The chances would still be that one hundred
thousand of them would be inhabited by rational beings whom we
call human. But where are we to look for these worlds? This no man
can tell. We only infer from the statistics of the stars--and this
inference is fairly well grounded--that the number of worlds
which, so far as we know, may be inhabited, are to be counted by
thousands, and perhaps by millions.
In a number of bodies so vast we should expect every variety of
conditions as regards temperature and surroundings. If we suppose
that the special conditions which prevail on our planet are
necessary to the highest forms of life, we still have reason to
believe that these same conditions prevail on thousands of other
worlds. The fact that we might find the conditions in millions of
other worlds unfavorable to life would not disprove the existence
of the latter on countless worlds differently situated.
Coming down now from the general question to the specific one, we
all know that the only worlds the conditions of which can be made
the subject of observation are the planets which revolve around
the sun, and their satellites. The question whether these bodies
are inhabited is one which, of course, completely transcends not
only our powers of observation at present, but every appliance of
research that we can conceive of men devising.
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