The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1870-06-17
LIE IN NARS.

The London Spectator gives the following
interesting review of chapter in a new work
entitled "Other Worlds Than Ours" by
Richard A. Proctor, F. r. A. s., just pub
lished i'll London
In book far more entertaining than any
modern novel Mr.. Proctor has given us,
amongst number of other studies of worlds
in physical condition widely different from
that of our own, a chapter of the highest in
terest on ''Mars the Miniature of our Earth"
the specific interest of the essay being the
very close analogy it proves in the physical
condition of Mars to that of our own earth,
SO that we have a far larger basis of simlari-
ties from which to draw our inferences to
other sin<serities which we can as yet, only
conjecture, than we have in the case of the
Moon, or even the planet Jupiter, or Venus,
or Mercury-worlds in all of which there is
some vast fundamental differences of condi-
ton which must affect the whole course of
nature there. In the moon there
is the fatal difference of no atmos-
phere, and none, therefore, of the
enormous variety of phenomena-evapo
ton, clouds, colors, vegetables, lungs, etc.
dependent thereon. In Mercury and Venus,
if there is not as we should suppose on the
first look, an amount of heat which would
make those planets quite intolerable to the
various races of creatures inhabiting our
assume that there is not, and no evidence at
all really demonstrating the existence of those
general physical conditions on which alone
we can base an argument from analogy. In
Jupiter there is pretty clear positive evidence
that the conditions of existence are quite in
consistent with life as we know it. In all
probability, the body of the planet is still
a glowing uncondensed mass of molten
matter, with an atmosphere heavily charged
with boiling vapor; and if there be life at all
of our kind in the Jovian system, it must
in all probability be on the satellites, and not
on the planet ITSELF and even they are COM
posed of so light a material, as compared
with the earth or the moon, as to suggest
very different general physical condition
Of course, there is nothing to prove that in
tellectual beings, like ourselves in reasoning
powers, may not exist in the fiery furnace of
the sun or on the cinder which we call the
moon, or, indeed, in empty space itself; but
there we come into the region of pure con-
lecture, and the argument from analogy wholly
fails. Nothing is beyond pure conjecture. A
hundred thousand intellectual beings like
myself may be dancing on the paper on
which am writing, for anything know; but
/ have no reason to think so, and 1 have very
little more reason to think that such beings
exist either on the sun or on the moon, for
the only circumstance which favorably dis
tinguishes these positions from empty space,
Tor the abode of beings like ourselves is the
existence of force of gravity there, more
CT less resembling the force of gravity
which keeps us rooted to the earth; and
even that circumstance as regards the sun
can hardly be said to furnish an analogy, for
at the surface of the sun, to say nothing of
the difficulty of living in furnace, the force
of gravity itself would be so enormous as to
crush any one with the body of a man.
While, therefore, there is nothing to prevent
our conjecturing inhabitants for all the suns
in space, there is precisely as little reason for
doing so as for conjecturing inhabitants for
the intervening celestial vacuum. The mere
attraction of our attention to these particu-
lar points in space by the lights sus-
pended there ought no more to suggest living
beings in any degree like ourselves than the
shining of candle should suggest to O moth
that in the flame of that candle living beings
like itself exist. In point of fact, the moth
would be much nearer the mark if it peopled
tine dark intervening spaces with moths and
excluded them from the various luminous
points visible to it; and SO as regards solar
worlds, not only have we no reason to single
them out for con njectural inhabitants but as
far as we can reason from analogy at all, we
have special reason to single them out as
localities in which creatures like ourselves are
even more unlikely to exist thansin the empty
celestial spaces themselves. No doubt
III Is r6dbOudDl6 10 suppose
that there may be planetary systems for most
or all of the solar worlds like that to which
we belong, and there, if beings more or less
like ourselves do not already exist, prepara-
tion may be making for them. But what we
want oinsist on is, that so far as we can reason
at all in this matter, we can reason only b,
analogy; and that argument, as distinguished
from mere conjecture fails us, Just so far as
we have no tangible analogies of physica
condition on which to build.
Now, in the case of the planet Mars, and il
the case of the planet Mars alone, ou
astronomers have really established the
existence of similarity of physical condition
which gives us the strongest positive ground
for inferring that even such creatures as w
now are could somehow make shift to liv
there, though, of course, not without Ger
tain amount of preliminary discomfort Will
we were trying to acclimatize ourselves. MI
Proctor's graphic account of these similarities
and his delightful chart of the planets cont
nents and waters suggest to us to discuss on
or two of the known differences of condition
in their relation to the probable results upo
the history and civilization of the Martialists
First, let us briefly say that the Martialist
have a world less in area than on
of our hemispheres to explore-that, il
spite of this it has not very much less Ian
than the earth, much less propol
tion of its surface being occupied with wate
than of our globe-that its seas are of tn
general type of the Baltic and the Mediterra
mean, for the most part narrow, struggling
inland seas-that the greatest seas are in tn
neighborhood of the cold South pole of Mars
which has a climate far severer than tn