Page:Gods Glory in the Heavens.djvu/355

Rh Chalmers gave it body and life; and the work of genius lives, while the dry logic is forgotten. The arguments of the anonymous essayist may he reduced to the following heads:—

1. We cannot conceive of intelligence unaccompanied by human attributes; if there be inhabitants in the stars, they must be men; and they cannot be men unless they have the conditions which, in this globe, develop the intellectual, moral, and religious character of man. This argument has, properly, no reference to the question of the habitableness of other worlds. It is rather a question of metaphysics or psychology. The question is simply. Whether there can be other intelligences than man? Whether there is only one type of mind? And his argument is, that as he cannot conceive of minds different from his own, there cannot be other minds. But this is only the well-understood fallacy of denying to be true what we cannot conceive. The mere power of conceiving of a thing is no criterion of its existence. The argument, pushed to its legitimate length, would ignore the existence of angels, and all those ranks of spiritual intelligences in whose existence we are taught to believe as a part of our Christian faith. This is the grand point which he wishes to establish, and on which the whole argument turns.

2. The next argument is that of analogy. He denies that the analogy is so strong as to warrant the inference, that the other heavenly bodies are