This gives us a rough and ready conception of what these twinkling lights we see in the sky mean. Evidently there is plenty of heat, because there are millions of suns, and some of them are hotter than our Sun. And there is plenty of cold, because we see how generously we have had space bestowed, and space is surely co1d, although this is a "1eft-handed" way of looking at space. It would be difficult to imagine that all this extreme of heat and all this extreme of cold would be present and only one little body possess the average temperature necessary to produce an intelligence. It is as unlikely as that all the dark areas in the star clouds are empty holes pointing directly toward Earth.
We should perhaps emphasize here a matter that has already been mentioned. It is the probable rate of development of intelligence per thousand centuries. We know the rate at which intelligence developed on Earth, and we know the temperature and other physical conditions that existed. We question that Earth's conditions were the optimum for rapid development of intelligence. According to Jeans, it took something like 300 million years for evolution to blunder blindly through the vicissitudes encountered on Earth and develop from a simple life cell a creature which we might fairly classify as a man. Others estimate it at nearer 500 million years. It took again, according to Jeans, another 300,000 years to develop an intelligence in this creature such as is represented- by you and me. Barring celestial accidents, and we have had one already, Earth will continue to offer favorable conditions of temperature, atmosphere, and moisture for many million times as many centuries as we have already enjoyed. With this example before us, have we not the right to expect the cosmos to possess every conceivable combination of conditions, some not as favorable as on our Earth, but others more favorable? If it is a reasonable expectation, then it would follow that there are bodies where for immensely longer periods than 500 million years more favorabie conditions have been offered than Earth has enjoyed, in which case we would have the right to expect the existence of intelligent creatures immensely more intelligent than we are.
With this much established, let us sum up thus far: You and I and yours and mine seem to be inhabitants of a little speck of cosmic dust, which is a satellite of a slightly larger speck of incandescent matter, which is a thoroughly inconsequential member of a galaxy containing several thousands of millions of similar masses of incandescent matter, which in turn is one of an unknown number of galaxies. Our insignificance seems to be magnificent. We cannot but regret that some of those who lived in past centuries cannot be reached and made to understand how wrong they were when they persecuted and killed their fellow creatures for questioning that the Earth was the center of everything, that it had been selected as the Divinity’s cosmic favorite, that everything in the sky revolved around it, and that its importance was superior to that of any other heavenly body. Possibly there may be examples of a more enlarged ego than such a concept represents, but our imagination fails to picture one.
While this may sum up as far as we have gone, we have not completed our survey. We have yet to examine and gain an idea of those objects we see out beyond our galaxy. Let us proceed to an examination of them next.
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