combination of favorable conditions must exist to preserve on the surface of a planet a degree of heat which shall never for any considerable time fall below 0° C., or rise above, say, 75° C., and that these narrow limits must be continuously maintained, not for hundreds or thousands only, but for millions, perhaps for hundreds of millions of years, if life is to be developed there. It is the maintenance of this comparatively uniform surface temperature for such enormous periodsduring, in fact, the whole time covered by the geological record-that most writers have overlooked as among the necessary conditions for the development of the higher forms of life on a planet; and this omission vitiates all their reasoning, since they have to show not only that the requisite conditions of temperature may exist now, but that there is even a probability that they have existed, or will exist, for a sufficiently extended period to allow of the development of a complex system of organic life comparable with our own. Let us then enumerate the chief favorable conditions which in their combination appear to have rendered this development possible on our earth. These are:

(1) A distance from the sun such as to keep up the temperature of the soil to the required amount, by sun-heat alone, and to evaporate sufficient water to produce clouds, rain, and a system of river circulation.

(2) An atmosphere of sufficient extent and density to allow of the production and circulation of aqueous va por in the form of clouds, mists, and dews, and to serve also as an equalizer of sun-heat during day and night, winter and summer, and also between the tropical and temperate zones. This amount of atmosphere is held to be

1 The evidence which demonstrates this per manence is set forth in my "Island Life." Chap. VI., and enforced by additional argu

largely dependent upon the mass of a planet, and this one feature alone probably renders Mars quite unsuitable, since its mass is less than oneeighth that of the earth.

(3) The very large proportion of the surface covered by deep oceans so that they surround and interpenetrate the land, and by their tides and currents keep up a continuous circulation, and are thus the chief agents in the essential equalization of temperatures. This, again, is largely dependent on our possessing so large a satellite, capable of producing a regular, but not excessive, tidal action. The want of such a satellite may alone render Venus quite unsuitable for the development of high forms of life, even if other conditions were more favorable, which seems in the highest degree improbable.

(4) The enormous average depth of these oceans, so that the bulk of water they contain is about thirteen times that of the land which rises above their level. This indicates that they are permanent features of the earth's surface, thus ensuring the maintenance of continuous land-areas and of uniform temperatures during the whole period of the development of life upon the earth.1

It is extremely improbable that this remarkable condition obtains in any other planet.

(5) Lastly, one of the most peculiar and least generally considered features of our earth, but one which is also essential to the development and maintenance of the rich organic life it possesses, is the uninterrupted supply of atmospheric dust, which is now known to be necessary for the production of rain clouds and beneficial rains and mists, and without which the whole course of meteorological phenomena would be so changed as to endanger

ments in my "Studies Scientific and Social," Vol. 1., Chap. 2.

the very existence of a large portion of the life upon the earth. How and why this is so is fully explained in my Wonderful Century. Now, the chief portion of this fine dust, distributed through the upper atmosphere, from the equator to the poles, with wonderful uniformity, is derived from those great terrestrial features which are often looked upon as the least essential, and even as blots and blemishes on the fair face of nature-deserts and volcanoes. Most persons, no doubt, think they could both be very well spared, and that the earth would be greatly improved, from a human point of view, if they were altogether abolished. Yet it is almost a certainty that the consequences of doing so would be to render the earth infinitely less enjoyable, and, perhaps, altogether uninhabitable by man. We must, therefore, reckon a due proportion of deserts and active volcanoes, with sufficiently constant winds to distribute the dust from them, as among the permanent essentials of a globe fitted for the development of intelligent life. This utility of deserts and volcanoes is, I think, now stated for the first time.

Now, if we consider that these five distinct conditions, or sets of conditions, many of them dependent on a delicate balance of forces acting at the origin of our planet, appear to be absolutely essential for the existence of high types of organic life, we shall at once see how peculiar and unique is our place and condition within the Solar System, since we know, with almost complete certainty, that they do not all co-exist in any of the other planets. And when we consider further, that even if they do happen to exist now, that would be nothing to the purpose unless we had reason to believe that they had also existed, as with us, in unbroken continuity, for scores, or, perhaps, hundreds of millions of years. All the evidence at our com

mand goes to assure us that our earth alone in the Solar System has been from its very origin adapted to be the theatre for the development of organized and intelligent life. Our position within that system is, therefore, as central and unique as that of our Sun in the whole stellar universe.

