lligent beings should not acquire the highest development.

Now let us look at the subject from the view of the mathematical theory
of probabilities. A fundamental tenet of this theory is that no matter
how improbable a result may be on a single trial, supposing it at all
possible, it is sure to occur after a sufficient number of trials--and
over and over again if the trials are repeated often enough. For
example, if a million grains of corn, of which a single one was red,
were all placed in a pile, and a blindfolded person were required to
grope in the pile, select a grain, and then put it back again, the
chances would be a million to one against his drawing out the red
grain. If drawing it meant he should die, a sensible person would give
himself no concern at having to draw the grain. The probability of his
death would not be so great as the actual probability that he will
really die within the next twenty-four hours. And yet if the whole
human race were required to run this chance, it is certain that about
fifteen hundred, or one out of a million, of the whole human family
would draw the red grain and meet his death.

Now apply this principle to the universe. Let us suppose, to fix the
ideas, that there are a hundred million worlds, but that the chances
are one thousand to one against any one of these taken at random being
fitted for the highest development of life or for the evolution of
reason. The chances would still be that one hundred thousand of them
would be inhabited by rational beings whom we call human. But where are
we to look for these worlds? This no man can tell. We only infer from
the statistics of the stars--and this inference is fairly well
grounded--that the number of worlds which, so far as we know, may be
inhabited, are to be counted by thousands, and perhaps by millions.

In a number of bodies so vast we should expect every variety of
conditions as regards temperature and surroundings. If we suppose that
the special conditions which prevail on our planet are necessary to the
highest forms of life, we still have reason to believe that these same
conditions prevail on thousands of other worlds. The fact that we might
find the conditions in millions of other worlds unfavorable to life
would not disprove the existence of the latter on countless worlds
differently situated.

Coming down now from the general question to the specific one, we all
know that the only worlds the conditions of which can