If he is of a devout turn of
mind, he thinks, as he gazes into those fathomless deeps and among
those bewildering hosts, of the infinite multitude of created beings
that the Almighty has taken under his care. The narrow ideas of the
old geocentric theology, which made the earth God's especial
footstool, and man his only rational creature, fall away from him like
a veil that had obscured his vision; they are impossible in the
presence of what he sees above. Thus the natural tendency, in the
light of modern progress, is to regard the universe as everywhere
filled with life.
But science, which is responsible for this broadening of men's
thoughts concerning the universality of life, itself proceeds to set
limits. Of spiritual existences it pretends to know nothing, but as to
physical beings, it declares that it can only entertain the
supposition of their existence where it finds evidence of an
environment suited to their needs, and such environment may not
everywhere exist. Science, though repelled by the antiquated
theological conception of the supreme isolation of man among created
beings, regards with complacency the probability that there are
regions in the universe where no organic life exists, stars which
shine upon no inhabited worlds, and planets which nourish no animate
creatures.
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