CHAPTER CCXVIII.

THE MUNDANE SYSTEM AS COMMONLY HELD IN D. OLIVA'S AGE.—MODERN OBJECTIONS TO A PLURALITY OF WORLDS BY THE REV. JAMES MILLER.

_Un cerchio immaginato ci bisogna, A voler ben la spera contemplare; Cosi chi intender questa storia agogna Conviensi altro per altro immaginare; Perchè qui non si canta, e finge, e sogna; Venuto è il tempo da filosofare._

PULCI.

One of Doña Oliva's treatises is upon the _Compostura del Mundo_, which may best be interpreted the Mundane System; herein she laid no claim to the merit of discovery, only to that of briefly explaining what had been treated of by many before her. The mundane system she illustrates by comparing it to a large ostrich's egg, with three whites and eleven shells, our earth being the yolk. The water which according to this theory surrounded the globe she likened to the first or innermost _albumen_, the second and more extensive was the air; the third and much the largest consisted of fire. The eleven shells, were so many leaves one inclosing the other, circle within circle, like a nest of boxes. The first of these was the first heaven wherein the Moon hath her appointed place, the second that of the planet Mercury, the third that of Venus; the fourth was the circle of the Sun; Mars, Jupiter and Saturn moved in the fifth, sixth and seventh; the eighth was the starry sky; the ninth the chrystalline; the tenth the _primum mobile_, which imparted motion to all; and the eleventh was the _immobile_, or empyreum, surrounding all, containing all, and bounding all; for beyond this there was no created thing, either good or evil.

A living writer of no ordinary powers agrees in this conclusion with the old philosophers whom Doña Oliva followed; and in declaring his opinion he treats the men of science with as much contempt as they bestow upon their unscientific predecessors in astronomy.

Reader if thou art capable of receiving pleasure from such speculations, (and if thou art not, thou art little better than an Oran-Otang) send for a little book entitled the Progress of the Human Mind, its objects, conditions and issue: with the relation which the Progress of Religion bears to the general growth of mind; by the Rev. James Miller. Send also for the “Sibyl's Leaves, or the Fancies, Sentiments and Opinions of Silvanus, miscellaneous, moral and religious,” by the same author, the former published in 1823, the latter in 1829. Very probably you may never have heard of either: but if you are a buyer of books, I say unto you, buy them both.

“Infinity,” says this very able and original thinker, “is the retirement in which perfect love and wisdom only dwell with God.

“In Infinity and Eternity the sceptic sees an abyss in which all is lost, I see in them the residence of Almighty Power, in which my reason and my wishes find equally a firm support.—Here holding by the pillars of Heaven, I exist—I stand fast.

“Surround our material system with a void, and mind itself becoming blind and impotent in attempting to travel through it, will return to our little lights, like the dove which found no rest for the sole of her foot. But when I find Infinity filled with light and life and love, I will come back to you with my olive branch: follow me, or farewell! you shall shut me up in your cabins no more.”

