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The heart of a continent : vol.1 |
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this, till the whole universe is a whirling vortex of dead worlds?
or are life and heat to come to them again by impact with one
another, or in some yet unknown manner?
Then, in the present, what is happening in these worlds
around us? When I visited the secluded little state of Hunza,
whose inhabitants were shut out by the mountains from contact
with outside peoples and countries, I found they thought that
the world only consisted of a few neighbouring valleys, and that
no higher race than themselves existed. They could form no
conception of such vast plains of cultivated land as are seen in
India; they could imagine nothing like the ocean; a railway
and a telegraph would have seemed supernatural to them, and
men who could invent and work such things, as of an altogether
superior order to themselves. We men on this earth are in
as remote a corner of the universe as Hunza is in this world;
and, among the millions of worlds around us, there must be
living beings of some sort, and, among them all, may there not,
perhaps, be some who are superior to ourselves? Man is the
highest form of living being in this single little world of ours—
this little speck, which is to the universe as the smallest grain
of sand to the stretch of the seashore. But is he the highest
in the whole universe? Are not the probabilities over-
whelmingly in favour of his not being so? Would it not be
the veriest chance, if, among all these millions of worlds, this
one on which we live should have happened to develop the
highest being? Thinking on all this, one cannot help believing
that, in some few at least of those myriads of worlds, there may
be more perfect beings than ourselves. There, there may be
beings with the senses more highly developed, who could see,
for instance, with the power of our telescopes and microscopes;
beings, again, who had still other senses than we possess, who
might have the power after which we seem to be dimly groping,
of reading the thoughts of others, and directly communi-
cating with others at a distance. Or, again, beings whose lives,
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