“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 ofthis 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 sofar 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 thepeople 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 thathave 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 machineshave 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 ofcarbonic 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, observingthat 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 sortof 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 withair 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 remotestantiquity,” 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.
“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,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.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.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 contradictorynotions 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 cuffedabout 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 topoint 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 systemwe 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 supportedwings 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 seenat 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 styledNachash. 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.”
“I confess,” said I, “that you have demonstrated the possibility of a development among the articulates quite equal at least to that of mammals. You must have animals of some sort in your seas and lakes; what do you do with them?”
“We have some large soft bodied animals, something akin to your large mollusks and others having a cartilaginous frame, but we have no bony fishes. These animals are sometimes caught and turned into food products, the same as other organic refuse, but never eaten directly, as we are vegetarians. The amount of water surface on our planet is quite small compared with yours. The seas are narrow, but of immense depth. Indeed, some of them are known to have passages communicating directly through the planet and connecting the waters of the exterior continent, with those of the “Pocket”. The fluctuation of the tides takes place bi-monthly, with enormous force through these “bores.” When the moon is between the earth and sun the tide rises on the exterior continent, and when on the opposite side, it rises in the interior continent, the amount of the rise being very great in the neighborhood of these “bores,” but inconsiderable elsewhere.”
“Your climate I suppose is very different from ours—of course it must be.”
“Yes certainly, and the climate of the interior continent differs greatly from that of the exterior. On the polar regions of the exterior continent, we experience the extreme change of seasons, that occur on earth, from a very cold winter to a very hot summer—all in the space of about 29½ of your days or 709 hours. In the equatorial regions, however, the extremes are greatly tempered by the winds, which always blow toward the position of the sun, by the great evaporation that takes place during the day, and by the fact that the air of the equatorial belt is both higher and denser than that in the polar regions.In many cases, the upper air is charged with heavy clouds, that remain suspended all night or all winter, as you choose, and these prevent the land from becoming very cold.”
“Vegetation must come on very rapidly during your little summers,” I observed.
“Yes, it does. We have grasses that grow from the sown seed and mature their grains in eight days. But, we have others, whose habit requires that they be sown about midwinter, and they are harvested in midsummer. Other plants are annual, dropping their leaves soon after darkness sets in and putting forth new ones again as soon as daylight returns. Our food plants are, however, chiefly raised artificially in both the exterior and the interior continents. The farms are often immense buildings covering several acres and consisting of from ten to twenty stories, each story comprising a farm. As our space can thus be multiplied indefinitely, and as we can raise twelve or more crops a year in the same space, you see a single acre can be made to be equal to one or two hundred. It is not necessary to use this degree of economy of room in all cases, and so, many farms consist of but a single story on the ground, and often on the exterior continent only the suns rays are employed instead of electricity to furnish energy for the growth of the crop. Even this method gives us about 13 crops a year. The artificial methods are generally preferred, however, as they are far more certain and reliable. In the interior continent of course these methods prevail exclusively.”
“It seems strange,” said I, “that the spaces inthe interior continent, should be great enough to hold any considerable population. We have on earth some large caves, but put them all together and they would not afford shelter for the inhabitants of a small city.”
“The caves that are at present accessible to you, are small and due to the action of water. All springs, by carrying out mineral matter in solution from below the surface, are constructing caves, and much more extensive ones than might be supposed. But those formed by the action of volcanoes, your explorers have had little opportunity to study, and, but few probably have any adequate idea of the sizes of the holes left under the surface, by the ejection of materials by volcanoes.
“Some of your scientists estimated that the volcano Krakatoa, in the East Indies, during a couple of days in August, 1883, discharged a cubic mile of materials. The volcano has had a great many eruptions in times past, and has thrown out a great many cubic miles. The materials composing the mountain itself, have all been thrown from its crater, and the same thing has happened in the case of all the volcanoes on earth, of which there are thousands. The spaces left in the crust of the earth by this process, have amounted in the aggregate to hundreds of thousands of cubic miles. Many spaces thus formed, have been filled again by melted materials pressed up from below, by the pressure of the crust upon the melted interior. But a vast amount of empty space yet remains and will continue to be added to for millions of years to come. As the earth grows older and colder, internally, the crust will become thickerand more unyielding, so that as new subterranean spaces are formed by volcanic activity, fewer of these will be filled up again and the final aggregate of them will doubtless in time reach millions of cubic miles. The spaces comprising the “Pocket” continent of the moon, above the sea level, are estimated by us to amount to about 1,500,000 cubic miles.”
