than the great bulk of the less cultured inhabitants of the earth, who occupy, really, a space far larger than the surface of the Moon; and, all intelligent though they be, and in the full possession of mental faculties, are yet, on the subjects of geometry and astronomy, entirely ignorant;—their minds, as to such a knowledge, a blank? It does not follow, then, that even if there be such inhabitants in the Moon, or in the Planets, they have any sympathy with us, or any community of knowledge on the subjects of which we are now speaking. The surface of the Moon, or of Jupiter, or of Saturn, even if well peopled, may be peopled only with tribes as barbarous and ignorant as Tartars, or Esquimaux, or Australians; and therefore, by making such a supposition, we do little, even hypothetically, to extend the dominion of that intelligence, by means of which all intelligent beings have some community of thought with each other, and some suggestion of the working of the Divine and Universal Mind.
6. But, in fact, the view which we have given of the mode of existence of the human species upon the earth, as being a progressive existence, even in the development of the intellectual powers and their results, necessarily fastens down our thoughts and our speculations to the earth, and makes us feel how visionary and gratuitous it is to assume any similar kind of existence in any region occupied by other beings than man. As we have said, we have no insuperable difficulty in conceiving other parts of the Universe to be tenanted by animals. Animal life implies no progress in the species. Such as they are in one century, such are they in another. The conditions of their sustentation and generation being given, which no difference of physical circumstances can render incredible, the race may, so far as we can see, go on forever. But a race which makes a progress in the development of its faculties cannot thus, or at least cannot with the same ease, be conceived as existing through all time, and under all circumstances. Progress implies, or at least suggests, a beginning and an end. If the mere existence of a race imply a sustaining and preserving power in the Creator, the progress of a race implies a guiding and impelling power; a Governor and Director, as well as a Creator and Preserver. And progress, not merely in material conditions, not merely in the exercise of bodily faculties, but in the exercise of mental faculties, in the intellectual condition of a portion of the species, still more implies a special position and character of the race, which cannot, without great license of hypothesis, be extended to other races; and which, if so extended, becomes unmeaning, from the impossibility of our knowing what is progress in any other species;—from what and towards what it tends. The intellectual progress of the human species has been a progress in the use of thought, and in the knowledge which such use procures; it has been a progress from mere matter to mind; from the impressions of sense to ideas; from what in knowledge is casual, partial, temporary, to what is necessary, universal, and eternal. We can conceive no progress, of the nature of this, which is not identical with this; nothing like it, which is not the same. And, therefore, if we will people other planets with creatures, intelligent as man is intelligent, we must not only give to them the intelligence, but the intellectual history of the human species. They must have had their minds unfolded by steps similar to those by which the human mind has been unfolded; or at least, differing from them only as the intellectual history of one nation of the earth differs from that of another. They must have had their Pythagoras, their Plato, their Kepler, their Galileo, their Newton, if they know what we know. And thus, in order to conceive, on the Moon or on Jupiter, a race of beings intelligent like man, we must conceive, there, colonies of men, with histories resembling more or less the histories of human colonies; and indeed resembling the history of those nations whose knowledge we inherit, far more closely than the history of any other terrestrial nation resembles that part of terrestrial history. If we do this, we exercise an act of invention and imagination which may be as coherent as a fairy tale, but which, without further proof, must be as purely imaginary and arbitrary. But if we do not do this, we cannot conceive that those regions are occupied at all by intelligent beings. Intelligence, as we see in the human race, in order to have those characters which concern our argument, implies a history of intellectual development; and to assume arbitrarily a history of intellectual development for the inhabitants of a remote planet, as a ground of reasoning either for or against Religion, is a proceeding which we can hardly be expected either to assent to or to refute. If we are to form any opinions with regard to the condition of such bodies, and to trace any bearing of such opinions upon our religious views, we must proceed upon some ground which has more of reality than such a gratuitous assumption.
7. Thus the condition of man upon the earth, as a condition of intellectual progress, implies such a special guidance and government exercised over the race by the Author of his being, as produces progress; and we have not, so far as we yet perceive, any reason for supposing that He exercises a like guidance and government over any of the other bodies with which the researches of astronomers have made us acquainted. The earth and its inhabitants are under the care of God in a special manner; and we are utterly destitute of any reason for believing that other planets and other systems are under the care of God in the same manner. If we regarded merely the existence of unprogressive races of animals upon our globe, we might easily suppose that other globes also are similarly tenanted; and we might infer, that the Creator and Upholder of animal life was active on those globes, in the same manner as upon ours. But when we come to a progressive creature, whose condition implies a beginning, and therefore suggests an end, we form a peculiar judgment with respect to God's care of that creature, which we have not as yet seen the slightest grounds to extend to other possible fields of existence, where we discern no indication of progress, of beginning, or of end. So far as we can judge, God is mindful of man, and has launched and guided his course in a certain path which makes his lot and state different from that of all other creatures.
8. Now when we have arrived at this result, we have, I conceive, reached one of the points at which the difficulties which astronomical discovery puts in the way of religious conviction begin to appear. The Earth and its human inhabitants are, as far as we yet know, in an especial manner the subjects of God's care and government, for the race is progressive. Now can this be? Is it not difficult to believe that it is so? The earth, so small a speck, only one among so many, so many thousands, so many millions of other bodies, all, probably, of the same nature with itself, wherefore should it draw to it the special regards of the Creator of all, and occupy his care in an especial manner? The teaching of the history of the human race, as intellectually progressive, agrees with the teaching of Religion, in impressing upon us that God is mindful of man; that he does regard him; but still, there naturally arises in our minds a feeling of perplexity and bewilderment, which expresses itself in the words already so often quoted, What is man, that this should be so? Can it be true that this province is thus singled out for a special and peculiar administration by the Lord of the Universal Empire?
9. Before I make any attempt to answer these questions, I must pursue the difficulty somewhat further, and look at it in other forms. As I have said, the history of Man has been, in certain nations, a history of intellectual progress, from the earliest times up to our own day. But intellectual progress has been, as I have also said, in a great measure confined to certain nations thus especially favored. The greater part of the earth's inhabitants have shared very scantily in that wealth of knowledge to which the brightest and happiest intellects among men have thus been led. But though the bulk of mankind have thus had little share in the grand treasures of science which are open to the race, their life has still been very different from that of other animals. Many nations, though they may not have been conspicuous in the history of intellectual progress, have yet not been without their place in progress of other kinds—in arts, in arms, and, above all, in morals—in the recognition of the distinction of right and wrong in human actions, and in the practical application of this distinction. Such a progress as this has been far more extensively aimed at, than a progress in abstract and general knowledge; and, we may venture to say, has been, in many nations and in a very great measure, really effected. No doubt the imperfection of this progress, and the constant recurrence of events which appear to counteract and reverse it, are so obvious and so common as to fill with grief and indignation the minds of those who regard such a progress as the great business of the human race; but yet still, looking at the whole history of the human race, the progress is visible; and even the grief and the indignation of which we have spoken are a part of its evidences. There has been, upon the whole, a moral government of the human race. The moral law, the distinction of