“In stretching our view through the wide expanse which surrounds us, we perceive a system of bodies receding behind one another, till they are lost in immeasureable distance. This region beyond though to us dark and unexplored, from the impossibility of a limit, yet gives us its infinity as the most unquestionable of all principles. But though the actual extent to which this infinite region is occupied by the bodies of which the universe is composed, is far beyond our measure and our view, and though there be nothing without to compel us anywhere to stop in enlarging its bounds, Nature herself gives us other principles not less certain, which prove that she must have limits, and that it is impossible her frame can fill the abyss which surrounds her. Her different parts have each their fixed place, their stated distance. You may as well measure infinity by mile-stones as fill it with stars. To remove any one from an infinite distance from another, you must in fixing their place, set limits to the infinity you assume. You can advance from unity as far as you please, but there is no actual number at an infinite distance from it. You may in the same manner, add world to world as long as you please, only because no number of them can fill infinity, or approach nearer to fill it. We have the doctrine of Nature's abhorrence of a _vacuum_; it is from a _plenum_ like this she shrinks, as from a region in which all her substance would be dissipated into nothing. Her frame is composed of parts which have each their certain proportion and relation. It subsists by mutual attractions and repulsions, lessening and increasing with distance; by a circulation which, actually passing through, every part rejects the idea of a space which it could never pervade. Infinity cannot revolve; the circulation of Nature cannot pervade infinity. The globe we inhabit, and all its kindred planets, revolve in orbits which embrace a common power in the centre which animates and regulates their motions, and on the influence of which their internal energies evidently depend. That we may not be lost in looking for it in the boundless regions without, our great physical power is all within, in the bosom of our own circle; and the same facts which prove the greatness of this power to uphold, to penetrate, to enliven at such a distance, shew in what manner it might at last become weak,—become nothing. Whatever relations we may have to bodies without, or whatever they may have to one another, their influence is all directed to particular points,—to given distances. Material Nature has no substance, can make no effort, capable of pervading infinity. The light itself of all her powers the most expansive, in diffusing itself through her own frame, shews most of all her incapacity to occupy the region beyond, in which (as the necessary result of its own effort) it soon sinks, feeble and faint, where all its motion is but as rest, in an extent to which the utmost possible magnitude of Nature is but a point.”

The reader will now be prepared for the remarks of this free thinker upon the Plurality of Worlds. Observe I call him free thinker not in disparagement, but in honour; he belongs to that service in which alone is perfect freedom.

“Perceiving,” he says, “as it is easy to do, the imperfection of our present system, instead of contemplating the immense prospect opened to our view in the progress of man, in the powers and the means he possesses, the philosopher sees through his telescope worlds and scales of being to his liking. By means of these, without the least reference to the Bible, or the human heart, Pope, the pretty talking parrot of Bolingbroke, with the assistance of his pampered goose, finds it easy to justify the ways of God to man. From worlds he never saw, he proves ours is as it should be.”

“To form the children of God for himself, to raise them to a capacity to converse with him, to enjoy all his love, this grand scenery is not unnecessary,—not extravagant. A smaller exhibition would not have demonstrated his wisdom and power. You would make an orrery serve perhaps! By a plurality of Gods, error degraded the Supreme Being in early ages; by a plurality of worlds it would now degrade his children, deprive them of their inheritance.”

“What are they doing in these planets? Peeping at us through telescopes? We may be their Venus or Jupiter. They are perhaps praying to us, sending up clouds of incense to regale our nostrils. Hear them, far-seeing Herschel! gauger of stars. I will pray to One only, who is above them all; and if your worlds come between me and Him, I will kick them out of my way. In banishing your new ones, I put more into the old than is worth them all put together.”

“These expanding heavens, the residence of so many luminous bodies of immeasurable distance and magnitude, and which the philosopher thinks must be a desert if devoted to man, at present possessing but so small a portion of his own globe, shall yet be too little for him,—the womb only in which the infant was inclosed, incapable of containing the mature birth.”

“We shall yet explore all these celestial bodies more perfectly than we have hitherto done our own globe, analyse them better than the substances we can shut up in our retorts, count their number, tell their measure.”

“As nature grows, mind grows. It grows to God, and in union with him shall fill, possess all.”

“Our rank among worlds is indeed insignificant if we are to receive it from the magnitude of our globe compared with others, compared with space. Put Herschel with his telescope on Saturn, he would scarcely think us worthy of the name of even a German prince. We may well be the sport of Jupiter, the little spot round which Mars and Venus coquette with one another. Little as it is however,—pepper-corn, clod of clay as it is, with its solitary satellite, and all its spots and vapours, I prefer it to them all. I am glad I was born in it, I love its men, and its women, and its laws. It's people shall be my people; it's God shall be my God. Here I am content to lodge and here to be buried. What Abanas and Pharphars may flow in these planets I know not: there is Jordan, here is the river of life. From this world I shall take possession of all these; while those, who in quest of strange worlds have forsaken God, shall be desolate.”

“This globe is large enough to contain man; man will yet grow large enough to fill Heaven.”

“Fear not, there is no empty space in the universe, none in eternity: nothing lost. God possesses all, and there is room for nothing but the objects of his affections.”