to imagine to ourselves, in other regions of the Universe, a moral population purified and elevated without the aid or need of any such Divine Interposition; the supposed possibility of such a moral race would make the sin and misery, which deform and sadden the aspect of our earth, appear more dark and dismal still. We should therefore, it would seem, find no theological congruity, and no religious consolation, in the assumption of a Plurality of Worlds of Moral Beings: while, to place the seats of such worlds in the Stars and the Planets, would be, as we have already shown, a step discountenanced by physical reasons; and discountenanced the more, the more the light of science is thrown upon it.

16. Perhaps it may be said, that all which we have urged to show that other animals, in comparison with man, are less worthy objects of creative design, may be used as an argument to prove that other planets are tenanted by men, or by moral and intellectual creatures like man; since, if the creation of one world of such creatures exalts so highly our views of the dignity and importance of the plan of creation, the belief in many such worlds must elevate still more our sentiments of admiration and reverence of the greatness and goodness of the Creator; and must be a belief, on that account, to be accepted and cherished by pious minds.

17. To this we reply, that we cannot think ourselves authorized to assert cosmological doctrines, selected arbitrarily by ourselves, on the ground of their exalting our sentiments of admiration and reverence for the Deity, when the weight of all the evidence which we can obtain respecting the constitution of the universe is against them. It appears to us, that to discern one great scheme of moral and religious government, which is the spiritual centre of the universe, may well suffice for the religious sentiments of men in the present age; as in former ages such a view of creation was sufficient to overwhelm men with feelings of awe, and gratitude, and love; and to make them confess, in the most emphatic language, that all such feelings were an inadequate response to the view of the scheme of Providence which was revealed to them. The thousands of millions of inhabitants of the Earth to whom the effects of the Divine Plan extend, will not seem, to the greater part of religious persons, to need the addition of more, to fill our minds with sufficiently vast and affecting contemplations, so far as we are capable of pursuing such contemplations. The possible extension of God's spiritual kingdom upon the earth will probably appear to them a far more interesting field of devout meditation, than the possible addition to it of the inhabitants of distant stars, connected in some inscrutable manner with the Divine Plan.

18. To justify our saying that the weight of the evidence is against such cosmological doctrines, we must recall to the reader's recollection the whole course of the argument which we have been pursuing.

It is a possible conjecture, at first, that there may be other Worlds, having, as this has, their moral and intellectual attributes, and their relations to the Creator. It is also a possible conjecture, that this World, having such attributes, and such relations, may, on that account, be necessarily unique and incapable of repetition, peculiar, and spiritually central. These two opposite possibilities may be placed, at first, front to front, as balancing each other. We must then weigh such evidence and such analogies as we can find on the one side or on the other. We see much in the intellectual and moral nature of man, and in his history, to confirm the opinion that the human race is thus unique, peculiar and central. In the views which Religion presents, we find much more, tending the same way, and involving the opposite supposition in great difficulties. We find, in our knowledge of what we ourselves are, reasons to believe that if there be, in any other planet, intellectual and moral beings, they must not only be like men, but must be men, in all the attributes which we can conceive as belonging to such beings. And yet to suppose other groups of the human species, in other parts of the universe, must be allowed to be a very bold hypothesis, to be justified only by some positive evidence in its favor. When from these views, drawn from the attributes and relations of man, we turn to the evidence drawn from physical conditions, we find very strong reason to believe that, so far as the Solar System is concerned, the Earth is, with regard to the conditions of life, in a peculiar and central position; so that the conditions of any life approaching at all to human life, exist on the Earth alone. As to other systems which may circle other suns, the possibility of their being inhabited by men, remains, as at first, a mere conjecture, without any trace of confirmatory evidence. It was suggested at first by the supposed analogy of other stars to our sun; but this analogy has not been verified in any instance; and has been, we conceive, shown in many cases, to vanish altogether. And that there may be such a plan of creation,—one in which the moral and intelligent race of man is the climax and central point to which innumerable races of mere unintelligent species tend,—we have the most striking evidence, in the history of our own earth, as disclosed by geology. We are left, therefore, with nothing to cling to, on one side, but the bare possibility that some of the stars are the centres of systems like the Solar System;—an opinion founded upon the single fact, shown to be highly ambiguous, of those stars being self-luminous; and to this possibility, we oppose all the considerations, flowing from moral, historical, and religious views, which represent the human race as unique and peculiar. The force of these considerations will, of course, be different in different minds, according to the importance which each person attaches to such moral, historical, and religious views; but whatever the weight of them may be deemed, it is to be recollected that we have on the other side a bare possibility, a mere conjecture; which, though suggested at first by astronomical discoveries, all more recent astronomical researches have failed to confirm in the smallest degree. In this state of our knowledge, and with such grounds of belief, to dwell upon the Plurality of Worlds of intellectual and moral creatures, as a highly probable doctrine, must, we think, be held to be eminently rash and unphilosophical.

19. On such a subject, where the evidences are so imperfect, and our power of estimating analogies so small, far be it from us to speak positively and dogmatically. And if any one holds the opinion, on whatever evidence, that there are other spheres of the Divine Government than this earth,—other regions in which God has subjects and servants,—other beings who do his will, and who, it may be, are connected with the moral and religious interests of man;—we do not breathe a syllable against such a belief; but, on the contrary, regard it with a ready and respectful sympathy. It is a belief which finds an echo in pious and reverent hearts;75 and it is, of itself, an evidence of that religious and spiritual character in man, which is one of the points of our argument. But the discussion of such a belief does not belong to the present occasion, any further than to observe, that it would be very rash and unadvised,—a proceeding unwarranted, we think, by Religion, and certainly at variance with all that Science teaches,—to place those other, extra-human spheres of Divine Government, in the Planets and in the Stars. With regard to the planets and the stars, if we reason at all, we must reason on physical grounds; we must suppose, as to a great extent we can prove that the laws and properties of terrestrial matter and motion apply to them also. On such grounds, it is as improbable that visitants from Jupiter or from Sirius can come to the Earth, as that men can pass to those stars: as unlikely that inhabitants of those stars know and take an interest in human affairs, as that we can learn what they are doing. A belief in the Divine Government of other races of spiritual creatures besides the human race, and in Divine Ministrations committed to such beings, cannot be connected with our physical and astronomical views of the nature of the stars and the planets, without making a mixture altogether incongruous and incoherent; a mixture of what is material and what is spiritual, adverse alike to sound religion and to sound philosophy.

20. Perhaps again, it may be said, that in speaking of the shortness of the time during which man has occupied the earth, in comparison with the previous ages of irrational life, and of blank matter, we are taking man at his present period of existence on the earth:—that we do not know that the race may not be destined to continue upon the earth for as many ages as preceded the creation of man. And to this we reply, that in reasoning, as we must do, at the present period, we can only proceed upon that which has happened up to the present period. If we do not know how long man will continue to inhabit the earth, we cannot reason as if we did know that he will inhabit it longer than any other species has done. We may not dwell upon a mere possibility, which, it is assumed, may at some indefinitely future period, alter the aspect of the facts now before us. For it would be as easy to assume possibilities which may come hereafter to alter the aspect of the facts, in favor of the one side, as of the other.76 What the future destinies of our race, and of the earth, may be, is a subject which is, for us, shrouded in deep darkness. It would be very rash to assume that they will be such as to alter the impression derived from what we now know, and to alter it in a certain preconceived manner. But yet it is natural to form conjectures on this subject; and perhaps we may be allowed to consider for a moment what kind of conjectures the existing stage of our knowledge suggests, when we allow ourselves the license of conjecturing. The next Chapter contains some remarks bearing upon such conjectures.