Are the Planets Inhabited?

CONTENTS


CHAPTER PAGE

I. THE QUESTION STATED 1

II. THE LIVING ORGANISM 6

III. THE SUN 20

IV. THE DISTRIBUTION OF THE ELEMENTS IN SPACE 33

V. THE MOON 43

VI. THE CANALS OF MARS 57

VII. THE CONDITION OF MARS 71

VIII. THE ILLUSIONS OF MARS 96

IX. VENUS, MERCURY AND THE ASTEROIDS 111

X. THE MAJOR PLANETS 122

XI. WHEN THE MAJOR PLANETS COOL 133

XII. THE FINAL QUESTION 143

INDEX 163




ARE THE PLANETS INHABITED?




CHAPTER I

THE QUESTION STATED


The first thought that men had concerning the heavenly bodies was an
obvious one: they were lights. There was a greater light to rule the day;
a lesser light to rule the night; and there were the stars also.

In those days there seemed an immense difference between the earth upon
which men stood, and the bright objects that shone down upon it from the
heavens above. The earth seemed to be vast, dark, and motionless; the
celestial lights seemed to be small, and moved, and shone. The earth was
then regarded as the fixed centre of the universe, but the Copernican
theory has since deprived it of this pride of place. Yet from another
point of view the new conception of its position involves a promotion,
since the earth itself is now regarded as a heavenly body of the same
order as some of those which shine down upon us. It is amongst them, and
it too moves and shines--shines, as some of them do, by reflecting the
light of the sun. Could we transport ourselves to a neighbouring world,
the earth would seem a star, not distinguishable in kind from the rest.

But as men realized this, they began to ask: "Since this world from a
distant standpoint must appear as a star, would not a star, if we could
get near enough to it, show itself also as a world? This world teems with
life; above all, it is the home of human life. Men and women, gifted with
feeling, intelligence, and character, look upward from its surface and
watch the shining members of the heavenly host. Are none of these the home
of beings gifted with like powers, who watch in their turn the movements
of that shining point which is our world?"

This is the meaning of the controversy on the Plurality of Worlds which
excited so much interest some sixty years ago, and has been with us more
or less ever since. It is the desire to recognize the presence in the orbs
around us of beings like ourselves, possessed of personality and
intelligence, lodged in an organic body.

This is what is meant when we speak of a world being "inhabited." It would
not, for example, at all content us if we could ascertain that Jupiter was
covered by a shoreless ocean, rich in every variety of fish; or that the
hard rocks of the Moon were delicately veiled by lichens. Just as no
richness of vegetation and no fulness and complexity of animal life would
justify an explorer in describing some land that he had discovered as
being "inhabited" if no men were there, so we cannot rightly speak of any
other world as being "inhabited" if it is not the home of intelligent
life. If the life did not rise above the level of algæ or oysters, the
globe on which they flourish would be uninhabited in our estimation, and
its chief interest would lie in the possibility that in the course of ages
life might change its forms and develop hereafter into manifestations with
which we could claim a nearer kinship.

On the other hand, of necessity we are precluded from extending our
enquiry to the case of disembodied intelligences, if such be conceived
possible. All created existences must be conditioned, but if we have no
knowledge of what those conditions may be, or means for attaining such
knowledge, we cannot discuss them. Nothing can be affirmed, nothing
denied, concerning the possibility of intelligences existing on the Moon
or even in the Sun if we are unable to ascertain under what limitations
those particular intelligences subsist. Gnomes, sylphs, elves, and
fairies, and all similar conceptions, escape the possibility of discussion
by our ignorance of their properties. As nothing can be asserted of them
they remain beyond investigation, as they are beyond sight and touch.