CHAPTER III.

_On Man’s Place in the Universe._

The mere aspect of the starry heavens, without taking into account the view of them to which science introduces us, tends strongly to force upon man the impression of his own insignificance. The vault of the sky arched at a vast and unknown distance over our heads; the stars, apparently infinite in number, each keeping its appointed place and course, and seeming to belong to a wide system of things which has no relation to the earth; while man is but one among many millions of the earth’s inhabitants;--all this makes the contemplative spectator feel how exceedingly small a portion of the universe he is; how little he must be, in the eyes of an intelligence which can embrace the whole. Every person, in every age and country, will recognize as irresistibly natural the train of thought expressed by the Hebrew psalmist: “when I consider the heavens the work of thy hands--the moon and the stars which thou hast ordained--Lord what is man that thou art mindful of him, or the son of man that thou regardest him?”

If this be the feeling of the untaught person, when he contemplates the aspect of the skies, such as they offer themselves to a casual and unassisted glance, the impression must needs be incalculably augmented, when we look at the universe with the aid of astronomical discovery and theory. We then find, that a few of the shining points which we see scattered on the face of the sky in such profusion, appear to be of the same nature as the earth, and may perhaps, as analogy would suggest, be like the earth, the habitations of organized beings;--that the rest of “the host of heaven” may, by a like analogy, be conjectured to be the centres of similar systems of revolving worlds;--that the vision of man has gone travelling onwards, to an extent never anticipated, through this multitude of systems, and that while myriads of new centres start up at every advance, he appears as yet not to have received any intimation of a limit. Every person probably feels, at first, lost, confounded, overwhelmed, with the vastness of this spectacle; and seems to himself, as it were, annihilated by the magnitude and multitude of the objects which thus compose the universe. The distance between him and the Creator of the world appears to be increased beyond measure by this disclosure. It seems as if a single individual could have no chance and no claim for the regard of the Ruler of the whole.

The mode in which the belief of God’s government of the physical world is important and interesting to man, is, as has already been said, through the connexion which this belief has with the conviction of God’s government of the moral world; this latter government being, from its nature, one which has a personal relation to each individual, his actions and thoughts. It will, therefore, illustrate our subject to show that this impression of the difficulty of a personal superintendence and government, exercised by the Maker of the world over each of his rational and free creatures, is founded upon illusory views; and that on an attentive and philosophical examination of the subject, such a government is in accordance with all that we can discover of the scheme and the scale of the universe.

1. We may, in the first place, repeat the observation made in the last chapter, on the confusion which sometimes arises in our minds, and makes us consider the number of the objects of the Divine care as a difficulty in the way of its exercise. If we can conceive this care employed on a million of persons, on the population of a kingdom, of a city, of a street, there is no real difficulty in supposing it extended to every planet in the solar system, admitting each to be peopled as ours is; nor to every part of the universe, supposing each star the centre of such a system. _Numbers_ are nothing in themselves; and when we reject the known, but unessential limits of our own faculties, it is quite as allowable to suppose a million millions of earths, as one, to be under the moral government of God.

2. In the next place we may remark, not only that no reason can be assigned why the Divine care should not extend to a much greater number of individuals than we at first imagine, but that in fact we know that it _does_ so extend. It has been well observed, that about the same time when the invention of the telescope showed us that there might be myriads of other worlds claiming the Creator’s care; the invention of the microscope proved to us that there were in our own world myriads of creatures, before unknown, which this care was preserving. While one discovery seemed to remove the Divine Providence further from us, the other gave us most striking examples that it was far more active in our neighbourhood than we had supposed: while the first extended the boundaries of God’s known kingdom, the second made its known administration more minute and careful. It appeared that in the leaf and in the bud, in solids and in fluids, animals existed hitherto unsuspected; the apparently dead masses and blank spaces of the world were found to swarm with life. And yet, of the animals thus revealed, all, though unknown to us before, had never been forgotten by Providence. Their structure, their vessels and limbs, their adaptation to their situation, their food and habitations, were regulated in as beautiful and complete a manner as those of the largest and apparently most favoured animals. The smallest insects are as exactly finished, often as gaily ornamented, as the most graceful beasts or the birds of brightest plumage. And when we seem to go out of the domain of the complex animal structure with which we are familiar, and come to animals of apparently more scanty faculties, and less developed powers of enjoyment and action, we still find that their faculties and their senses are in exact harmony with their situation and circumstances; that the wants which they have are provided for, and the powers which they possess called into activity. So that Müller, the patient and accurate observer of the smallest and most obscure microscopical animalcula, declares that all classes alike, those which have manifest organs, and those which have not, offer a vast quantity of new and striking views of the animal economy; every step of our discoveries leading us to admire the design and care of the Creator.[27] We find, therefore, that the Divine Providence is, in fact, capable of extending itself adequately to an immense succession of tribes of beings, surpassing what we can imagine or could previously have anticipated; and thus we may feel secure, so far as analogy can secure us, that the mere multitude of created objects cannot remove us from the government and superintendence of the Creator.

