indications of the continued existence of some kind of life on the
moon; such a world is better without inhabitants. It has met its fate;
let it go! Fortunately, it is not so near that it cannot hide its
scars and appear beautiful -- except when curiosity impels us to look
with the penetrating eyes of the astronomer.

The Great Mars Problem

Let any thoughtful person who is acquainted with the general facts of
astronomy look up at the heavens some night when they appear in their
greatest splendor, and ask himself what is the strongest impression
that they make upon his mind. He may not find it easy to frame an
answer, but when he has succeeded it will probably be to the effect
that the stars give him an impression of the universality of
intelligence; they make him feel, as the sun and the moon cannot do,
that his world is not alone; that all this was not made simply to form
a gorgeous canopy over the tents of men. 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