“I am amazed,” said I, “to learn that the moon is inhabited and by a race apparently more advanced than our own. Our astronomers have assured us that the moon is a desolate played out barren world without air or water; totally unfit for inhabitants.” “The astronomers could only report what they could see, and the side of the moon visible from the earth is as they describe it, but they have never seen the further side and never will, for that side is always turned from the earth. But the population of the moon is not far from half that of the earth and the people live in greater comfort. But there is no population living on the surface on the hemisphere facing the earth—I see this puzzles you,” he said.
It certainly did. “Do you mean that the Lunarians live under ground?” I inquired.
“I will explain. The moon is a much lighter body than the earth bulk for bulk, a cubic yard of it containing on an average only six tenths as much matter as an average yard of earth. The reason of[32] this is that a very large part of the moon’s bulk is made up of interstices, caves and openings. Now it is a remarkable fact that the hemisphere of the moon facing the earth is much lighter than the further one, so much so that the center of gravity is 33 miles further from this side of the moon than from the further side. This fact has been suspected by some of your astronomers. The consequence of it is that the sea has all gone to the further hemisphere, and the near hemisphere is in the highest place, about 33 miles above the level of the sea. It is much as if a concave cap, the material of which is 33 miles thick at the center and tapers to zero all round the rim, were fitted on to a sphere. This rim is at the edge of the moon, as seen from the earth. Our atmosphere like yours, gets lighter as we ascend and is too thin to support life at a height of five miles, so that the great plateaus of our hither hemisphere are over 20 miles higher than any appreciable atmosphere. So you can see the impossibility of life on the hither surface of the moon if you reflect a moment what the conditions would be on a mundane plateau 33 miles above the sea level. Your highest mountains are only between five and six miles high, and you know the impossibility of either vegetable or animal life at even that altitude.
“On the earth such elevations are regions of perpetual snow, and the hither surface of the moon would be such a region if it possessed water and an atmosphere. But while the surface on this side is uninhabitable, there are immense tracts of underground space, that have been converted into habitable territory. This underground country lies so[33] far below the surface that it is practically near the sea level throughout. It is approached at all parts of the rim of the cap just described, and there are many thousands of tunnels entering it all round this rim, especially in the equatorial parts of the moon. A great amount of labor has been expended, not only on these entrances, but on the internal cavities to which they lead; but compared with the work performed for us by nature, our own labor is but an insignificant item—hardly so much as the labor of your race in fitting up the earth for your residence. The entrances are all volcanic craters, and the vast cavities to which they lead, were excavated long ages ago by volcanic action. The material blown out of the volcanoes, mostly fell upon the hither side of the moon increasing the bulk of the cap; most of the volcanoes being on this side. But even the material thrown from the lateral regions was drawn this way by the attraction of the earth and after describing a longer or shorter curve, fell on the hither side of the moon.
“Nearly all the moon’s volcanoes are on the hither portion, the volcanic region occupying about two-thirds of the whole surface of the moon. The weight of bodies on the hither side is appreciably less than on the further side. These facts are supposed to be due to the earth’s attraction neutralizing that of the moon and having resulted in building up the vast protuberance or table land (of light and porous material) on this side, the latter is often called, by us the “Mundane Hump” in recognition of the earth’s instrumentality in its formation. The interior continent is often spoken of as the “Pocket” by the[34] people on the further side; or sometimes as the “Chest”, and the “Hump” is called its Lid.
“The further side of the moon is called the Exterior Continent, but often humorously designated by the people of the “Pocket”, as the Out-door Continent.”
“But,” said I, “what a strange life it must be in those underground cavities. I suppose of course you can have nothing better than artificial light there?”
“True,” he said, “our light is mostly artificial, but it is made as bright as we can bear it. It is electric light, but it is regulated to be quite equal to sun light and it never goes out. There is no night in the underground country, as there is outside.”
“This is wonderful!—But where do you get the power to furnish this light? Have you got waterfalls and coal beds down there?”
“We have many waterfalls, but do not utilize them to any great extent for their power and we have a considerable amount of coal, which however we do not use for fuel, but reserve for food purposes, to be drawn upon as may be required.”