3. We may observe further, that, vast as are the parts and proportions of the universe, we still appear to be able to perceive that it is _finite_; the subordination of magnitudes and numbers and classes appears to have its limits. Thus, for any thing which we can discover, the sun is the largest body in the universe; and at any rate, bodies of the order of the sun are the largest of which we have any evidence: we know of no substance denser than gold, and it is improbable that one denser, or at least much denser, should ever be detected: the largest animals which exist in the sea and on the earth are almost certainly known to us. We may venture also to say, that the smallest animals which possess in their structure a clear analogy with larger ones, have been already seen. Many of the animals which the microscope detects, are as complete and complex in their organization as those of larger size: but beyond a certain point, they appear, as they become more minute, to be reduced to a homogeneity and simplicity of composition which almost excludes them from the domain of animal life. The smallest microscopical objects which can be supposed to be organic, are points,[28] or gelatinous globules,[29] or threads,[30] in which no distinct organs, interior or exterior, can be discovered. These, it is clear, cannot be considered as indicating an indefinite progression of animal life in a descending scale of minuteness. We can, mathematically speaking, conceive one of these animals as perfect and complicated in its structure as an elephant or an eagle, but we do not find it so in nature. It appears, on the contrary, in these objects, as if we were, at a certain point of magnitude, reaching the boundaries of the animal world. We need not here consider the hypotheses and opinions to which these ambiguous objects have given rise; but, without any theory, they tend to show that the subordination of organic life is finite on the side of the little as well as of the great.

Some persons might, perhaps, imagine that a ground for believing the smallness of organized beings to be limited, might be found in what we know of the constitution of matter. If solids and fluids consist of particles of a definite, though exceeding smallness, which cannot further be divided or diminished, it is manifest that we have, in the smallness of these particles, a limit to the possible size of the vessels and organs of animals. The fluids which are secreted, and which circulate in the body of a mite, must needs consist of a vast number of particles, or they would not be fluids: and an animal might be so much smaller than a mite, that its tubes could not contain a sufficient collection of the atoms of matter, to carry on its functions. We should, therefore, of necessity reach a limit of minuteness in organic life, if we could demonstrate that matter is composed of such indivisible atoms. We shall not, however, build any thing on this argument; because, though the _atomic theory_ is sometimes said to be proved, what is proved is, that chemical and other effects take place as if they were the aggregate of the effects of certain particles of elements, the _proportions_ of which particles are fixed and definite; but that any limit can be assigned to the smallness of these particles, has never yet been made out. We prefer, therefore, to rest the proof of the finite extent of animal life, as to size, on the microscopical observations previously referred to.

Probably we cannot yet be said to have reached the limit of the universe with the power of our telescopes; that is, it does not appear that telescopes have yet been used, so powerful in exhibiting small stars, that we can assume that more powerful instruments would not discover new stars. Whether or no, however, this degree of perfection has been reached, we have no proof that it does not exist; if it were once obtained we should have, with some approximation, the limit of the universe as to the number of worlds, as we have already endeavoured to show we have obtained the limits with regard to the largeness and smallness of the inhabitants of our own world.

In like manner, although the discovery of new species in some of the kingdoms of nature has gone on recently with enormous rapidity, and to an immense extent;--for instance in botany, where the species known in the time of Linnæus were about ten thousand, and are now probably fifty thousand;--there can be no doubt that the number of species and genera is really limited; and though a great extension of our knowledge is required to reach these limits, it is our ignorance merely, and not their nonexistence, which removes them from us.

In the same way it would appear that the universe, so far as it is an object of our knowledge, is finite in other respects also. Now when we have once attained this conviction, all the oppressive apprehension of being overlooked in the government of the universe has no longer any rational source. For in the superintendence of a finite system of things, what is there which can appear difficult or overwhelming to a Being such as we must, from what we know, conceive the Creator to be? Difficulties arising from space, number, gradation, are such as we can conceive _ourselves_ capable of overcoming, merely by an extension of our present faculties. Is it not then easy to imagine that such difficulties must vanish before Him who made us and our faculties? Let it be considered how enormous a proportion the largest work of man bears to the smallest;--the great pyramid to the point of a needle. This comparison does not overwhelm us, because we know that man has made both. Yet the difference between this proportion and that of the sun to the claw of a mite, does not at all correspond to the difference which we must suppose to obtain between the Creator and the creature. It appears then that, if the first flash of that view of the universe which science reveals to us, does sometimes dazzle and bewilder men, a more attentive examination of the prospect, by the light we thus obtain, shows us how unfounded is the despair of our being the objects of Divine Providence, how absurd the persuasion that we have discovered the universe to be too large for its ruler.

