25 APRIL 1874, Page 9

MR. R. A. PROCTOR ON THE WASTES OF THE UNIVERSE.

MR. PROCTOR, our own well-known astronomer, after delivering above a hundred astronomical lectures in the United States, has been summing up in New York the general lessons which astronomy teaches as to the divine methods of creation, in a somewhat remarkable lecture on the principle of what would seem to men, judged by human standards, as divine waste. By waste' he means, of course, not absolute fruitlessness, but the lavish employment of forces acting on an immense scale, to produce results which seem comparatively very infinitesimal and very short-lived. When we say ' to produce,' we assume, perhaps, that what we regard as the end of creation is the end, simply because it is nearer akin to human ends. But what Mr. Proctor refers to is some- thing of this sort :—In the first place, if Life of any kind at all resembling our own, is supposed to be one of the ends of physical nature, then it must be admitted that the spots in the universe where such life is possible are infinitely small, as compared with

time. or not, must be for us immaterial. There is a real lesson in the

To an imagination bewildered, as human imaginations so often certainty that the spaces in which the forms of force we know, do are, not with the infinite repose of the universe, the lavish expendi- not exist, are infinitely large, in comparison with those in which ture of time and force on apparently small results, but rather with such forms of force do exist ; and that even in worlds in which such the hurry, the crowding, the human frettings and turnings of this forms of force as we are familiar with exist, there are an infinite vivid little world of misery and joy, there is something at first number of both regions and times in which they are inconsistent rather resting and solemn in thus realising for ourselves the infinite with the kind of physical life best known to us, as compared with tracts of space and time which seem secure from the invasions of the number of those regions and times in which such physical life the swarms of organic life. A fanciful mind might even expect might possibly be. It may be said that this only comes, after all, the Earth herself to feel as if relieved of something of a fever-fit, to saying that the unknown occupies a vastly greater proportion after the comparatively short period during which she is fit for the of the universe than the known. But it is more than this. For support of organic life shall have elapsed, and the passionless calm it is clearly reasonable to suppose that the same relation which of the lunar solitudes shall have succeeded to the tread of busy exists between the quantity of space in which there is life like ours, feet and the crush of eager appetites. But that, of course, would and the immeasurable spaces in which there can be no such life, be the mere fancy of minds solicited by too many competing i exists also between the quality of what is known to us and what is the spaces where such life is not possible. Concede, for instance, interests, and yearning for a better adjustment between their thirst that such life cannot exist except on the surface of solid worlds, i for peace and their impulses to action. Still, Mr. Proctor's and you admit at once not only that the subterranean in- speculations are useful, if only for this purpose,—that they help teriors of all these worlds is, as far as such life is concerned, us to realise, not the smallness of human interests, (for that is wasted, but that the vacuum of the intermundaue spaces, of hardly the result of seeing how many ages of evolution have led course far more vast than the infinitesimal continents of the up to them, even though as many more lead down from them to globes scattered about amongst tbem, is for the same purpose silence and desolation once more), but the infinite number of " wasted." But Mr. Proctor goes much further. Assuming that, other and perhaps infinitely higher ends which are evidently in- as far as we know anything whatever of the laws of physical life; cluded in the divine mind, besides those with which we are able to a certain amount of heat and a tolerably dense atmosphere are any effect to concern ourselves. Of course it does not follow that necessary to it, while any very considerable excess of heat and the worlds which Mr. Proctor believes to be destitute of organic any great deficiency of atmosphere would be fatal to it, Mr. life are so, simply because they are probably destitute of it in the Proctor at once excludes the great central suns from the class of sense which we attach to the word. There may be iu other worlds habitable worlds, as being centres of heat far too intense for millions and millions of organic beings to whom the heat of the anything like such life ; while at the other extreme of the scale, solar temperature itself is only a pleasant stimulus, instead of instant he excludes a burnt-out ash like the moon, which has neither destruction ; there may be others to whom cold which would atmosphere nor water, from the category of worlds fit for any freeze mercury, and a darkness which would not admit of our organisation known to us. And even between these limits Mr. recognising each other's faces, are the acme of physical com- Proctor finds but few planets which he thinks fit for such life as fort. For anything we know to the contrary, the fiery ours at the present moment. Venus and Mercury are both too centre of our own planet may be inhabited by beings much scorched up by the sun's rays, he holds, for any organisa- who could not even conceive the possibility of life on its tion we know. Mars, if not already too cold, is fast becoming surface. Again, the spaces which we call a perfect vacuum so, with his comparatively small supply of watery vapour, and between one planet and another, and between one solar his immense fields of winter snow. Jupiter and the other known system and another, may be inhabited by beings to whom the major planets are still, says