Page:A philosophical essay on probabilities Tr. Truscott, Emory 1902.djvu/191

Rh animal affinity. Although there exists a great analogy between the organization of plants and that of animals, it does not seem to me sufficient to extend to vegetables the sense of feeling; but nothing authorizes us in denying it to them.

Since the sun brings forth, bytheby the [sic] beneficent action of its light and of its heat, the animals and plants which cover the earth, we judge by analogy that it produces similar effects upon the other planets; for it is not natural to think that the cause whose activity we see developed in so many ways should be sterile upon so great a planet as Jupiter, which, like the terrestrial globe, has its days, its nights, and its years, and upon which observations indicate changes which suppose very active forces. Yet this would be giving too great an extension to analogy to conclude from it the similitude of the inhabitants of the planets and of the earth. Man, made for the temperature which he enjoys, and for the element which he breathes, would not be able, according to all appearance, to live upon the other planets. But ought there not to be an infinity of organization relative to the various constitutions of the globes of this universe? If the single difference of the elements and of the climates make so much variety in terrestrial productions, how much greater the difference ought to be among those of the various planets and of their satellites! The most active imagination can form no idea of it; but their existence is very probable.

We are led by a strong analogy to regard the stars as so many suns endowed, like ours, with an attractive power proportional to the mass and reciprocal to the square of the distances; for this power being