CHAP. V - The Sun, Moon, Satellites, and Asteroids

Summary

So strong has been the belief that the Sun cannot be a habitable world, that a scientific gentleman was pronounced by his medical attendant to be insane, because he had sent a paper to the Royal Society, in which he maintained “that the light of the sun proceeds from a dense and universal aurora which may afford ample light to the inhabitants of the surface beneath, and yet be at such a distance aloft, as not to annoy them;”—that “vegetation may obtain there as well as with us,”—that “there may be water and dry land there, hills and dales, rain, and fair weather,”—and that “as the light and the seasons must be eternal,” the “sun may easily be conceived to be by far the most blissful habitation of the whole system.” In less than ten years after this apparently extravagant notion was considered a proof of insanity, it was maintained by Sir William Herschel as a rational and probable opinion, which might be deduced from his own observations on the structure of the sun.

It is by no means necessary that those who believe in a plurality of worlds within the limits of our own system, should adopt the opinion that the sun which lights it, and the many satellites which light the primary planets, should be inhabited worlds.