“This then,” I observed, “must give you a continent in there of something like 1,500,000 cubic miles, supposing the space to be a mile high.”
“Yes, but that is not the shape of the interior. The ground floor of our continent at or near the sea level is only about 800,000 square miles, and it consists of thousands of separated chambers, varying from a few rods to many miles in extent, and of every conceivable shape, some being circular or oval, some long and narrow, and straight or crooked. There are a great many of the long narrow sort, extending in some cases as much as 400 miles, widening in some places to as much as ten miles and again narrowing down to half a mile. These are nothing less than cracks in our planet. They run in many directions, often intersecting each other, and they extend far down toward the center and upward in some places eight or ten miles before the sides arch together in a mighty dome. There are water marks high up the sides of these great chambers showing the sea level to have been much higher in ancient times than at present, and the action of the water on the sides has greatly widened the spaces, the materials being washed into the bottomless fissures, that extend toward the center of the planet.”
“How do you account for the changes in the sea-level?” I inquired.
“As the moon cooled off, a great deal of water was taken up by the rocks, while crystallizing and thus chemically united with them, a great deal more was absorbed by them mechanically, by their pores, while a still greater quantity occupies large fissures and chambers, penetrating in all directions through the planet communicating with each other and connecting the interior waters with those of the exterior continent. The action of the water has greatly contributed, not only to the enlargement of the spaces in the interior continent, but to the creation of a pulverized soil and pleasing landscapes. The chambers that are inhabited, are of course all connected with each other, but besides these, it is quite certain there are great numbers of very extensive ones in the masses of materials that bound the inhabited chambers. Artificial tunnels are constantly being cut into these walls and so new countries are often discovered and connected with the rest and opened for settlement. In addition to those chambers that come down to the sea level the aggregate of the area of which I told you is about 800,000 square miles, there are vast areas situated at higher levels in the material, that bounds the sea-level chambers. These elevated areas are at all heights from one-fourth of a mile to four or five miles above the sea-level. There are known to be many above these, but they are not habitable, on account of lightness of the air. The elevated chambers are connected with each other, and with the lower ones, by means of sloping passages at all grades. In some caseschambers are located directly on top of the thick roof of others and are reached by long and circuitous routes. In a number of cases, the walls of sea-level chambers, after closing in almost together to form an arch over them, widen out again above and thus form other chambers above, and sometimes these stories continue one above another until the surface of the hump is reached, where the openings appear sometimes as channels, and at others, as circular craters.”
“No doubt,” said I, “the craters that our astronomers see in such vast numbers on this side of the moon communicate with your interior continent.”
“Yes they do.”
“Then is it possible, that they sometimes see down to your interior habitations? They report some of these craters, as appearing to be many miles deep.”
“They cannot see down to our habitations, for two reasons. In the first place, although the craters connect with the vast labyrinth of passages and chambers below, with few exceptions they bend and subdivide into numerous dividing branches long before they get down to a habitable level. In the second place there are perpetual clouds standing in all those passages, that lead to the surface of the hump, at various elevations of from two or three to eight or ten miles above the sea level. Of course it is not possible to see down through these—nor up through them either—except when they are cleared away for a special purpose, as is done sometimes for the benefit of our astronomers.”
“They sometimes look out through these cratersthen, do they? How do they get rid of the clouds?”
“I will describe one of the craters used by the astronomers for an observatory. It is the shape of a funnel with a diameter at the surface of the hump of twenty-five miles. From there it tapers rapidly inwards till at a distance of about 29 miles below the surface, it has narrowed down to a mile in diameter. This is the entrance, down to what was originally a vast dome shaped chamber. This chamber is now filled to the roof on one side, by material poured down through the funnel, while on the other side the material consisting of volcanic ashes, scoria, rocks etc., slopes down for three miles, the over-arching dome finally closing down to it leaving only a few narrow passages through into other chambers. Well up on this slope and nearly under the center of the great funnel, our astronomers established their observatory. This is for the special purpose of examining the earth, which is always in sight from this point, and as it rolls itself over every twenty-four hours, without apparently moving out of its tracks, it is seemingly on exhibition for our sole benefit. As we revolve around it every month we are enabled to see both poles alternately, while the whole of the equatorial parts can be seen every twenty-four hours.
