The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1856-1888, 1876-01-01
THE PACIFIC
Commercial AOOertiscr.
SATURDAY Y, JANUARY ]
Is There Life In Other Worlds?

Boston recently was the probability OF the eXts-
tence Of life in other worlds than ours. Modern
science, he said, does not object, az many sup
pose, TO the idea of a scheme in the universe,
but 10 the theory that that scheme is one which
men can understand. Formerly, If a choice lay
between two interpretations Of observed facts,
and one seemed to accord well, the other i'll, with
conceptions entertained respecting the ways OF
God, the former was accepted unhesitatiBgly,
even though the balance Of evidence might be IN
favor Of the latter. Thus IN astronomy Il was
assumed that the celestial bodies had been all
created either 10 support life as the sun does, or
to subserve the wants OF living creatures az the
moon does, or like our own earth, 10 be actually
the abode Of living creatures. He said that IN
studying the heavens We have to face a seeming
mystery of nature, namely, the apparent waste
fulness Of the plan of creation. In illustration
Of this he said
- All the planets together receive less than the
go millionth part of the heat and light which
the sun is constantly emitting. In each second
he emits az much heat as would result from the
burning of IL 900 millions Of millions Of tons Of
coal, and Of all this amazing amount Of energy
but one part in 230 millions fall on the members
Of the suns planetary family. What is true Of
the sun is doubtless true of his fellow suns, the
stars. All the thousands of stars we see, all the
millions revealed by the telescope, and millions of
times as many which no telescope yet made by
man can reveal, are suns similarly pouring heat
and light into space, and similarly wasting, ac-
cording to our conceptions, the energy which they
possess. The energy wasted SEEMS in fact, near
" the whole of the inconceiyable amount ex-
pended. But it is not necessary to leave the
study of our earth to find evidences of seeming
waste. How many seeds are scattered over the
face Of the earth to no visible purpose, for each
one that grows to perfection How many Great
ures are brought to life that perish before they
reach maturity This is true Of man as Of other
races. True of individual men, it is true of ma
tions, or races. Looking back at the past history
- e -. a,-kI -A ed A-a nAr YnIan o.
dence of seeming waste, until we reach a time
when the whole mass of the earth appears as Il
mere waste. For millions of years the whole
terrestrial globe was the scene of processes of
Tremendous activity, yet utterly unfit to be the
abode Of life. So, also, if we look Onward. In
a period lncomparably exceeding in duration the
life period of her history, she will circle around
the central sun, bearing only the records and
of former life, but to our conceptions
a useless, desert scene. But if we could see the
whole plan instead of the minutest portion if
We could scan the whole space instead of the
merest corner if all time was before us, instead
of space, we might indeed pronounce judgment.
But knowing as we do how little we really can
perceive, with any clearness, We may admit the
truth of all that science teaches, believing still
that the scheme of nature appears imperfect only
because it is seen but in part"
Coming to the question of life in other spheres
he said
sc 1t is conceivable, indeed, that many, if not
of the orbs which have come into being
may not have supported life in the past, nor will
life hereafter. If many seeds are to our
view wasted for each one that grows and bears
fruit, so may it be with planets. 1t is only our
own minuteness which makes the scale of the
planet seem so infinitely to transcend the scale of
the seed but to him in whose thoughts one day
is q thousand years, and a thousand years as one
day, the great and the small are alike. the planet
is no worthier than the mustard-seed, the seed
no worthier than the planet. Even assuming,
that each planet, satellite, asteroid,
or (passing in the other directlon) each
sun, sun system and galaxy was intended to sup
port life or to be the abode of life, it remains
equally certain, from what we know of the past
history of our own earth. that the life-era of ii
planet is but as a moment compared with the ex-
stence of the planet itself, and it is utterly i'm
probable that the life-era of the earth synchron-
ses with the life-era of any other planet Of the
solar system.
1.-The very argument from probability which
eads us to regard any given planet, or even any
given sun, as not the centre of a scheme in which
1t this moment there is life, forces upon us the
that among the millions on millions,
the millions of millions of suns which peo-
Die space, millions have orbs circling round them
which are at this moment the abode of living
If the chance is one in a thousand in
he case of each particular star, then in the
whole number of stars practically Infinitely one
n a thousand rules over a system in which there
s lie and what is this but saying that millions
# stars are life-supporting orbs? There is, then,
n infinity of life around us, although we recog-
lize infnity of time, as well as infnity of space,
n the existence of life in the universe. And,
hough remembering that life in each individual
s finite, in each planet finite. in each solar sys-
finite, in each systems of suns finite, so Ito
peak of no higher orders) the infnity of life
tself demonstrates the infnity of death, the inf
ity of inhabited worlds implies the infnity of
7orlds not as yet habitable, or which have long
passed the period of inhabitability.''