The Bossier banner. [volume] (Bellevue, Bossier Parish, La.) 1859-1952, 1883-07-19
The Value Of Life.

| space, sparsely Lit by its stellar lamps,
| no thoughtful person can but question
| its mystery and wonder if there beings
| of like passions as ourselves suffer,
struggle, toll and enjoy the same that
we do on this planet. There is some
| thing overwhelming in the thought that
our little ball is the sole and solitary
home of organized life, and that the
sun lights and warns for our exclusive
| benefit the space through which we
| swing and spin. The feeling is akin to
| that which comes over one in the dense
solitude of the forest, or upon the sum-
NIT of mountain-a sense of desola-
! ton, desertion, loneliness and awe.
Even the teeming millions which swarm
upon the earth seem few and solitary
! when we conceive of them as the only
| conscious inhabitants sailing through
everlasting depths. The ark and the
eight souls saved therein, with the
beasts and the birds. floating upon the
| flood which hid all signs of existence,
or the balloon disappearing in infinite
| depths is not picture of intenser soil
| tude than the earth swimming in q
| shoreless ocean, broken only by planet
| airy islands wholly deserted.
| Yet five may trust a writer in the
| Popular Science Monthly, such, or near
| " such are the conclusions of science.
The great planets, Jupiter and Saturn.
are lit by their own and not by reflected
| light. Hence, like the sun, they must
be incapable of sustaining any life con-
ceiyable to us. And should they ever
become fit for it, life there will have to
submit to conditions which would render
existence on the earth quite impossible.
The attraction exerted by Jupiter is
| three hundred times that of the earth.
A man of average weight here would
| there have a ponderous tread of more
| than twenty tons; his own weight would
crush him into pulp; falling hickory
nut would whiz through him like rifle
ball; a wave would shiver an iron-clad
to pieces; a riVulet cut mile-deep can
| yons, and a moderate breeze sweep
away the hills and mountains. In
| some points, however, this description
is exaggerated; for We're man to be
| weighted to the earth by pressure of
| twenty-five tons he could not easily be
moved by water, and the hills and
mountains would be so firmly fixed by
I
the moving atmosphere could not dis
| place them. In other words, every
thing on the planet of Jupiter would be
| adjusted to its new conditions.
/ On Mars the conditions would be re-
versed. There, man would weigh only
two and half pounds. It would be
easy to fly, but an eighty-ton loeomo-
| tive could not draw train of empty
| cars; Niagara Falls would furnish
scarcely power enough to turn mill,
and rifle ball might be caught in the
hand without harm. In an atmosphere
even as dense as our own, all animal
and vegetable forms would there be the
merest gossamer, blown to pieces by
| every breeze. But no such an atmos-
/ phere as ours is possible in Mars. It's
! pressure, would be less than that of our
| atmosphere on the tops of our highest
mountains, rendering existence an inn
| possibility. Moreover, Mars has less
| than half the heat from the sun which
the earth enjoys. On his torrid zone
| the thermometer would never rise above
| fifty degrees, and even that is made i'm
| possible by the thinness of the atmos-
! phere. Nothing can be more certain
than that there is no 1iquidin Mars and
no life. ;, On the moon the conditions
are even worse than in Mars; while its
day and night, each two weeks long,
utterly forbid the presence of life there.
Mercury, with its temperature of boil
| ing water at the poles and red-hot iron
at the equator, cannot sustain life.
/ Beside the earth, therefore, Venus Is
the only member of the solar system
which science declares canpreserve life,
and on it life, though in lower forms
than those of the EARTH. probably does
exist; but this insignificant little globe
is the only one on which there are any
/ probabilities of life, so that if the inhab-
ltants of the earth were equally dis
tributed through solar space, all per-
sons would be thousands of miles apart.
/ Moreover. life has existed on the earth
| for thousands of years. The time that
it has taken to ripen our highest civil
! ization, which is an eternity of itself,
has been necessary to give birth to
Shakespeare and TO develop intellect
capable of a glimmering comprehension
of what has created them. Life is far
more rare and far more costly in our
solar system than diamonds in the
! NetA all C1SC 10 WSbotC-GpdCCs nCdU,
energy, except as it is being used for
the production of life in eternities
beyond. r~5s- =
I Considering this as fact, if it be one,
how little value is placed upon life.
Destruction by war. by slaughter. by
mems own appetites and passions, by
/ plague, pestilences, fevers and other
agencies, to a degree at least under
mems control, is never ceasing. In
crowded cities and provinces human
life is the cheapest of all commodities;
in great manufacturing communities, it
is esteemed at a smaller value than the
machine which it operates, the product
which it turns QUIT Notwithstanding
that life is as rare in the universe as
diamonds in the earth, it is flung away
as recklessly as if diamonds were
pebbles and not precious stones.-De-
troit Post and Tribune.
The Brooklyn bridge was not the
only important structure of the kind
opened to public use on the Queens
L h11sthAoxy No 4 L