“We are thus enabled to make far more complete and perfect maps of the earth, than you have yourselves. We have powerful telescopes. The one at the funnel observatory I am telling you of, can bring the earth within forty miles.”
“If it brought it eleven miles further it wouldstop up the funnel and become invisible, wouldn’t it?” said I.
His eyes expressed a slight gleam of humor, which I fancied was tinged by a shade of compassion, as he recognized this for a joke, and then he went on:
“As to the clouds—they are cleared away whenever we wish, by means of artificial thunder storms. Metallic conductors have been put in place up the sides of the lofty chambers, and at the proper heights are fixed with their poles pointing across the space, the positive on one side and the negative on the opposite. Heavy electric discharges are then made, the spark which is often one-fourth of a mile long traversing the cloud and speedily condensing it into rain. The observatory, I have spoken of, is too high to be often affected by clouds, but when the funnel is hazy, it can soon be cleared out. There are several observatories on this side of the moon situated like this one, and their chief business is the examination of the earth, which is our most interesting celestial object, and which can never be seen from the external continent, except at its extreme east and west ends, from which position it is seen low down on the horizon.”
“It must be extremely handy,” said I, “to be able to produce a shower whenever you wish. The formation of these clouds however presupposes great evaporation.”
“Yes, evaporation takes, place from the numerous sheets of sea water in the various chambers, the aggregate of which is estimated at about 120,000 square miles. There is more or less of this sea water in almost every one of the sea-level chambers. Besidesthe evaporation from these bodies of water, more or less evaporation occurs from every one of the industries in which water is used, and so the aggregate is very considerable. But it is always nearly uniform in quantity, in the interior continent. As the suspended moisture comes into contact with the upper walls and roofs of the lofty chambers, it is being constantly condensed, and the fresh water thus formed trickles down the walls and slopes in drops, rills and brooks, and finds its way through the ground and porous rocks. Many underground streams are formed that find their way into the high-level chambers, which are thus supplied with pure water. The inhabitants of others have supplied themselves by tunnelling through into the upper parts of lofty chambers, that have their floors at the sea-level, and thus they tap the clouds themselves.”
“Our astronomers tell us that some of the Lunar craters are 60 or 80 miles in diameter or even more, which indicates that an enormously greater amount of volcanic action has taken place on the moon than on the earth. How is that?”
He replied, “Our opinion is this: The volcanic action in the moon toward its close and final cessation, was enormous. The planet had already been completely honeycombed by former convulsions and the seas had poured themselves into the underground openings, until there was almost as much water below the surface as above. This water kept up a continual contention with the melted interior, resulting in still greater explosions, sending out enormous quantities of volcanic matter, forming cones in some cases twenty-five miles high and over 100 milesin diameter. The enormous weight of these volcanic cones in many cases proved too great to be supported by the crust, that separated them from the interior cavities their materials had been blown out of, and so they broke through—that is the central part of the cones broke through, leaving a margin of their bases all around, standing like the walls of a crater. But these are not the original craters, as you can see. If they were, they would be on top of elevated cones of enormous height, which they are not.”
“This view appears to me very plausible and I feel the more interested in the subject, because the idea constantly impresses itself upon me, that the earth is repeating the history of the moon. According to our theories of evolution the two bodies separated from each other, when they were in the condition of hot expanded gases, and as the moon contained only 1/81 part as much matter as the earth, it cooled down and became a habitable world, many millions of years before the earth. Since you have been talking to me, the impression has constantly grown upon me, that your moon history is really an anticipation of our own, and it becomes the more interesting on that account.”
His eyes expressed extreme satisfaction, as he replied that he was glad that I had seen that point.
