Are the Planets Inhabited?Maunder, E. Walter (Edward Walter)
Science
Are the Planets Inhabited?
Maunder, E. Walter (Edward Walter)
Life on other planets
Another plea for vague sentiment in this matter is that we cannot expect
that intelligent beings on other worlds would have the same form as man,
and if not the same form, then, that the same conditions of existence
would not hold good for them as for us. Both contentions are unsound.
Protoplasm is the physical basis of all the life that we know, whatever
its form; though these forms are to be counted by the million, and are as
diverse as they are numerous. And everywhere and always, water is found
essential to protoplasmic life. Of life of any other kind we do not know
any examples; we have no instance; if such exist, then they are beyond our
ken.
And neither anthropologist nor biologist would admit that the form of
intelligent life was an unrelated accident. Whether the form brought the
intelligence, or the intelligence the form, or both were evolved together,
the one reacting on the other, the human form and the human intelligence
are associated, and we feel this to be so of necessity. In 1891, Dr.
Eugene Dubois found in Java a molar tooth and a portion of a skull, and
later the thigh bone of the left leg, and two more teeth. Such as they
were, these relics appeared nearer in form to the corresponding fragments
of an average Australian than to those of an ape, and on this ground
intelligence was claimed for the creature of which they were the remains,
and it was given the name of Pithecanthropus, or Ape-Man. The discovery
aroused much discussion, but on all sides it was unhesitatingly assumed
that the difference between the form of Pithecanthropus and that of the
most similar ape was an index of its superior intelligence over the ape,
just in so far as that difference was in the direction of the modern human
form. The same remark applies to the recent discovery of very ancient
human remains in Sussex. Never at any time has it been supposed that the
physical frame has followed any other path in the evolution of
intelligence than that which brought forth man. The flesh-eating animals
have attained efficiency in hunting and warfare by variation along many
types of form; the herbivora have been not less varied in the forms by
which as races they secured themselves from destruction; but Thought has
been associated with the development of one type or form only, and the
entire future of Thought on this planet rested neither with mammoth nor
cave-bear, but with the possessor of the erect stature, the upward look,
the differentiation of hand and foot, even in their crudest and earliest
stages.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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