Viewing the advent of Man, and what preceded it, it seems the analogy of nature that there should be inferior, as well as superior, provinces in the universe, and that the inferior may occupy an immensely larger portion of Time than the superior. Why not, then, of Space? “The earth was brute and inert, compared with its present condition; dark and chaotic, so far as the light of reason and intelligence are concerned, for countless centuries before man was created. Why then may not other parts of creation be still in this brute and inert and chaotic state, while the earth is under the influence of a higher exercise of creative power? If the earth was for ages a turbid abyss of lava and of mud, why may not Mars or Saturn be so still?... The possibility that the planets are such rude masses, is quite as tenable, on astronomical grounds, as the possibility that the planets resemble the earth, in matters of which astronomy can tell us nothing. We say, therefore, that the example of geology refutes the argument drawn from the supposed analogy of one part of the universe with another; and suggests a strong suspicion that the force of analogy, better known, may tend _in the opposite direction_.”[34] We have now gone through a large portion, embracing two of the three sections into which we had divided this startling _Essay_; presenting as full and fair an account of it as is consistent with our limits. Though the author professes that he “does not pretend to disprove the Plurality of Worlds, but to deny the existence of arguments making the doctrine probable,” his undisguised object is to assign cogent reasons for holding the opposite to be the true doctrine—the Unity of the World. What has gone before is, moreover, on the assumption that the other bodies of the universe are fitted, equally with the Earth, to be the abodes of life. Before passing on, however, to the remaining section of the _Essay_, which is decidedly hostile to that assumption, let us here introduce on the scene Dr Whewell’s only hitherto avowed antagonist, Sir David Brewster.