“We have in one of the provinces of the interior continent, an immense university, devoted to the study of mundane affairs, past, present and future. The duty is assigned me of holding a professorship in this university, in the college of ‘Mundane Prognostication’. As this college has been in operation forover 100,000 years, we have had abundant opportunity to verify our system of prognostication, and you would be surprised at the accuracy with which our predictions have been realized in your history. Of course, we could have done nothing, but for the basis our own history gave us to work on.”
“Well,” said I, “I can’t say that I am sorry to know that my time will be out long before the earth reaches the conditions that makes it necessary for the inhabitants to retreat underground. These spaces below must indeed be queer places to live in, for it don’t seem like they would be exposed to storms, as if out of doors, and yet not cosy and homelike, as if in a house, and I don’t see how they can be otherwise than cold damp and gloomy—that is, viewed from the stand point of earth. Am I right?”
“No,” he replied, “you are not. Those abodes, as we have them fixed up on the moon, you would regard as more delightful than anything you have on earth, and as equalling your dreams of paradise. There are as you suppose no storms and no extremes of temperature. There is always a very light breeze blowing, half the time in one direction, and half in the other. This is caused by the action of the sun on the external continent, as it progressively passes over it from east to west. There is always fog and cloud at all the entrances to the interior continent that prevent the radiation of heat and help preserve an even temperature within. All the inhabited chambers are made as bright as sunlight by immense and numerous electric lights, which are placed with reference to the best, effects both from a utilitarian and an artistic point of view. They are generallyplaced at great elevations, and are often arranged to imitate the constellations of the heavens, so that looking up, one may see a portion of the sky as he would see it from the external continent, and by traveling about among the various interior provinces, he can see the whole of it. In some of the chambers, the lights are made to represent the members of the solar system and each one is caused to make the movements properly, belonging to it, the whole constituting a planetarium on an immense scale—in some instances—several miles in diameter and three miles above the floor.”
“I can well imagine the glory of such scenery and such possibilities,” said I, “but I do not see by what mechanism you can accomplish such results.”
“You must remember,” he replied, “that we have resources, that your race does not possess. With you a great many things would be practically out of the question that with us are very easy. In the first place, we are a flying race as you see, and this means a great deal on the moon’s external continent, and still more in the internal continent, where on account of the attraction of the earth and the hump, our weight is much reduced without a corresponding reduction of strength. The fluttering and flying about of crowds overhead is one of the pleasing features of our life.
“In the second place, the power of neutralizing the gravity of metals, as I have explained to you, enables us to erect works miles above the ground more easily than you do at the surface. In fact the works erect themselves and the most we do is to tether them at the proper height to keep them fromgoing too far. When motion is required to be given them, the globes of light are sometimes attached to a car that is made to run on a single rail elliptical track, which may be suspended at any elevation and reduced to a minimum weight by proper adjustments of its gravitation, the light globe being either suspended from the car or floating above it. The elliptical orbit is inclined enough to enable gravity to propel the car. An automatic shunt turns on repulsion when the car reaches the lowest part of the orbit and it is then forwarded on the up grade portion, shunted again at the top and so on perpetually. Another machine often used is a hollow cylindrical stem suspended from the dome, having a series of wheels, concentric with the cylinder, one above another and caused to revolve horizontally at different rates, by clockwork inside the cylinder. Globes of light are suspended by long wires to these wheels, which by their revolution, at varying rates, cause the globes by centrifugal motion to describe large or small orbits as desired. All sorts of eccentric and peculiar motions are imparted to the globes by variations in the regularity of the revolutions of the wheels, the spheres falling toward the center when the motion is slow and flying outward when it is fast. The mazes of a cotillion are often imitated, and the performance is called the ‘dancing of the spheres’. This is also accompanied by music, sometimes by local bands situated on the ground playing in concert with the movement, at other times by immense instruments operated by the same machinery that drives the spheres.
