OUR PLACE AMONG INFINITIES.* No popular writer on astronomy succeeds
so thoroughly as Mr. Proctor in conveying to our minds an idea of the vastness of Creation, the portion of the subject which he now brings before
us being our own infinite littleness. Not the littleness of indi- vidual man, with his short span of life and comparatively futile powers, but our aggregate littleness, as shown by the mere speck which represents our planet in the immensity of space, and the vast extent of time during which that planet existed in an unin- habited state, as well as the probably immense duration of its existence after we shall have ceased to be. Such is in brief the matter treated of in the series of essays comprising this volume, the first lecture, " The Past and Future of our Earth," being, as it were, the key of the whole position. In his opening pages Mr. Proctor at once disclaims the association of his subject with religious questions, because as "science deals with the finite, though it may carry one's thoughts to the infinite," he considers it impossible to learn from it anything of the infinite attributes of an Almighty Being. Such teachings, in fact, come entirely within a different province, so that while science is by no means incompatible with them, it is altogether a different branch of study, and without detriment to the former, " we may," as Mr. Proctor says, " proceed to inquire into the probable past and future of our earth as calmly as we should inquire into the probable past and future of a pebble, a seed, or an insect ; of a rock, a tree, or an animal ; of a continent, or of a type, whether of vegetable or of animal life ;" for, as he truly remarks in another place, "we may be perfectly satisfied that the works of God will teach us aright, if rightly Studied."
It is a grand conception which is tjius placed before us, and one which, if necessarily based on theory, yet carries with it a strong assumption of probability. Reasoning from analogy, the author first shows us our earth in one of its earliest stages as a "rotating mass of glowing vapour, capturing then, as now, but far more actively then than now, masses of matter which approached near enough, and growing by these continued in-draughts from with- out." At this period the earth was, according to this theory, pre- paring to become a sun, and this was in all probability her next stage of existence, the Moon being at that time the abode of life, our earth supplying light and heat to the creatures which then dwelt there. After this a process of cooling and solidification, during which the first mountain ranges were formed and oceans and continents evolved, prepared the planet to become the abode of life, first in the vegetable and then in the animal forms ; and before these appeared she was, in all probability, in a condition like that through which Saturn and Jupiter are now apparently passing. But what are the time-intervals which were, according to Mr. Proctor, necessary for the production of all these changes ? Hundreds of millions of years. As he puts it, "Hundreds of thou- sands of years are the seconds of the time-measures we have to deal with." And he says, further on, "Taking as the extremest span of the past existence of life upon the earth ten millions of years, we learn from the researches of physicists that the age pre- ceding that of life (the age during which the world was a mass of • Our Place among Infinities. By Richard A. Proctor. London : Henry S. King and Co. molten rock) lasted more than thirty-five times as long, since Bischoff has shown that the earth would require 350 millions of years to cool down from a temperature of 2,000° Centigrade to 200°.
But far back beyond the commencement of that vast era, our earth existed as a nebulous mass, nor can we form even a conjecture as yet respecting the length of time during which that earlier stage of the earth's existence continued ; and Mr. Proctor goes on to show that by the effect of changes which we know to be slowly progressing, our earth must (unless any sudden catastrophe should previously destroy life from off her surface) fall into a condition similar to that of the moon at present, a condition which would not be attained short of a period so distant as to be represented,
probably, by hundreds of thousands of years ; after which, again, stretches a period of apparent inutility of immense duration, when
our planet in its stage of decrepitude will still continue to circle round the Sun.
But wonderful as this may seem, nay, taxing to the uttermost our powers of imagination, it is but a mere introduction to—the veriest foreshadowing of—what is to follow. According to Mr.
