OTHER WORLDS THAN CURS.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1751, 27 September 1905, Page 56

OTHER WORLDS THAN CURS.

Dr Simon Newcomb has a fascinating article in “Harper’s Magazine” entitled “Life in the Universe.” “If,” he writes, “it would be going too far to claim that all conditions may have forms of life appropriate to them, it would :<e going as much too far in the other direction to claim that life can exist only i eli the precise surroundings which nurure it on this planet. . . The popular /lew that life began through a special ict of creative power seemed to he almost forced upon man by the failure -,i science to discover any other beginning or it. It cannot be said that even today anything definite has been actually discovered to refute this view. . . .” r>r Newcomb thus sums up his argument: “The fact that, so far as we have yet been able to learn, only a very small proportion of the visible worlds scattered through space are fitted to be the abode of life does not preclude the probability that among hundreds of millions of such worlds, a vast number are so fitted. Such, being the case, all the analogies of nature lead us to believe that, whatever the process which led to life upon this earth—whether a special act of creative power or a gradual course of developmentthrough that same process does life begin in every part of the universe fitted to sustain it. The course of development involves a gradual improvement in living forms, which by irregular steps rise higher and higher in the scale of being. \Ve have every reason to believe that this is the case wherever life exists. It is, therefore, perfectly reasonable to suppose that beings, not only animated, but endowed with reason, inhabit countless worlds in space. It would, indeed, be very inspiring could we learn by actual observation what forms of society exist throughout space, and see the members of such society enjoying themselves by their warm fireside. But this is, so far as wa can now see, entirely bevond the possible reach of our race, so long as it is confined to a single world.”