“It is not difficult for you to imagine the beautyand grandeur of some of these overhead scenes. Of course the power used is electricity, and it is used liberally and freely since its cost is merely nominal. Heat as well as light is supplied through the same means and used for all purposes, domestic, industrial and public. Our houses are very tasteful and often highly ornamental. The architecture is light and graceful and suited to a mild and quiet climate, for we have the pleasant air of your tropics without their storms or excessive heat. A slight sprinkle of rain is all we ever have in the shape of a storm in any part of the interior continent, and these sprinkles are rendered periodical by artificial means. There are no wide agricultural tracts with us, nor densely populated cities, but the population is distributed in towns, and continuous villages line the roads, each of which is devoted to some principal productive industry. There are principal streets that run miles, passing through and connecting these towns, and often bending so as to make a complete circuit. The streets are wide and we are always furnished with a number of rail tracks, and paved with a hard smooth material—sometimes stone and sometimes iron or alumina. The only vehicles used on the streets, besides the rail cars are light, private and pleasure carriages, propelled by storage batteries. The roads that unite the various internal provinces to each other and to the external continent, are chiefly the gravity roads, that I have already described to you. In some cases to save room, the roads are built in stories, one track above another. The work shops and farms, are situated conveniently near on streets parallel to the main thoroughfares,and their products are conveyed from them, and their materials to them, on roads laid on those streets.”
“I should like to know something about your social and political arrangements, your industrial economy and your form of government,” said I. “If the government controls the increase of population, I suppose it must control labor and production; and consumption too—how is that?”
“The sort of control, which the government exercise is almost exclusively advisory. There is no government control in the sense of the term as used on earth. All productive labor is expended for the creation of common property, to which, when created, every individual has equal title. Not the slightest compulsion however is put upon labor, nor the least prohibition upon consumption.”
“Do you mean to say that nobody is obliged to work, and yet everyone can take what he wants from the common stock?”
“Yes.”
“Then yours is an angelic race, truly. We have not anything like that on this earth, and I reckon, we never will have.”
“The human race, as a whole, is not yet like it, although the tendency is certainly that way and it would be rash to predict it never will be, but there are other and older races on earth, that you overlook. Consider our relatives the Bees; did you ever see a lazy bee or one that wanted more than a reasonable share of the common property?”
“Yes,” said I, “it has become instinctive withthem to work and their wants are likewise, only such as instinct dictates.”
“Instincts,” he replied, “are only crystallizations of reason. They are habits become hereditary to such a degree that the person is liable to fall into them with little or no teaching. I know that the people of the human race pride themselves greatly on the assumed fact that they act from reason, while other animals act from instinct, but the fact is, that 99 out of every 100 good acts that human beings perform, are done through instinct or inherited disposition to do them, while only one is reasoned out. And your teachers appear to understand that your instincts alone are to be depended upon to produce good actions, since they always depreciate and throw suspicion on good acts not done from the “heart” that is, not done from instinct. They give little or no credit for such actions, and strive by cultivation of the emotions to substitute disinterested impulse or in other words instinct, for mere calculating reason. Now, we Lunarians have long since passed this stage. Lazy Lunarians are as impossible as lazy bees. To work is instinctive with us and so is consideration for the rights and dues of the rest, and as everyone can be relied on to obey his instincts, it is not necessary to watch any one to keep him from plundering the public or shirking out of his duties.”
“There have often been socialistic communities with us,” said I, “that have endeavored to live on the principles you speak of. But their lives have been of the most monotonous dead level sort. There is no chance for individuality or for the developmentor exercise of the superior talents, which some are certain to possess in a higher degree than others. They are merely little despotisms and endure only while their leaders are people of exceptional ability. We do not regard such a state of society as desirable even if it could be made permanent.
“With us,” he replied, “the greatest liberty is accorded to the individual, but so well grounded is our predisposition to work for the benefit of the community, that no one has any fear or suspicion that another is not doing what he ought, or is able to do for the common good. There are extensive colleges for art, literature, science and invention, accessible to any according to their several tastes. If a person thinks, for example, that he has the conception of a valuable invention, he is admitted to the college of invention where there is every facility and appliance for developing the idea and constructing the machine or instrument. In these colleges there are depositories of models something like your patent office, and professors are on hand familiar with physics, chemistry and kindred sciences to advise and assist the inventor. As they are all working for the good of all, the inventor is not afraid his idea will be stolen, he finds the assistance he gets invaluable, and is often saved the useless labor of doing something that has been done already or attempting something in contravention of the principles of physics and therefore impossible. An invention, when made, is the property of the public, and if it lightens labor in anydirection, it allows it to take on greater activity in some other direction.