“Is stone coal what you have to eat then?” I here broke in. With exasperating deliberation, he gave me an admonitory poke with his right joker.
“One thing at a time—one thing at a time. You wanted to know where we get power to turn into electric lighting. It is the power of gravity. If one of your perpetual motion cranks understood the secret of the use of the repulsion of gravitation, he could contrive a perpetual motion in an hour and a half. We have many forms of such machines that[35] have been in use for ages. One of these is the pendulum machine. This consists of a pendulum weighing from a few pounds to many tons and so contrived that when it reaches the lowest part of its swing it automatically turns on the repulsion of gravitation, which reinforces its momentum on the ascending part of its arc, enough to compensate for the work done by it and the friction of the machine. Another machine is the oscillating balance. This consists of weights at each end of a beam balanced in the middle and so governed by an automatic shunting apparatus, that one of the weights is under the influence of attraction while the other is under that of repulsion. When the former has reached the bottom of its oscillation and the latter the top, the force is reversed in each and so the motion is perpetual.
“Another machine is the Automatic hammer, which is a literal hammer though it may weigh many tons. The end of its handle is confined by a stationary wrist, while the hammer rises and falls under the effect of repulsion and attraction automatically alternated by shunting apparatus. Then we have the vertical parabolic railway; which consists of two steep inclined tracks, meeting each other at the foot. A car runs alternately down one and up the other on much the same principle as the pendulum machine. There are numerous other machines, but they all operate on the same principle, just as you have many forms of water wheels, all operated by the weight of water. So you see our power costs us nothing at all after the machine is built, except for the oil for its lubrication. As these machines[36] have been known and used by us for many thousands of years, you may readily perceive what changes we have been able to make in all those conditions of our planet, that relate to our comfort and general purposes. You may add to this, that any exertion we make relating to the movement of heavy bodies, is ten times as effectual as the same exertion made on earth. Water and air with us are only one-sixth as heavy as on earth, and the average soil and rocks one-tenth as heavy; so that our laborers handle wheelbarrows holding a cubic yard of material as easily as yours do their little barrows containing two or three cubic feet.”
Here I interposed again. “You speak of your atmosphere being only one-sixth as heavy as ours. That agrees with what our astronomers have told us, and they have pointed out that even if there is such an atmosphere, on the moon, animal life like ours is not possible there, because the air is too thin.”
“Your astronomers do not consider that animal life and activity depend, not on the amount of air the animal is surrounded by, but by the amount of it he can use. The fishes in your waters have less air to the cubic foot of space than we have, yet are active, but if you take them out of the water and surround them with ten times as much air as they had, they nevertheless die, because they have not lungs suitable for breathing it. But furthermore it is not the amount of air that is of such consequence to animal life, but the amount of oxygen. Your air consists of about 21 parts of oxygen to 79 of nitrogen, and mixed with it is a considerable amount of[37] carbonic acid and other impurities. In our air the proportions of nitrogen and oxygen are about reversed, and there is a far less amount of carbonic acid gas. There is also a much greater quantity of ozone, which as you know, is a concentrated and more active form of oxygen. And so on the whole, when I take a breath of air here on your earth, I get but a slightly greater quantity of oxygen than at home.”
“Then you are not greatly inconvenienced in being transferred from lunar conditions to those of earth?”
“Well, not with respect to breathing, but when we are at the surface of the earth we are greatly oppressed by the weight of your atmosphere and by our own increased weight as well. Ten or fifteen minutes is as long as we can stand it at one time. But we can get speedy relief by ascending ten thousand miles or so, and when we have come to earth to make extended studies of things here, we are compelled to interrupt them by frequently going up and remaining awhile.”
I had become not only intensely interested in the extraordinary information communicated by my visitor, but greatly fascinated by his person and presence; and his last speech made me painfully apprehensive that I was about to lose his company, and so I expressed the wish that if he felt obliged to go up stairs to recover himself, he would return and continue the interview as soon as possible. He replied that he would be compelled to return home as soon as he left me, but added that he would remain with me for a considerable time longer, observing[38] that he felt exceedingly glad to impart information to so willing a listener. I could not at the time reconcile his intention of remaining a considerable time longer with what he said about not being able to remain at the earth’s surface more than ten or fifteen minutes at a time, as I thought he had already considerably exceeded that. But not wishing to lose time by having him reconcile his observations, I hastened to get back to the thread of his discourse, by asking what sort of food the Lunarians live on.
