THE PLACE OF MAN IN THE UNIVERSE.
IN his lecture of Saturday at the Royal Institution, Sir Robert Ball, lately Astronomer-Royal in Ireland, and a man with a singular capacity for "popularising" science without debasing it, stated that we now knew the existence of thirty millions of stars or suns, many of them much more magnificent than the one which gives light to our system. The majority of them are not visible to the eye, or even recognisable by the telescope, but sensitised photo- graphic plates—which are for this purpose eyes that can stare unwinking for hours at a time—have revealed their existence beyond all doubt or question, though most of them are almost inconceivably distant, thousands or tens of thou- sands of times as far off as our sun. A telegraphic message, for example, which would reach the sun in eight minutes, would not reach some of these stars in eighteen hundred years. The human mind, of oourse, does not really conceive such distances, though they can be expressed in formula which the human mind has devised, and the bewildering statement is from one point of view singularly depressing. It reduces so greatly the probable importance of man in the universe. It is most improbable, almost impossible, that these great centres of light should have been created to light up nothing, and as they are far too distant to be of use to us we may fairly accept the hypothesis that each one has a system of planets round it like our own. Taking an average of only ten planets to each stn, that hypothesis indicates the existence within the narrow range to which human observa- tion is still confined of at least three hundred millions of separate worlds, many of them doubtless of gigantic size, and it is nearly inconceivable that those worlds can be wholly devoid of living and sentient beings upon them. Granting the to ns impossible hypothesis that the final cause of the universe is accident, a fortuitous concourse of self-existent atoms, still the accident which produced thinking beings upon this little and inferior world must have frequently repeated itself; while if, as we bold, there is a sentient Creator, it is difficult to believe, without a revelation to that effect, that he has wasted such glorious creative power upon mere masses of insensible matter. God cannot love gases. The high probability, at least, is that there are millions of worlds—for, after all, what the sensitised paper sees must be but an infinitesimal fraction of the whole—occupied by sentient beings, probably mortal in our sense, as all matter must decay, certainly finite; and then what is the relative position of mankind P If he dies at death, man is a member of a weak tribe of animals with inferior physical powers, with keen brains but very poor natures, with a very short life, and so insignificant in numbers that it seems at first sight possible—we write with all reverence—that he might be forgotten even by God. We know, or think we know, from Revelation that he is not for- gotten ; but there is no natural reason why he should not be, in the sense that any one of the smaller forest tribes of Africa may be forgotten by the most learned of geographers or most benevolent of philanthropists. We can conceive no thought more depressing than this of the contemptible in- significance, the almost invisibility, of man among the myriads of sentient creatures of whom he knows, and while he remains here will continue to know, absolutely nothing. His fate is the fate of an animalcule such as science suspects to exist, below detection or observation by the most searching microscope. How an unbeliever can be grateful to the astronomer we cannot imagine, any more than we can imagine how men who see in mankind only superior animals, can conceive of humanity as a worthy object of worship. We had rather worship the sun, or Space, which at least is grand in this, that it contains all that exists.
It is only by believing that the human being has a spirit, and that it continues to exist after death, that man can in any degree regain his importance in the scheme of things. Even then he is but one among many myriads of competitors, and in no way the centre or flower, as he now thinks himself, of creation ; but still he may be an important being, lasting for countless ages, capable through those ages of perpetual addi- tions to his powers, and of becoming through all that time of more use in the work of the universe. He is, from the astronomer's point of view, of sufficiently little use now, for he only cultivates, and in cultivating uses up, a single grain of sand. We know nothing about it, of course, except that man exists after death, which we hold to be proved at once by Revelation and by the perpetually repeated experience of a few persons to whom it has been given to see dimly and for a few moments beyond the veil which seems to the majority to drop at death and to be so impenetrable; but it is difficult to believe that anytbing created—and the spirit is as much created as the body—can remain stationary in con- dition, as even inanimate matter does not do. Why should it when there must be so much, not only to know, but to do, in this illimitable universe P The popular notion that man, once escaped from the confinement of the body, does nothing except sit on a cloud and sing psalms to the glory of a God whose glory is so perfect without him that he was content when man was not in being, rests upon no evidence, whether of reason or Revelation, and seems to us derived either from man's long experience of overtoil and misery, and his enjoyment, therefore, of their absence, or from the inherent Asiatic dislike of exertion. Why should we not work for ever as well as now ? If man can live again, and grow in that new life, and exert himself to carry out the always hidden, but necessarily magnificent, purpose of the Creator, then, indeed, his existence may have some importance, and the insignificance of his place of origin be forgotten. For he has an inherent quality which does not belong, so far as the mind can see what must always remain partially dark, even to the Divine, he is capable of effort, and in the effort and through the effort not only of growing greater than before, but of adding force to an inanimate thing like his own body. What if that power of effort should be slowly aggrandised until man, now a little higher than the monkey, became a really great being P There is a field for hope in that speculation which is limitless, and, dreamy as it seems, it is at least more reasonable, if the existence of spirit is conceded, than the popular belief upon the subject, —that singular compound of reverence, laziness, and intense de- light at the prospect of escape from all the miseries inherently connected with this present life. Some day or other the great teachers of theology will, we believe, take up this subject with enthusiasm and with powers to which, of course, we cannot pretend. They have grown out of the crude notions of heaven and hell as the place of harps and the place of fire, but they have not yet replaced them by any definite teaching. By and by they will, we think, see that in falling into their present vagueness they have thrown aside their strongest weapon for the conversion of the world, and will once more examine and state strongly the little that Revelation teaches on the subject—it is not nothing—and the little more that can be deduced from admitted facts by human reason, and then tell us in clear words what they think. When they do, they will be startled to find how strongly human interest in their teaching has revived, how fierce will be the controversy as to the accuracy of every sentence they utter. They tell us enough of the Whence, but are too cautious about the Whither.
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