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This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text
Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1855. Excerpt: ... necessary knowledge to enable them to do so. The parties who cry No Popery loudest, are always those who know least of the real merits of the controversy; and too often the loudest vociferations of the Bible in danger, proceed from those who have least carefully examined the foundations on which its authority is built. Confining ourselves to the paper on the Unity of Worlds, we will indicate in one extract both the style and method of reasoning of this deep thinker, on the subject before us. The materials of which Jupiter is composed are of a specific gravity about equal to that of water, which is the same nearly as that of the sun. The essayist, in his assumed magisterial vein, lays it down as by no means an arbitrary hypothesis, that Jupiter is a globe of water; and argues accordingly that his inhabitants, if any, must be aquarian creatures of a soft, pulpy, boneless, watery character, to which, he thinks, we should naturally feel it very difficult to ascribe intelligence or moral attributes, that is, without violating those analogies which we are so prone to form (perhaps groundlessly) from contemplating our own species. Bnt, as Sir David Brewster, on the other hand, very justly observes, there are many solid substances, and even some minerals, as pumice, pitchstone, &c., and the metals of the alkalies, of less specific gravity than water. Jupiter, therefore, may just as well be composed of solid materials, and be tenanted by animals capable of living on land, as by aquatics. Similar calculations have shewn, that in all the outer planets the conditions of gravitation are nearly the same; nor need the small specific gravity requisite for such animated beings occasion any difficulty. On our own planet animals differ widely in this respect. It is h...
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