Des Cartes, for one, (and he counts for many,)
held just the opposite opinion.
Our sun and all the millions upon millions of suns whose
light will never reach us are but the aggregation of atoms
drawn together by the same force that governs their orbit,
and which makes the apple fall. When their heat, however
generated, is expended, they die to frozen cinders; possibly
to be again diffused as nebulae, to begin again the eternal
round of change.
What is life amidst this change? 'When I consider the work
of Thy fingers, the moon and the stars which Thou hast
ordained, what is man that Thou art mindful of him?'
But is He mindful of us? That is what the sceptic asks. Is
He mindful of life here or anywhere in all this boundless
space? We have no ground for supposing (so we are told) that
life, if it exists at all elsewhere, in the solar system at
least, is any better than it is here? 'Analogy compels us to
think,' says M. France, one of the most thoughtful of living
writers, 'that our entire solar system is a gehenna where the
animal is born for suffering. . . . This alone would suffice
to disgust me with the universe.' But M. France is too deep
a thinker to abide by such a verdict. There must be
something 'behind the veil.' 'Je sens que ces immensites ne
sont rien, et qu'enfin, s'il y a quelque chose, ce quelque
chose n'est pas ce que nous voyons.' That is it. All these
immensities are not 'rien,' but they are assuredly not what
we take them to be. They are the veil of the Infinite,
behind which we are not permitted to see.
It were the seeing Him, no flesh shall dare.
The very greatness proves our impotence to grasp it, proves
the futility of our speculations, and should help us best of
all though outwardly so appalling, to stand calm while the
snake of unbelief writhes beneath our feet. The unutterable
insignificance of man and his little world connotes the
infinity which leaves his possibilities as limitless as
itself.
Spectrology informs us that the chemical elements of matter
are everywhere the same; and in a boundless universe where
such unity is manifested there must be conditions similar to
those which support life here. It is impossible to doubt, on
these grounds alone, that life does exist elsewhere. Were we
rashly to assume from scientific data that no form of animal
life could obtain except under conditions similar to our own,
would not reason rebel at such an inference, on the mere
ground that to assume that there is no conscious being in the
universe save man, is incomparably more unwarrantable, and in
itself incredible?
