It is therefore perfectly reasonable to suppose that beings not only animated but endowed with reason inhabit countless worlds in space.

Simon Newcomb.

Until within recent centuries, man has not only believed that he and his kind were the only intelligent creatures in the universe, but that the little round ball on which he lived was the dominant part thereof. So rooted for ages was this conviction that it became fixed in man's mental structure, and hence the survival of the idea that still lingers in the minds of a few to-day. The conclusion was natural, however, for the behavior of the starry heavens and the Sun and the Moon seemed sufficient evidence that man, and the surface upon which he lived, was the centre of the universe. The stars were bright points of light, the Moon a silver disk, and the Sun a heat and light giving ball of fire, equally diminutive and not far away. Let one realize for a moment the experience of these early people. Everything aerial, with the exception of feathery birds, fluffy bats and flying insects, was composed of the lightest particles?—?cottony seeds, reluctantly falling snow-flakes, motes in the air, smoke and vaporous cloud, and, in contrast, the rock-foundationed and irregular surface upon which the people dwelt, and flat as far as man had reached. What wonder, then, that man viewed these brilliant points and dazzling disks as objects of no great size and not far away, hauled across the heavens by unseen spirits of some kind. The marvel of it all is, not that they believed as they did, but that any other views of cosmography could have been established. And yet the successive increments of astronomical knowledge, founded apparently on the soundest mathematics, were adopted in their turn. What more convincing than the epicyclic theory of Ptolemy, buttressed by figures so ingenious and convincing, that the theory might have lasted till now except for the truer understanding of planetary movements in relation to that of the Earth? All through this history are found traces of the barriers erected by prejudiced conservatives, of which the attitude of Tycho Brahe is a good example, though in this case it was probably his belief in the Hebraic conception of the universe which excited his opposition to Kepler's views, a conception which, unfortunately for the progress of astronomical research, still lingers among certain observers to-day and places them in precisely the same category with Tycho Brahe.

With the gradual accumulation of knowledge it was found that of all the innumerable illuminated bodies in the heavens, only one,?—?just one,?—?the Moon, revolved around the Earth, and that the Earth instead of being all dominant in the affairs of the universe, played a very minor part, and, instead of being master, was a very humble midget revolving around the Sun; that, indeed, with the exception of the Moon, there were visible to the naked eye only three bright points of light in the whole range of the heavens more insignificant in size,?—?Mercury, Venus, and Mars,?—?while the other planets were vastly larger, and had many more satellites revolving around them. Then it was found that, with the exception of the few planets, the myriad stars had no connection with the Sun whatsoever, that the Sun was no longer the centre of a great universe. Later it was discovered through spectroscopic analysis that all the myriad of stars were composed of chemical elements similar to our Sun. Here, then, was the startling revelation that our Sun was simply a star, and that the stars represented a "universe of Suns," and, if we could get near any one star of the millions that sparkle in the heavens telescopically, we should see it as a round ball emitting light and heat. It was perhaps humiliating to find that our Sun was so insignificant in size that from Sirius, for example, it could not be seen with the naked eye, so small indeed that in the close companionship of other stars it would be swallowed up by their greater size and brilliancy.

To assume, then, that our Sun, so identical to the stars in heat and light emitting properties, was the only Sun that had revolving around it a few minute balls, would be as absurd as if one should go on a pebbly beach, extending from Labrador to Florida for example, and picking up a single pebble, should have the hardihood to assert that this pebble was the only one, among the millions of pebbles, upon which would be found the bits of seaweed and little snails which it might support. The overwhelming vastness of the universe is entirely beyond the grasp of the human mind. The mere statement that it requires so many years for the light to reach us from a certain star, the parallax of which has been rudely established, affords one only a faint glimmer of the truth. The swing of our Earth about the Sun gives us a base line of 186,000,000 of miles, and yet, with this enormous base from which to subtend an angle, only a very few of the myriad of stars show the slightest displacement; the others exhibit no more signs of divergence than if while looking at them we had simply moved our heads from one side to the other! Fixed stars they appear to be, and are so called, though we are told they are all drifting in various directions, as our star-Sun is.

Only by reducing all these vast distances and dimensions to a minute scale can the mind realize the futility of ever comprehending the illimitable distances of space.

In order to consider the attitude of the Earth in relation to the Sun and the nearest fixed star, we will reduce the Sun's diameter of 866,000 miles to the dimensions of a ball one inch in diameter; the Earth reduced to the same scale would be a minute speck less than one one-hundredth of an inch in diameter; a perforation in paper made by the finest cambric needle would represent the size of this minute speck, the Earth. Following this scale we should place this speck nine feet from the inch ball, this distance representing 93,000,000 of miles, the Earth's distance from the Sun; Mars would be a still smaller speck a step farther off. Let us now proceed to Boston Common, for example, and on the smooth playground place our inch ball representing the Sun; taking three good steps we should place our minute speck, representing the Earth, upon the ground where it would be immediately lost in the fine gravel; another step and we would place a still smaller particle, representing Mars. How big a circle on the Earth's surface, using the inch ball as a centre, should we have to describe in order to include the nearest fixed star? Such a circle would reach to Detroit, Michigan, and Columbus, Ohio, or Wilmington, North Carolina! To find a circle which would include eight other fixed stars next in distance, and only eight of the thousands which render the heavens so beautiful on a clear winter's night?—?we should run such a circle through the centre of Hudson Bay, the waters of southern Greenland, Lake Winnipeg, and New Orleans!

In this broad way only can we form a dim conception of the overwhelming distances of space, and, in this absolutely unthinkable space, our little Sun, with its constant rain of meteoric dust, an occasional comet, and its microscopic planets are literally bunched together. To admit, as we must then, that one of these motes has had irrigating canals on various parts of its surface since prehistoric times, and the other mote has nothing of the sort despite the geodetic lines that are seen marking its surface, is simply preposterous. Their disposition, their visibility coincident with the Martian summer, becoming apparent only when the snow caps melt, their convergence towards centres of distribution, all go to prove by the simplest analogy an identity of structure. Certainly the overwhelming force of Lowell's observations and arguments baffles any other reasonable explanation of the character and purpose of these markings. Here are the lines, some following the arcs of great circles, all appearing precisely when they should appear, and in progressive strength from the north when the vivifying water from the melting snow cap first starts the vegetation. Why certain parallels or doublings are observed in some of the canals is about as puzzling to us as the checkerboard townships of the West would appear to a Martian, where some would be yellow with the ripening grain while others, uncultivated, would appear of a different color.