“All articles that can be produced in quantities by machinery are distributed to everybody desiring them, but individual works of art as great pictures and statuary and rare and curious things, are placed in public art galleries, libraries etc., accessible to all.”
“Well,” said I, “this is extremely pretty and no doubt it works all right with you wise Lunarians, but I cannot help imagining what sort of a mess we should make of it on earth, if we adopted the same policy. I admit that many of us are workers by instinct or at least a semi instinct, that controls us after some habit got by practice, and it is also instinctive with us to care for the young and those who are helpless from disease or old age, but there are plenty of people with whom it is equally instinctive never to do a lick of work if they can help it, and at the same time their instincts allow them to help themselves to the proceeds of the labor of others without any limit, except that of forcible restraint.”
“The trouble with you,” said he, “is that you have no control over the production of your people. You are like the civilized Indians, that once inhabited some of the western parts of your country, who were constantly threatened and invaded and finally exterminated by wild and barbarous neighbors, except that they were physically too weak to help themselves.
“It is true your civilization is now in little danger from foreign savages, but you allow yourselvesto be steadily invaded by fresh generations, of them born in your midst, and the crudeness and injustice of your political and social conditions, are such as to give but slight encouragement to the development of the unselfish instincts in anybody. Wealth carries power and power commands respect. Your wealth is distributed without justice, sometimes by accident and to those who are merely lucky, at other times to those who are simply selfish greedy and unscrupulous, and generally least to those who create it, and so luck and greed become prominent objects for your attention and emulation. How very young your race is and how much you have to learn!”
“You said something about a college of “Mundane prognostication,” you have on the moon where you study our affairs and forecast our future. I should be infinitely gratified to know what your learned college has figured out for us—if it is no secret.”
“It is no secret at all,” he answered, “and I shall be glad to give you such insight in your future, as our profiles in their present condition afford.”
With this he drew from a receptacle somethinglike a pocket under his right lower wing, a cylindrical roll of paper three inches in diameter, and ten inches long, exactly resembling a roll of profile paper, such as civil engineers use in plotting the profile of a survey for a railroad. Familiarity with such things together with the idea that he intended handing it to me, caused me almost involuntarily to reach out for it, but he retained it in his own hands and began with great dexterity unrolling it, holding the scroll in his right hand, while with his left he rolled up again the unrolled end. As he held these two rolled ends in his front hands a yard apart with that length of the profile open between them, he used his middle pair of hands to point out the various marks and lines on the paper to which attention was directed. I could not help observing what a vast advantage one has with four hands instead of two. When we hold a profile thus, there is nothing left to point with, but the nose.
In plotting the profile of a railroad survey, the engineer uses paper several feet long and 8 to 12 inches wide, covered with fine horizontal lines, running the whole length of it and ruled so close together, that there are from 20 to 50 lines to the inch. Then there are other lines drawn across the paper at right angles to the first, and one-fourth of an inch apart. These last represent distances of 100 feet each; or “stations;” while each of the spaces between the horizontal lines is called a foot. Having the survey of a line of stations with the relative height of each, ascertained by a leveling instrument, the line is plotted on this paper so thatits distance from the lower edge of the paper at each station corresponds with the height of the ground at that station. The irregular line thus formed is a fac simile of the surface of the ground with its vertical undulations and irregularities. The engineer then draws a grade line on this profile of the ground, that indicates the position of the surface of the road bed, as he intends it to be when finished. In some places this line is above the ground line and this indicates that here is to be a fill. In other places it runs below, and this shows a cut.
Now the profile that the Lunarian Professor of “Mundane Prognostication” held in his multiple hands (I shall call him the Professor hereafter) very much resembled in appearance that just described, except that instead of only one there were several profiles on this one strip of paper, one above another. In each one there was the irregular surface line accompanied with the more or less straight grade line showing cuts in some places and fills in others. The professor explained these profiles to be graphic exhibits of the state of various human institutions and conditions as they appeared during a continuous term of time beginning in the past, and extending into a far distant future.
