Hopkinsville Kentuckian. [volume] (Hopkinsville, Ky.) 1889-1918, 1897-01-15
STARRY PEOPLES.
Speeulaiions as 10 the Population Of
Other Worlds.

AuC NAoOCNCAJ VI bhO bhhOoOphCh
stone, supposing that phrase to
imply working scheme for trans
muting an inferior metal into gold,
would probably produce nothing be-
yond a period Of terrible economic
confusion, or perhaps q vast and
disastrous, because over-rapid, trans
fer of property; but the attainment
Of certainty that sentient beings
with corporal encasements, acting
by effort and not by pure voition,
existed in any one other planet,
would only enlarge the range of
human thought and the force Of the
human Imagination. Such a GER
tainty would either increase to an
extraordinary degree the reverence
for the Creator-for we are all SO
limited that we reverence powers
which we see exerted more than
powers which we know in theory
must exist--or would compel ma
terialists to revise and widen their
whole theory of the relation of mat
ter to mind, it being evident that
sentence could exist under condi-
tons hitherto deemed impossible.
There are certainly millions, and
possibly billions, of worlds of which
no two are the same, and if sentient
beings we're found past question in
one other world than ours, the pre-
sumption that they exis ted under a
variety Of conditions, and probably,
therefore, in variety OF forms practi-
cally unlimited, would become so vio-
lent that to reject the theory would
soon be regarded as an evidence Of
a foolish, popular habit OF disbelief
in the unseen Man has some in
ternal dislike to believe that limited
beings with sentence can exist un-
der conditions other than his own,
and habitually assumes that world
without air is a dead world, or at
all events an empty world; yet there
is no proof that the ether, which
we know to be everywhere, cannot
support life, or that circums tances
OF which we know nothing may not
modify either its intolerable cold or
the effect of that cold.
In Mars itself there is some po-
tency at work which, to the despair
for the moment of terrestrial science,
produces warmth where cold ought
to reign permanently supreme 1t
is as certain as any deduction from
analogy can be that air in Mars,
though it exists, is as rarefed as it
would be at the top Of mountain
twice as high as Mount Everest,
and that consequently the normal
and permanent degree Of cold ought
to be terrible. 'The thermal in
come of Mars is less than half that
of the earth, and its theoretical
mean temperature is consequently
taking into account its low 'albedo,
or reflective power per unit of area
80 degrees Centigrade below freez-
ing" Yet the actual climate of
Mars is mild. Snow certainly melts
rapidly-that is patent to the tele-
scope-vapor certainly rises-that
is clear from the spectrum-analysis
water flows, and there are indi-
cations, if not proofs, that a sudden
vegetation follows the sudden thaw-
ing of the snow. What warns the
air is unknown, but it is warmed
past all question or doubt, and all
arguments, therefore, as to the in
evitableness or cold in other worlds
must be pronounced imperfect, as
are also those which show the i'm
possibility of sustaining corporal
life. All we can say with certainty
is that if sentient beings with cor
poreal frames exist in Mars, the re-
lation of the lungs to the body can
not be identical with their relationsI
in man, which, as we are aware of
fishes, is not an impossible exercise
of the imagination. London Spec
tator.