And is it not in perfect harmony with this grandeur of design (if it be design), this vastness of scale, this marvellous process of development through all the ages, that the material universe needed to produce this cradle of organic life, and of a being destined to a higher and a permanent existence, should be on a corresponding scale of vastness, of complexity, of beauty? Even if there were no such evidence as I have here adduced for the unique position and the exceptional characteristics which distinguish the earth, the old idea that all the planets were inhabited, and that all the stars existed for the sake of other planets, which planets existed to develop life, would, in the light of our present knowledge, seem utterly improbable and incredible. It would introduce monotony into a universe whose grand character and teaching is endless diversity. It would imply that to produce the living soul in the marvellous and glorious body of man--man with his faculties, his aspirations, his powers for good and evil--that this was an easy matter which could be brought about anywhere, in any world. It would imply that man is an animal and nothing more, is of no importance in the universe, needed no great preparations for his advent, only, perhaps, a second-rate demon, and a third or fourth-rate earth. Looking at the long and slow and complex growth of nature that preceded his appearance, the immensity of the stellar universe with its thousand million suns, and the vast æons of time during which it has been developing--all these seem only the appropriate and harmonious surroundings, the necessary supply of material, the sufficiently spacious workshop for the production of that planet which was to produce first, the organic world, and then, Man. In one of his finest passages our great world-poet gives us _his_ conception of the grandeur of human nature--'What a piece of work is man! How noble in reason! How infinite in faculty! In form and moving, how express and admirable! In action how like an angel! In apprehension how like a god!' And for the development of such a being what is a universe such as ours? However vast it may seem to our faculties, it is as a mere nothing in the ocean of the infinite. In infinite space there may be infinite universes, but I hardly think they would be all universes of matter. That would indeed be a low conception of infinite power! Here, on earth, we see millions of distinct species of animals, millions of different species of plants, and each and every species consisting often of many millions of individuals, no two individuals exactly alike; and when we turn to the heavens, no two planets, no two satellites alike; and outside our system we see the same law prevailing--no two stars, no two clusters, no two nebulæ alike. Why then should there be other universes of the _same_ matter and subject to the _same_ laws--as is implied by the conception that the stars are infinite in number, and extend through infinite space?