unlike the earth, being at a temperature so high that, like our
sun, they shine by their own light. In such worlds we may regard
it as quite certain that no organized life could exist. But
evidence is continually increasing that dark and opaque worlds
like ours exist and revolve around their suns, as the earth on
which we dwell revolves around its central luminary. Although the
number of such globes yet discovered is not great, the
circumstances under which they are found lead us to believe that
the actual number may be as great as that of the visible stars
which stud the sky. If so, the probabilities are that millions of
them are essentially similar to our own globe. Have we any reason
to believe that life exists on these other worlds?

The reader will not expect me to answer this question positively.
It must be admitted that, scientifically, we have no light upon
the question, and therefore no positive grounds for reaching a
conclusion. We can only reason by analogy and by what we know of
the origin and conditions of life around us, and assume that the
same agencies which are at play here would be found at play under
similar conditions in other parts of the universe.

If we ask what the opinion of men has been, we know historically
that our race has, in all periods of its history, peopled other
regions with beings even higher in the scale of development than
we are ourselves. The gods and demons of an earlier age all
wielded powers greater than those granted to man--powers which
they could use to determine human destiny. But, up to the time
that Copernicus showed that the planets were other worlds, the
location of these imaginary beings was rather indefinite. It was
therefore quite natural that when the moon and planets were found