The doctrine is maintained by almost all the distinguished astronomers and writers who have flourished since the true figure of the earth was determined. Giordano Bruna of Nola, Kepler, and Tycho Brahe, believed in it; and Cardinal Cusa and Bruno, before the discovery of binary systems among the stars, believed also that the stars were inhabited. Sir Isaac Newton likewise adopted the belief; and Dr. Bentley, Master of Trinity College, Cambridge, in his eighth sermon on the Confutation of Atheism from the origin and frame of the world, has ably maintained the same doctrine. In our own day we may number among its supporters the distinguished names of the Marquis de la Place, Sir William and Sir John Herschel, Dr. Chalmers, Isaac Taylor, and M. Arago. Dr. Chalmers maintains the doctrine in his _Astronomical Discourses_, which one Alexander Maxwell (who did not believe in the grand truths of astronomy) attempted to controvert, in 1820, in a chapter of a volume entitled _Plurality of Worlds_. Next appeared _Of a Plurality of Worlds_, attributed to the Rev. Dr. Whewell, Master of Trinity College, Cambridge; urging the theological not less than the scientific reasons for believing in the old tradition of a single world, and maintaining that “the earth is really the largest planetary body in the solar system,--its domestic hearth, and the only world in the universe.” “I do not pretend,” says Dr. Whewell, “to disprove the plurality of worlds; but I ask in vain for any argument which makes the doctrine probable.” “It is too remote from knowledge to be either proved or disproved.” Sir David Brewster has replied to Dr. Whewell’s Essay, in _More Worlds than One, the Creed of the Philosopher and the Hope of the Christian_, emphatically maintaining that analogy strongly countenances the idea of all the solar planets, if not all worlds in the universe, being peopled with creatures not dissimilar in being and nature to the inhabitants of the earth. This view is supported in _Scientific Certainties of Planetary Life_, by T. C. Simon, who well treats one point of the argument--that mere distance of the planets from the central sun does not determine the condition as to light and heat, but that the density of the ethereal medium enters largely into the calculation. Mr. Simon’s general conclusion is, that “neither on account of deficient or excessive heat, nor with regard to the density of the materials, nor with regard to the force of gravity on the surface, is there the slightest pretext for supposing that all the planets of our system are not inhabited by intellectual creatures with animal bodies like ourselves,--moral beings, who know and love their great Maker, and who wait, like the rest of His creation, upon His providence and upon His care.” One of the leading points of Dr. Whewell’s Essay is, that we should not elevate the conjectures of analogy into the rank of scientific certainties; and that “the force of all the presumptions