But, it may be asked, even if it be conceded that both by position, by size, and by its combination of physical features, we really do stand alone in the Solar System in our adaptation for the development of intelligent life, in what way can the position of our Sun at or near the centre of the stellar universe, as it certainly appears to be, affect that adaptation? Why should not one of the Suns on the confines of the Milky Way, or in any other part of it, possess planets as well adapted as we are to develop high forms of organic life?

These are questions which involve the most difficult problems in mathematical physics, and only our greatest thinkers, possessing the highest mathematical and physical knowledge, could be expected to give any adequate answer to them. In the meantime I will briefly indicate what seems to me to be the probable nature of the reply. Accepting the proof astronomers have given us, that so far from the material universe of which our Sun forms a part extending infinitely into space, we can actually see beyond its outer boundaries, and can even approximately give a maximum limit to its magnitude, we are confronted with the problem, of how a limited universe of matter and ether, with the motions and forces which everywhere pervade it, can conserve those forces at and near its farthest limits. Is it, in fact, necessarily becoming dissipated into outer space? Do any of its constituent suns, like those comets which have hyperbolic or parabolic orbits, continually fly out beyond its range, and become

lost to it for ever? Comparing the stars of the Milky Way to the molecules of a gas, must not a certain proportion of these stars continually escape from the attractive powers of their neighbors, as a result of collisions, or in other ways, and wandering into outer space, soon become dead and cold and lost for ever to the universe? Will not the whole of the outer margins of the stellar universe be therefore unstable? always being liable to pass into regions where they would be dissipated, as we see comets dissipated before our eyes? If such results are certain, it will follow that the outer portions of the universe, at all events, and for an unknown extent inward, will be entirely unfitted to ensure that continuity of uniform conditions which is the first essential for the development of life.

But this is only a small portion of the problem. A still more difficult question is, how will the ether behave near the outer borders of the universe? Can gravitation maintain its influence on the confines of a finite universe in the same degree as near its centre? If, as now generally believed, gravitation is really produced by pressure of some kind, which must be equal in all directions, then it is almost certain that at any considerable distance beyond the central portion of the universe, gravitation would vary in intensity in different directions. Whether this variation could possibly be detected by means of the motions of remote binary stars, or in any other way, it must be left for mathematicians and astronomers to determine.

But leaving this question of variation of the force of gravity as beyond our powers at present, we may give a little consideration to those wonderful radiant forces, other than light and heat, the very existence of some of which we have only recently discovered. Such are electricity, magnetism, the

Röntgen rays, the Hertzian, the Goldstein, the Becquerel rays, and some others. That electrical forces bear an important part in the development of living organisms there can be little doubt, while the other forms of radiation here referred to, some of which produce curious physiological effects, can hardly be supposed to have been wholly without influence in the formation of the marvellous living machine, the substance of which, in its complexity, both of structure and constituent elements, is a true microcosm-an epitome of matter and its forces. But if all these radiant forces, or several of them, have combined in the development of life, we may feel sure that they can only have done so under conditions which limit their energy to that gentle and imperceptible action which has caused them to remain so long hidden even from the most inquisitive seekers of the past century. And it is at least a possible, and I think not improbable supposition, that this imperceptibility and continuity may exist only in the more central portions of the universe, while in its outer regions less regularity may prevail, and while some of these necessary radiant forces may be wanting, others may be too abundant, or be manifested in so irregular or excessive a manner as to be antagonistic to the delicate and nicely-balanced forces which are essential to the orderly development of life.

Returning now for a moment to the consideration of our position in the stellar universe, it will assume a somewhat different aspect in view of the possibilities or probabilities just set forth.

We can hardly suppose any longer that three such remarkable coincidences of position and consequent physical conditions should occur in the case of the one planet, on which organic life has been developed, without

any causal connection with that development. The three startling factsthat we are in the centre of a cluster of suns, and that that cluster is situated not only precisely in the plane of the Galaxy, but also centrally in that plane, can hardly now be looked upon as chance coincidences without any significance in relation to the culminating fact that the planet so situated has developed humanity.

Of course the relation here pointed out may be a true relation of cause and effect, and yet have arisen as the The Fortnightly Review.

result of one in a thousand million chances occurring during almost infinite time. But, on the other hand, those thinkers may be right who, holding that the universe is a manifestation of Mind, and that the orderly development of Living Souls supplies an adequate reason why such an universe should have been called into existence, believe that we ourselves are its sole and sufficient result, and that nowhere else than near the central position in the universe which we occupy, could that result have been attained.

Alfred R. Wallace.