“The Lunarians are exclusively vegetarians and live chiefly on grains and grasses and leguminous plants in some degree resembling those on earth, but of an entirely different habit, for they all or nearly all, mature in the period of one-half of a lunar month or about fourteen of your days. But this will not seem so surprising, when you reflect that we have continuous sunshine without night during the whole time. Of course this observation applies only to the exterior continent on the further half of the moon. Our plants were all developed on that side and became adapted to the seasons there, and they generally retain their habits of growth since their introduction to the interior continent, or Pocket. But in many cases, by changing the conditions of nourishment, new varieties have been developed, having a longer or shorter period of growth. Much more than half of our food products are produced under extremely artificial conditions. The artificial heat we require for cooking, for warmth etc., is produced by means of electricity and so is our artificial light; moreover, we do not allow any organic matter, such as dead bodies, dead trees or vegetables or any sort[39] of refuse or excrete matters, to rot either in the open air or in the ground, and the manuring of the soil is strictly forbidden. Our air therefore is very poor in carbonic acid gas, (or carbonic dioxide), which constitutes almost the sole food required for the growth of plants. In fact about all that the air gets of this gas is that thrown off from our lungs in breathing. To use this up, we cultivate various air plants that grow with little or no roots and yet cover the ground with an agreeable carpet. Some of these are eatable. All organic matters, when they become refuse, are carefully collected in great air tight and powerful tanks, in which they are heated under an enormous pressure until their original organization entirely disappears. The dimensions of the tanks are reduced during this process by the gradual forcing in of the walls, which are made movable for that purpose, and when the contained material has become reduced to about the consistency and constitution of your ordinary lignite or soft coal, it is forced through a number of cylindrical holes on one side of the tank, by which it is moulded into round sticks of coal, and is then ready to be used over again. The whole process is an imitation of that by which mineral coal is produced in nature, both on the earth and the moon, except that it is accomplished artificially with us in about 50 hours, while nature takes thousands of years for it. The fluids and nitrogenous and other volatile substances pressed out, are secured and saved by proper absorbents. These together with the coal are used by our food growers in producing their plants.
“The planting is all done in vats or chambers with[40] air tight roofs. The bottom of a vat is covered with a few inches of soil specially prepared and appropriate for the plant intended to be sown. After the seeds germinate the vat is covered and the inside is brightly illuminated with electricity and filled with carbonic dioxide, obtained by burning a proper quantity of coal in a retort, which is also accomplished by electricity. All the conditions necessary for rapid growth are supplied to the plants and they are forced forward to maturity without any pause or delay, such as takes place in the growth of plants on earth, through the intervention of cloudy or stormy weather, too much or too little moisture, too much or too little heat, the darkness of night etc.
“The same method of cultivation prevails to a great extent on the exterior continent, although as the sun shines on that continent about 350 hours at a time, which constitutes the length of the day there, the vats are often merely covered by air tight glass roofs and the sun is the growing power instead of electricity.”
“I understand now,” said I, “what you meant by saying you reserved your mineral coal for food purposes. You draw on it only when the steady supply of artificial coal fails?”
“That is correct.”
“But if you rigorously save every particle of your organic matters to be reconverted into food, I don’t see why it should ever fail unless your population increases. But you have not informed me on that subject.”
“The control of the reproduction of the population has been in the hands of the state from the remotest[41] antiquity,” said he; “and no increase in the total number has ever been permitted unless there had already been an increase in the means of supporting the population by the discovery of improved methods or new appliances. The tendency and policy has always been to allow the population to keep up near the limits of the means of support, and occasionally it has crowded a little too close. Then there are occasional losses by fire and a more or less steady unavoidable waste of food materials in their ordinary handling. Some are lost in the sea. But as long as there is a store of mineral coal to draw upon, no such losses can entail more than a temporary inconvenience. One thing that has a considerable effect on the food supply, is the change in fashions, that often takes place in a manner that the authorities cannot foresee or provide for.”