4. Another ground of satisfactory reflection, having the same tendency, is to be found in the admirable order and consistency, the subordination and proportion of parts, which we find to prevail in the universe, as far as our discoveries reach. We have, it may be, a multitude almost innumerable of worlds, but no symptom of crowding, of confusion, of interference. All such defects are avoided by the manner in which these worlds are distributed into systems;--these systems, each occupying a vast space, but yet disposed at distances before which their own dimensions shrink into insignificance;--all governed by one law, yet this law so concentrating its operation on each system, that each proceeds as if there were no other, and so regulating its own effects that perpetual change produces permanent uniformity. This is the kind of harmonious relation which we perceive in that part of the universe, the mechanical part namely, the laws of which are best known to us. In other provinces, where our knowledge is more imperfect, we can see glimpses of a similar vastness of combination, producing, by its very nature, completeness of detail. Any analogy by which we can extend such views to the moral world, must be of a very wide and indefinite kind; yet the contemplation of this admirable relation of the arrangements of the physical creation, and the perfect working of their laws, is well calculated to give us confidence in a similar beauty and perfection in the arrangements by which our moral relations are directed, our higher powers and hopes unfolded. We may readily believe that there is, in this part of the creation also, an order, a subordination of some relations to others, which may remove all difficulty arising from the vast multitude of moral agents and actions, and make it possible that the superintendence of the moral world shall be directed with as exact a tendency to moral good, as that by which the government of the physical world is directed to physical good.

We may perhaps see glimpses of such an order, in the arrangements by which our highest and most important duties depend upon our relation to a small circle of persons immediately around us: and again, in the manner in which our acting well or ill results from the operation of a few principles within us; as our conscience, our desire of moral excellence, and of the favour of God. We can hardly consider such principles otherwise than as intended to occupy their proper place in the system by which man’s destination is to be determined; and thus, as among the means of the government and superintendence of God in the moral world.

That there must be an order and a system to which such regulative principles belong, the whole analogy of creation compels us to believe. It would be strange indeed, if, while the mechanical world, the system of inert matter, is so arranged that we cannot contemplate its order without an elevated intellectual pleasure;--while organized life has no faculties without their proper scope, no tendencies without their appointed object;--the rational faculties and moral tendencies of man should belong to no systematic order, should operate with no corresponding purpose: that, while the perception of sweet and bitter has its acknowledged and unmistakeable uses, the universal perception of right and wrong, the unconquerable belief of the merit of certain feelings and actions, the craving alike after moral advancement and after the means of attaining it, should exist only to delude, perplex, and disappoint man. No one, with his contemplations calmed and filled and harmonized by the view of the known constitution of the universe, its machinery “wheeling unshaken” in the farthest skies and in the darkest cavern, its vital spirit breathing alike effectively in the veins of the philosopher and the worm;--no one, under the influence of such a train of contemplations, can possibly admit into his mind a persuasion which makes the moral part of our nature a collection of inconsistent and futile impressions, of idle dreams and warring opinions, each having the same claims to our acceptance. Wide as is the distance between the material and the moral world; shadowy as all reasonings necessarily are which attempt to carry the inferences of one into the other; elevated above the region of matter as all the principles and grounds of truth must be, which belong to our responsibilities and hopes; still the astronomical and natural philosopher can hardly fail to draw from their studies an imperturbable conviction that our moral nature cannot correspond to those representations according to which it has no law, coherency, or object. The mere natural reasoner may, or must stop far short of all that it is his highest interest to know, his first duty to pursue; but even he, if he take any elevated and comprehensive views of his own subject, must escape from the opinions, as unphilosophical as they are comfortless, which would expel from our view of the world all reference to duty and moral good, all reliance on the most universal grounds of trust and hope.

Men’s belief of their duty, and of the reasons for practising it, connected as it is with the conviction of a personal relation to their Maker, and of His power of superintendence and reward, is as manifest a fact in the moral, as any that can be pointed out is in the natural world. By mere analogy which has been intimated, therefore, we cannot but conceive that this fact belongs in some manner or other to the order of the moral world, and of its government.

When any one acknowledges a moral governor of the world; perceives that domestic and social relations are perpetually operating and seem intended to operate, to retain and direct men in the path of duty; and feels that the voice of conscience, the peace of heart which results from a course of virtue, and the consolations of devotion, are ever ready to assume their office as our guides and aids in the conduct of all our actions;--he will probably be willing to acknowledge also that the means of moral government are not wanting, and will no longer be oppressed or disturbed by the apprehension that the superintendence of the world may be too difficult for its Ruler, and that any of His subjects and servants may be overlooked. He will no more fear that the moral than that the physical laws of God’s creation should be forgotten in any particular case: and as he knows that every sparrow which falls to the ground contains in its structure innumerable marks of the Divine care and kindness, he will be persuaded that every individual, however apparently humble and insignificant, will have his moral being dealt with according to the laws of God’s wisdom and love; will be enlightened, supported, and raised, if he use the appointed means which God’s administration of the world of moral light and good offers to his use.