After examining these profiles a short time, I had little difficulty in getting the ideas intended to be conveyed by them. They will be readily understood without much explanation. Thus the line of “muscular development” is shown in the remote past as being almost up to grade, but as gradually falling below it in the course of time, then risingagain and coming almost to the grade line about the year 2500, but after that gradually falling away again. Selfish instinct, which has always shown heavy cutting, comes down nearly to grade, about the year 7200. While altruistic instinct that regards the common welfare and has been below grade, always, but at times higher than at present, is seen to rise and come to grade about the same time. Health has always shown a fill, often a large one, but gradually rises almost to grade about the year 2500. Crime has always been a cut, but disappears in the future about the same time as theology.
Peace, which is a condensation or composite of all the rest and the end for which they all exist, has always been a fill and always must be until human actions become absolutely instinctive and unconscious, which they never can do until men have been acted upon and molded by habit by every stimulation possible to their environment. Reasoned acts are those which arise from stimulations, that are new or unusual to us, and new stimulations will continue to come as long as knowledge increases or continues to be pursued, or to be thrust upon us. If the accumulation of knowledge should stop, actions would finally become instinctive, and unconscious. This would be complete absence of misery, and also absence of happiness, but perfect peace. So the grade line of Peace is a dead level. Above it is the ragged line of misery always a great cut, and below it is the line of happiness always a fill, somewhat lighterthan the cut above the line, and terminating in grade soon after it.
I inquired of the Professor, the principle, upon which predictions of the future were worked out. He replied, that the principles were exceedingly simple, although the actual working out of any scheme of the future involved the consideration of such a vast number of details and conditions, as to render it a labor of magnitude. “Prediction,” said he, “is only past history, projected forward. If we know precisely what happened in the past, our knowledge will include the antecedent causes of the events. Events beget events, and they succeed each other as one generation succeeds another. Knowing the character and condition of one generation and the modifications that have been made in it by its environment, we have the principal data for estimating the character of its successor and so on. The principal uncertainty we encounter, is in the prediction of changes in the environment itself. Thus the invention of a self portable power like steam made the invention of railroads possible and the construction of railroads completely changed the environment of the succeeding generations.
“Now it is difficult to forecast just what particular turn invention will take, but it is not impossible, because inventions constitute a race with generations one begetting another. Knowing all that is known to-day makes it possible to see what this knowledge will lead to to-morrow. The trouble is for one to know all that is known. As I have already mentioned, our own Lunarian historygreatly aids us in our study of your future, for we have passed through an experience, which, while it is different from what yours has been or will be, is parallel and comparable with it. And making due allowance for the difference in physical structure of the two races and considering that we are 500,000 years older than you, we have only to consult our past in order to get your future, or something much like it, for many generations to come.”
“These profiles of yours, Professor,” said I, “are evidently the result of much learned detail work and they are of extreme interest and value to the philosophical and scientific student. But to common people the details themselves are more interesting, because they are more easy to be understood and come nearer to the common life. Could you not favor me with some of the future history of our planet and especially of the United States and of the State of Minnesota. Any of the facts that you have prognosticated and from which you have deduced the generalizations that you embody in your profiles, would be of great interest.”
He seemed a little disappointed at this request, as no doubt his habits of thought had made him familiar with and attached to the comprehensive and wholesale treatment of these questions, and he looked upon the detailed story as a means to an end and containing but little interest in itself. But it is easier to generalize from details, than to construct the details. However he complied, observing that he would be compelled to get these details in part from his memory, which howeverwould be prompted and refreshed by the general profile he held in his hands.
“I will take my stand,” said he, “at about the year 2,000 of your era, and then by looking forward and backward along these lines, I think I can recover the principal factors that have entered into their make-up. This will also allow me to give you the descriptions in the past tense as events that have been accomplished up to that time and from that date we will also look forward, for the events subsequent to it.”
It occurred to me that he must be tired of holding the profile so long between his outstretched hands and so I offered to hold it for him awhile, or at least hold one end of it. At that he shifted the rolls from his front to his middle pair of hands, by which maneuver he gave me to understand that he had abundant resources for resting himself without outside help. How I did envy him that extra pair of hands.