“Then fashion holds sway in the moon as well as the earth! Well, I am surprised! But as your clothes appear to grow on you I don’t see how fashion can interfere very much, or how it could affect the question of food.”
“Fashion with us has nothing to do with dress. As you say, nature has provided us with a dress at once suitable and beautiful. Whatever faults we have, personal vanity is not among them. Our attention is but little absorbed in ourselves, but is constantly directed to others and to the service of the community. If anyone should betake himself to personal frills and ornaments, I fancy he would be told he was getting like the Earthlings, and, he would be advised to go up and live on the Hump, so he could be near the people he was trying to ape.
[42]
“But there is much variety and change of fashion with us in the construction and ornamentation of our buildings, grounds and resorts, and the fashion prevailing in relation to the transmutation of the dead is making a steady inroad upon our total food supply.”
I wondered what he could mean by the transmutation of the dead—but said nothing, awaiting his explanation.
“You may have thought,” he went on, “that our dead were utilized and turned into lignite like other effete organic substances.”
“Certainly,” I said, “that disposition of a useless body is preferable to any method that prevails on earth. Here as soon as a man dies his presence becomes so intolerable to us, that we are obliged in self defense to consign him to earth. Even then the corruption resulting from dissolution is disseminated through the soil contaminating the water supply and starting epidemics of diphtheria and typhoid fever, besides occupying room that sooner or later is begrudged to him. Cremation is certainly an improvement on inhumation, but even that is a considerable expense, and when it is over, we have only a handful of raw mineral ashes left. The best part of the man has gone off in smoke and we have not three or four pounds of good coal left to show for him as you have. And then it ought to be a source of gratification to the defunct himself if he could know it, that his ‘corpus’ was turned to some useful account.”
He here turned his vast eyes upon me with such a deep expression of mild and sorrowful reproach,[43] that I instantly felt as if I had made an exceedingly flippant speech and had said far too much or much too little, but he gave me no time to amend it.
“We are much more sentimental than that,” he said; “our dead are not cremated in the manner practiced on earth, but are totally disintegrated by electricity, and turned into their component elements. No portion of their substance is lost or dissipated, but the material is all conserved and caused to form a new organism. The fashion originated many ages ago, to use the materials to grow some common sort of a plant or shrub from the seed, such as something resembling your grass or fern or some cereal. This was done in the garden vats I have described to you. Plants grown under these circumstances or any circumstances for that matter, very often sprout or grow into forms differing slightly from the normal. Taking advantage of this, our botanists have produced food plants having a wonderful concentration of nourishing qualities in small compass and accompanied by the least possible quantity of waste products. And in like manner our undertakers have developed a great variety of plants to be grown from the constituent materials of the dead. It was formerly the fashion to preserve only a portion of the plants, thus grown. A few leaves were distributed among the friends of the deceased and pressed in herbariums for preservation. But the growing veneration for ancestors and consideration for each other together with the prevalent belief among us that we are formed in the very image of the Deity, finally brought about the practice of preserving entire, the plants produced by transmutation.[44] Thus there is already a vast accumulation of these vegetable representatives of deceased Lunarians, and our economists point out that if this goes on, we will be compelled to constantly draw on our natural food reserves, and that finally these will all be consumed and everything eatable will at last become transmuted into these sacred and inviolable forms. In short the living race will finally become transmuted into dead dry plants. These arguments of the philosophers have as yet had no effect on the people and their priestly leaders. They denounce the philosophers as being unfaithful to the religion and traditions of the race, and as advocating cannibalism.
“They say: ‘you would reduce us to the level of the necrophagous Earthlings, who from time immemorial have consumed the elements of their ancestors and friends and enemies alike, with beastly indifference’.”
“But,” I interrupted; “you know they are mistaken in this opinion of us. Only a few savages on earth are man eaters.”
