The Republican. [volume] (Oakland, Md.) 1877-current, 1883-06-23
The Value Of Life.


its mystery and wonder if there beings
of ike passions as ourselves suffer,
struggle, toll and enjoy the same that
wedo on this planet. There is some
thing overwhelming an the thought that
our little ball is the sole and solitary
home OF organized life, and that the
sun nghts and warns for our exclusive
beneht 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-
init OF mountain--a sense of desola-
ton, assertion, 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
shoreless ocean, broken only by planet
airy islands wholly deserted
Yet II we may trust writer in the
Popular Science Monthly, such, or near
ly such are the conclusions of science.
The reat planets, Jupiter and Saturn,
are " their own and not by reflected
light Hence, like the sun, they must
be lne@able of sustaining any life con-
celVabNto us. And should they ever
becomeit for it, life there will have to
submit tconditions which would render
exlstenc9n the earth quite impossible.
The attrstion eXerted by Jupiter is
three hunted times that of the earth.
A man OF yerage weight here would
there have ponderous tread of more
than twentyons; his own weight would
crush hlm IMP pulp; falling hickory
nut would wiz through him like rifle
ball wave puld SILVER an iron-clad
to pieces; riulet cut mile-deep can
yons, and a Moderate breeze sweep
away the HIN and mountains. In
some points, h0ever, this description
is exaggerated; for were man to be
weighted to the arth by pressure of
twenty-five tons he could not easily be
moved by watei and the hills and
mountains wouldbe so firmly fixed by
their own gravitaton that the weight of
the moving atmoShere could not dis
place them. In ther words, every
thing on the planetof Jupiter would be
adjusted to its newconditions.
On Mars the conditions would be re-
versed. There, mar would weigh only
two and a half pounds. 1t would be
easy to fly, but an eghty-ton locomo-
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. Its
pressure would be less than that of our
atmosphere on the tops of our highest
mountains, rendering existence an i'm
possibility. Moreover, Mars has less
than half the heat from the sun which
the earth enjoys. On his torrid zone
tie 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 liquid in 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-
itants 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 a
Shakespeare and to develop intellect
capable of glimmering comprehension
of what has created them. Life is far
more rare and far more costly in our
solar system than diamonds in the
earth. " All else is waste-space, heat,
energy, except as it is being used for
the production of life in eternities
beyond.
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 degree at least under
mems control, is never ceasing. In
cities and provinces human
life is the cheapest of all commodities;
in great manufacturing communities, it
is esteemed at smaller value than the
which it operates, the product
which it turns out. 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-
trO1 Post and Tribune.
The Brooklyn bridge was not the
only important structure of the kind
opened to public use on the Queens