Proctor, while one orb after another is gradually becoming in- capable of supporting life, others, superior in the planetary scale, have been slowly preparing themselves for the same purpose ; and if his theory be correct, the longer a planet shall have been in "putting on life," the longer will be the duration of its life-sup- porting existence ; possibly, also, the higher will be the order of beings destined to dwell upon its surface ; and this continuous succession of changes will occur until the Sun itself will be the only orb in our system on which life will be possible, and we may look forward to a period, distant almost beyond conception, when it also will be the theatre of busy existence. But the sun itself gives evidence of incessant change. Will life cease to exist when that world, the centre of our system, shall have become worn out, and as effete as its many satellites? No, the end is as remote as the beginning, for both are swallowed up in eternity. Mr. Proctor expresses this so eloquently, that he must be allowed to speak for himself :—
" The end, seemingly so remote, to which our earth- issi..encling, the end, infinitely more remote, to which the solar system is tending, the end of our galaxy, the end of systems of such galaxies as oars,—all these endings (each one of which presents itself in turn to our conceptions as the end of the universe itself) are but the beginnings of eras comparable with themselves, even as the beginnings to which we severally trace back the history of our planet, of the planetary system, and of galaxies of such systems, are but the endings of prior conditions which have followed each other in infinite succession. The wave of life which is now passing over our earth is but a ripple in the sea of life within the solar system ; this sea of life is itself but as a wavelet on the ocean of eternal life throughout the universe. Inconceivable, doubtless, are these infinities of time and space, of matter, of motion, and of life ; in- conceivable that the whole universe can be for all time the scene of the operation of infinite personal power, omnipresent, all-knowing; utterly incomprehensible how infinite purpose can be associated with endless material evolution. But it is no new thought, no modern discovery, that we are thus utterly powerless to conceive or comprehend the idea of an Infinite Being, Almighty, All-knowing, Omnipresent, and Eternal, of whose inscrutable purpose the material universe is the unexplained manifestation. Science is in presence of the old, old mystery ; the old, old questions are asked of her —' Canst thou by searching find out God? canst thou find out the Almighty unto perfection ? It is as high as heaven, what canst thou do? deeper than hell, what canst thou know ?' And science answers these questions, as they were answered of old, As touching the Almighty, we cannot find Him out.' "
Passing over Mr. Proctor's interesting chapters on Jupiter and Saturn, on Sirius the giant sun, and on the Comets, which be describes as but frail creatures after all, notwithstanding the terror which they have from time to time inspired, we will touch for a moment upon that which treats of " the Star-depths," for here we are not only brought face to face with facts of appalling grandeur, but enabled to realise more completely that which, as we have said before, is the main subject of the entire work,—the infinite littleness of our orb, when compared with the majesty of that portion of the sidereal vault into which we short-sighted mortals are permitted to gaze. In this essay the author wishes to show "that so far from having penetrated the secret of the
star-depths; we stand as yet but on the threshold of that mighty domain which belongs to the astronomy of the Future ;" and beginning with the fact that the mighty instruments of our day, wielded with all the skill of men of vast experience, have not enabled us to measure the distances of more than a dozen stars, from the nearest of which the earth's orbit of more than 180 millions of miles would be something absolutely inappreciable, he goes on to divide the stars into two chief classes,—leading orbs, like our own
sun, of which he supposes millions to exist, or rather, he concludes that the sun is inferior both in size and brightness to the greater number of this class of orbs around him,—and minor stars, more profusely spread through space, through which all move in every
conceivable direction and at very different rates. Then he proceeds to show that the number and variety of these isolated stars is as nothing when compared to the wondrous galaxy of the Milky Way, with its marvellous complexity of structure, its stars of every degree of magnitude, and its clouds of nebulous light, which clouds may be, says the author, merely vast depths of nebulous matter, or schemes of stars as magnificent as the most splendid of all the star-clusters discernible with the telescope. Referring to the differences of star-colours, some of which are observable to the naked eye, while the telescope reveals to us shades of blue and green, of yellow, of orange, and of deepest red, he argues a marked difference in the condition of the stars so distinguished, and proves it by divergencies presented by their several spectra, showing the wondrous variety presented by the sidereal firma- ment; and speaking of the double stars, the pairs of one or two colours, which are distinctly seen, he suggests that they may either be double suns, round which other planets may revolve, or that each component sun may have its own distinct system of dependent worlds ; and he then proceeds to consider the con- dition of things in those spheres where worlds may circle round the component suns of quadruple or multiple star-systems, where there could be no night at all, save for brief periods at very long intervals. From thence he mounts to the star-clusters, and finds that they all form part and parcel of one and the same scheme, amazing in splendour and sublimity, and asks, in conclusion, " whether we have now better reason than the astronomer had of old time to consider the mysteries of the universe as fully revealed to us and interpreted."
The idea which Mr. Proctor brings before us of seeming wastes in nature is very startling,—the Sun, for instance, emitting in each second as much heat as would result from the burning of 11,600 millions of millions of tone of coal; while the heat received by the various members of the solar system corre- sponds only to that of fifty millions of tons ; and all the other suns we see, and the myriads that lie beyond the range of our moat powerful telescopes, similarly pouring heat and light into space, What a wondrous expenditure of force and energy is here, ahowing us 'that we have but scanned the minutest portion of the work of the Creator, and that all we can ever learn is as nothing ! This, then, is the lesson which this book teaches,—our infinite littleness, and the grandeur of the system of which our planet forms so almost inappreciable a part ; and it is impossible to read it without having our conceptions enlarged, our humility strengthened, and our faith in a Being of infinite power and goodness increased. Mr. Proctor does well not to shrink from inquiries such as these, since they can only tend to raise those who pursue them from a grovelling existence to the reverent contemplation of the highest works of God.
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