“True,” said he, “but what they mean is, that from your manner of disposing of the dead, when they become decomposed, their elements are dispersed in the air and absorbed by the soil from which they pass into plants and finally become your food. I have heard a Lunarian say he would starve rather than eat a grain containing a molecule of nitrogen or carbon, that had once formed a part of one of his ancestors.”
“Well, I think that is the culmination of scrupulosity.[45] I am glad such phenomenal squeamishness does not exist on this planet.”
“I do not defend it nor approve of it,” he replied, “any more than you do. But still I think your complacent congratulations of your own race rather out of place. You are quite as much under the dominion of indefensible ideas as we. For example, you have an ancient book whose doctrines and precepts you think you must accept and obey whether they are agreeable and suitable or not, although the men who gave them, have been dead two or three thousand years, while scarcely two of you agree as to what the precepts are and each generation has a different interpretation of them. You have a sect that believe that your Deity is mortally offended with all who do not submit to be immersed under water, while others think he will be satisfied with their having a few drops sprinkled on the face. You have sects that believe your Deity is greatly displeased to see people hopping around on their legs, or dancing as you call it, while one sect employ dancing as the most satisfactory mode of worshipping him. You have a sect that believe that pictures, music and ornaments, and coats with collars that turn down are offensive to the Deity, and who think he is best pleased with silent worship, while others think he likes to be flattered in loud speeches and louder songs addressed to himself, and that he is indifferent whether coat collars stand up or lie down. You have a sect that believe that buttons on the clothes are offensive to him and who therefore fasten their clothing with hooks and eyes. All these sects and many more equally absurd, get their various contradictory[46] notions from the same book, and they adhere to them with such tenacity that in many cases they would die rather than give them up and would if they dared, murder other people for not accepting them, and in times past have done so in thousands of instances. In former times it was a common opinion, that your Deity had an arch enemy called the Devil, who opposed, bothered and thwarted him in the most provoking manner, and among other things inspired and aided thousands of unattractive old women to turn themselves into wolves, cats and other beasts and to become witches, and in these conditions to attack and injure their neighbors and bring strange diseases upon them. For these offenses these old women were judged by your sacred books and were burnt by the thousand. And yet many of the men of this generation, while still holding to the sacred books, have not only repudiated witchcraft, but even the devil himself, and an attempt to burn a witch would now be met by an insurrection. Then you have a sect, or a nation rather, of people, who claim that they are the peculiar favorites of your Deity, who chose them from among all the nations and set them apart as his own, and ordered them to practice a certain peculiar mutilation on the bodies of their children as an evidence and seal of his promises to them. No one of these people would consider himself entitled to hold up his head if it were not for his mutilation. Notwithstanding the claims of these peculiar people are admitted by the rest, no people on earth have been so despised, persecuted and maltreated as they. For over 2,000 years they have been kicked and cuffed[47] about the earth, robbed, driven repeatedly from one country to another, and have never in all that time possessed the sovereignty of a single township. Then again your race believe they are made and formed in the very image and likeness of your Deity, yet you conceal that likeness with garments as if ashamed of it, and such are your notions of propriety that if a man should show this divine likeness in public, naked or even half naked, he would be sent to prison, or a mad house. And then consider the fashions of these garments. Those whose business it is to make clothes, constantly demand changes in the fashion, so as to secure more employment and profit for themselves, and whenever certain ones, who have appointed themselves to be the leaders, say the word, everybody feels obliged to procure new clothes of such sort as these leaders require, notwithstanding those they already have may be good, useful and becoming, and that those prescribed, may be hideous, unsuitable and unhealthful. Many of you are actually so infatuated with this bondage, that if you could not comply with its requirements, you would regard life as of no account.”
During the delivery of this tirade, the flashing eyes of my visitor showed how much his feeling was enlisted in the subject and during the whole time I continued to reproach myself for having started him off on such a rampage, by an unlucky, if not impertinent remark of my own. I was made to recall the adage that people who live in glass houses, should not engage in throwing stones; and it was forcibly shown me how very much “human nature” the Lunarians possess, since while he was willing to[48] point out, criticise and condemn the follies of his own people, he would not allow an outsider to do it. I was greatly relieved when he paused and gave me an opportunity to change the subject, which I did with a precipitancy, that evidently amused him and brought back the good natured expression that habitually possessed his eyes. In fact I believe that the change I had observed was due to intellectual activity and was not accompanied by any real feeling of resentment or passion. Said I, “One of our wise men has expressed the opinion, that the people of the earth, are “maistly fules,” and I believe that most other wise men agree with him. So I beg you will waste no more of your precious time in arraigning our race, but go on with your intensely interesting and instructive account of your own race and your remarkable planet.” He thereupon goodnaturedly resumed.
