dependent_. And as the idea of the unique position
of the earth to be the abode of human life was fresh in his mind, he
thought it would prove interesting to the general public. However,
before his article appeared simultaneously in the American papers and in
the _Fortnightly Review_, a friend who read it was so impressed with
its originality and treatment that he persuaded Wallace to enlarge it
into book form; and it appeared in the autumn of 1903 as "Man's Place in
the Universe."

This fascinating treatise upon the position occupied by the earth, and
man, in the universe, had the same effect as some of his former
writings, of drawing forth unstinted commendation from many religious
and secular papers; whilst the severely scientific and materialistic
reviewers doubted how far his imagination had superseded unbiased
reason.

On one point, however, most outsiders were in agreement--that he had
invested an ancient subject with freshest interest through approaching
it by an entirely new way. The plan followed was that of bringing
together all the positive conclusions of the astronomer, the geologist,
the physicist, and the biologist, and by weighing these carefully in the
balance he arrived at what appeared to him to be the only reasonable
conclusion. He therefore set out to solve the problem whether or not the
logical inferences to be drawn from the various results of modern
science lent support to the view that our earth is the only inhabited
planet, not only in our own solar system, but in the whole stellar
universe. In the course of his close and careful exposition he takes the
reader through the whole trend of modern scientific research, concluding
with a summing-up of his deductions in the following six propositions,
in the first three of which he sets out the conclusions reached by
modern astronomers:

(1) That the stellar universe forms one connected whole; and, though of
enormous extent, is yet finite, and its extent determinable.

(2) That the solar system is situated in the plane of the Milky Way, and
not far removed from the centre of that plane. The earth is, therefore,
nearly in the centre of the stellar universe.

(3) That this universe consists throughout of the same kinds of matter,
and is subjected to the same physical and chemical laws.

The conclusions which I claim to have shown to have enormous
probabilities in their favour are:

(4) That no other planet in the solar system than our earth is i