No

During the last fifty years journalism has been revising its ideals, and shifting its ambitions. Once a willing servant, it is to-day a busy master. longer content to repeat the passage of events, it would turn them to its own end, and persuade a docile public to believe that all things happened for its peculiar glory and benefit. "An eye in every house, an ear at every keyhole," such was the modest aspiration of one arrogant journalist, who had not dared to breathe it without the conspicuous example of M. de Blowitz. But M. de Blowitz would have made a discreet qualification; he would have insisted that the house, upon which he turned his eye, was a diplomatist's, and that behind the keyhole to which he applied his ear, they were whispering secrets of State; for the late correspondent of "The Times" in Paris believed that the Providence, whose ends were shaped by journalism, was a respectable Providence, and while he did more than any of his contemporaries to increase the importance of his craft, he did not pry into musty

corners, nor prefer the tavern to the palace.

De Blowitz (like a peer of the realm he disdained Christian names) was born in Bohemia some eighty years ago. His early life, and even his nationality are enwrapped in mystery. Though he was expansive enough concerning the achievements of his maturer years, he was curiously reticent about his youth, and as death overtook him in the act of composing his Memoirs, the curtain of uncertainty will never be drawn aside. His name was Oppert, as he was forced to confess when he took out his papers of naturalization as a French citizen, and Oppert he was always called by angry French journalists who wished to rob him of his dignity. But there is little in a name, and as Blowitz he will always be remembered-till he is forgotten.

Of his early life no more can be said than that the true spirit of adventure soon drove him from his father's

house, and that for some years he wandered up and down Europe, picking up languages, and studying poli

tics, to which he had given his mind, as he told Lord Beaconsfield, ever since he was born. His industry was not thrown away, and he was no more than nineteen when a French Minister of Public Instruction gave him a post as teacher of foreign tongues at Tours. It was not a bad beginning, but the soul of Blowitz could not for ever be chained to an usher's stool. Nevertheless he served a long apprenticeship at Tours, at Poitiers, and at Marseilles, and it was not until his marriage, in 1859, that he ceased to perform the duties of a pedagogue. For a while he vainly fumbled for his vocation, and it was not until 1869 that the first real chance of his life came, in which year MM. Thiers, Gambetta, and de Lesseps stood as candidates before the electors of Marseilles. Now, at that moment an official representative would have hardly polled a vote, and M. de Lesseps, though nominated by the Emperor, was careful to disavow his august patronage. But Blowitz had a friend in Egypt, who told him in a letter how a messenger had come out with an order from the Emperor to M. de Lesseps that he should be a candidate for Marseilles. Blowitz, of course, gave the secret to a Legitimist politician, who printed it in his journal, and all the hopes of M. de Lesseps foundered in the storm which followed. Blowitz was terrified at what he had done. "I was somewhat in the position of an elephant," he wrote in "Harper's Magazine," "from whose back a cannon has been discharged, and which first feels the shock without knowing whence it comes." But Marseilles very soon found out whence it came, and clamored loudly for the expulsion of the elephant. Indeed, Blowitz would have had but a small chance of survival had he not won the favor of Thiers, who, when the order of expulsion was signed, quietly put it aside. In the career of most men this would

have been a mere episode; for Blowitz it shaped the whole future. In the first place, it had won him the notice of Thiers, at that time invaluable; in the second, it had proved to him the deadly power of "exclusive information." Henceforth that was the end of his constant ambition, the deity of his daily worship. Exclusive information! That little stone in the hand of David was strong enough to destroy all the Goliaths of the world, as Blowitz presently proved to the discomfiture of Bismarck and many another.

For the next two years the great little man found small chance of distinction. He was forced by the hostile opinion of Marseilles to hide himself in the country; nor did he increase his popularity by prophesying that disaster would surely overtake the arms of France. Yet he proved that his prophecy was based rather upon a love of truth than upon malice, by becoming a Frenchman at the moment of defeat. Il s'est fait naturaliser vaincu, said About with undeniable wit, and surely Blowitz never took a more prudent step than when he made himself the citizen of a conquered country. By this simple act he not merely regained his lost popularity; he gave touching evidence of his loyalty to France, and Thiers and his colleagues were not the men to let so graceful a thought go unrewarded. No sooner was the war over than he was marked out for promotion. Thiers suggested a consulship, and had not Providence intervened he might have passed a useful, inglorious life as the protector of French interests at Riga.

But Providence did intervene, as Blowitz most devoutly believed it always intervened, in his favor. There is nothing more difficult than to discover the truth of modern history, and it has been variously told how Blowitz was appointed upon the staff of "The Times." His own account is briefly