Mr. Proctor, glowing masses of detached ether through which light is transmitted, is what the sea is to fishes. solar fire, not sufficiently cooled down for their surface to be the All that Mr. Proctor shows is all that any man of science can show, abode of life of our sort. In short, except the planet Mars, which Mr. —that judging by the only analogies we have, organic life like our Proctor thinks nearly, if not quite, past the stage at which there is own cannot exist in any of the suns and on a great many of the sufficient heat to support life like ours, and one of the satellites of planets which make up the subjects of astronomical study. No Jupiter, and possibly an asteroid or two, Mr. Proctor does not hold one can bind the power of conjecture ; nor need it be denied that it possible that any life of the kind we know now exists elsewhere. there may be plausible moral grounds for conjectures for which in the Solar system. As for the other stellar systems, the stars there are no physical grounds. If any one thinks that it derogates themselves are centres of heat far too great for the existence of from the goodness of God, as otherwise made known, to believe, such life, and of their planets we know nothing. And he argues for instance, that the solid crust and fiery centre of a planet is not from analogy that but a very few even of the planets can be under as thickly populated as its surface is, or that there ever was the conditions which render organic life, as we know it, possible. a series of ages when even the surface itself was destitute of life, At any one moment the vast majority of physical worlds in existence such a person may have very fair moral grounds for conjecturing are, in Mr. Proctor's belief, unfit to support life, though each one that the interstellar spaces are all peopled by inhabitants of some of them may be, or may have been, for some small fraction of its kind, and that the pre-organic age of the Earth was an age career, the theatre of such life. The Earth, for instance, must have in which invisible beings, or at least beings which left no been unfit to support life for ages before it had cooled down suffi- physical traces of their existence, dwelt upon it. But even to ciently for the purpose, and, for ages after it shall have shrunk into such a person Mr. Proctor's lectures should show thus much,— the condition of the moon, it will again be unfit for the support of that life, as we know it, is the exception, and not the rule, in the life. In a word, not only is the proportion of space devoted to universe ; that an indefinite number of ages must have elapsed in organised life at any one moment an infinitesimal one, but if you the case of every astronomical body whose existence we know, take the career of any single world separately, you will find that its without the appearance of what we mean by organic life, and that period of waste is an infinitude, in the midst of which its little age of an indefinite number of ages will elapse after that which we call habitability resembles a mere island in the wide and barren ocean of organic life has ceased to be. Well, that at least shows that its desolation. The proportion of space utilised (if the support of or- even if the infinite universe be teeming with finite life in some ganic life be the definition of " utilisation-) to waste space is infini- sense, the purposes and conditions of that life must be wholly tesimal; and the proportion of time utilised (iu the same sense) to different, in an infinitude of tracts both of space and time, from waste time, in the history of any one among the material worlds, is what they are in the world so familiar to us. Why, then, should infinitesimal also. For the most part,—this is Mr. Proctor's infer- we not accept the far easier and equally reasonable conception ence from his astronomical surveys,—the map of the physical that finite life of any kind fills up but a few insulated points universe is a map of vast solitudes, most of which,—namely, the in the infinite solitudes of the universe, though the infinite interstellar and intermundane spaces,—were never adapted for mind is, of course, present through all the infinitudes both of organised life at all ; while of the spots which are so adapted, the space and time? The study of astronomy certainly brings home as time during which there is a capability of supporting life is a mere no other study can, the certainty that life, like ours at all events, narrow strip of isthmus between two infinite oceans of perpetual is not wanted everywhere, because it is not conceivable everywhere ; solitude, the infinite antecedent history of gradual preparation, and that the number of thoughts and purposes in which neither we the infinite subsequent history of exhausted powers. According nor any beings like us have any share, must be infinite, even as to this view, if life in any way like ours is the end of the compared with those equally deep, and to us, of course, much more material universe, almost the whole universe is either a blank, or a interesting, thoughts and purposes iu which we have a vivid share ; becoming, or a passing-away, and the portions of time and space in that what seem to us the wastes of time and space, are simply the which organic life has appeared, but not yet passed away, count theatres of infinite power and reason quite beyond our knowledge ; but for a few drops in the ocean of perceivable space and recordable and whether, therefore, they are the abodes of other finite creatures

unknown ;—in other words, that the powers and purposes which are beyond our apprehension are as infinitely above those which are within our apprehension, as the times and spaces devoted in the universe to what we know and can understand, are to the times and spaces devoted to what we do not know and cannot understand. If that inference be warranted, astronomy suggests, with almost physical irresistibleness, the absolute infinitude of God, in the only sense in which infinitude has any real meaning for finite beings.