“Organic existence must everywhere be to a great extent the same. The elements that enter into the composition of organisms, are subject to certain laws of chemical affinity, that demand their own conditions, and will not operate when these conditions are absent. The chief of these are furnished by the radiations of the sun in our solar system and no doubt by those of the stars in other systems. These radiations impressed upon organized materials become light and heat and where they are either in excess or deficiency organic development is not possible. These conditions obtain throughout the solar system, and no doubt in every system composed of the same sort of elements. But of the solar system[49] we can speak with some confidence, for we have been able to visit a considerable part of it.
“The inhabitants of the different planets differ from each other in the same way that the various animal races of earth differ from each other. You have on earth four sub-kingdoms of intelligent animals; vertebrates, articulates, mollusks and radiates. These have all been evolved from a common worm-like ancestry, and each form possesses the potentiality of receiving an equally high development, both physically and mentally. The development of any of them in all cases depends upon the way they are impressed by their surroundings and the proper surroundings can develop high intelligence in either of the forms. On earth the highest development has happened to the vertebrate branch, but with us the articulates have always been the dominant branch, while the vertebrates have never attained to a condition above that of your salamanders and small lizards. The ascendant race with us as with you has always contributed to keep the others in the background, by destroying the most advanced and aggressive of them and pursuing them till none but the smallest, weakest and most harmless of their tribe remain. Indeed until this is done, the position of the ascendant race is not secure. Your own race has had experience of this in the struggle with and subjugation of other races. In the early history of the earth, it was for a long time doubtful whether it was to be dominated by the human family or by a tribe of reptiles. At that ancient period, a tribe of reptiles had become developed that walked erect on their hind legs, and whose fore limbs supported[50] wings and terminated in excellent hands, having four fingers. There were several related families of these animals, some of which were almost or quite the equal of man in intelligence. The final triumph of man over these advanced reptiles, was due to his superior compact social organization. While they relied on their superior personal prowess and often fought single handed, men always fought in bands, and hung together in all their enterprises. The reptiles being finally vanquished and the tribes most advanced and most to be feared having been exterminated, the rest had two modes of escape. They could use their wings and thus by flight keep out of the way of their enemies or they could hide by crouching down in the grass and weeds and making themselves as small, sly and inconspicuous as possible. Some pursued one of these courses and some the other. The descendants of those that flew away gradually became developed into the birds as you now have them; while those that resorted to hiding and crouching down, were thus deprived of the opportunity to use their limbs generation after generation and so the limbs gradually became shrunken and useless, finally disappearing completely, or almost so, causing the body to come down flat on its belly on the ground, and thus were produced the serpents as you now have them.”
“No doubt,” said I, “the serpents originated in that way. They formerly possessed limbs, because many species still have the rudiments of them. In some cases these remnants show themselves like little hooks on the outside of the skin, while many others are covered up by the skin and are not seen[51] at all. But all that retrogressive adaptation by which they lost their limbs, must have been practically completed before our race possessed any semblance of their present form and condition.”
“The earth,” he proceeded, “was full of contending races, and of course the backset that was imposed on the snakes, was contributed to by others, as well as men, but the latter were among the last and as regards the particular family of reptiles in question, the most formidable and effectual opponents. Some of your ancient traditions and literature contain allusions to this contest, the reptile being styled Nachash. You preserve an allusion to this ancient competition, in the legends of the Devil, who represents the reptile, and is often called the serpent etc. I recall this history, only to show you that the essential qualities of predominance do not inhere in any particular animal form. Your planet escaped the final domination of a reptile instead of a mammal, by only a little. As you have already perceived the dominant race on our planet is an articulate.”