444 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



the atmosphere, is rejected on the ground that in that case the moon 

 would need some matter whereon to rest, and from which it might 

 derive fuel for its fire. We are informed that, according to Pindar, 

 the earth is propped up all round by pillars with bases of adamant, 

 whereas, according to the Stoics, she has no need of supports, being 

 situate in the centre of the universe toward which all things tend. 

 This last opinion is declared to be untenable, because the earth, whose 

 surface is so broken with elevations and depressions, must then be con- 

 sidered as spherical, and that would imply the existence of antipodes 

 clambering up and down the earth's sides like lizards. Coming back 

 to the principal question under discussion, the solitary interlocutor in 

 this dialogue maintains that, even granting the impossibility of pon- 

 derous, earth-like bodies moving in the heavens, it does not follow 

 thence that the moon is not another earth, but only that it happens 

 to be in a region to which it does not by its nature belong. Man, for 

 example, in like manner has his ponderous, earth-like parts in the 

 upper region of his body, in the head, and the warm, fire-like parts in 

 the lower; of his teeth some are directed downward, others upward, 

 but in neither is there anything contrary to Nature. The moon, situ- 

 ate between the sun and the earth, as the liver or other soft viscus 

 lies between the heart and the stomach, transmits heat from the 

 upper regions to us, at the same time dissipating the mists which rise 

 from the earth, purifying and attenuating them by the action of her 

 own heat. Considered as an earth, the moon is a splendid body ; as a 

 star it would be a shame to its class; for of all the innumerable heav- 

 enly bodies to quote the author literally she is the only one that 

 needs another's light ! When the sun goes down he is hidden from 

 us by the earth ; in an eclipse, on the contrary, by the moon. Hence 

 the earth, owing to its great size, covers the sun entirely, as long as 

 the night endures, while the moon sometimes conceals him totally, 

 but only for a short time. The moon, therefore, is a body like our 

 earth; and inasmuch as it contains nothing that is foul, and enjoys 

 the purest light of heaven, and is filled with genial fires which do not 

 consume like the fires of earth, the moon must contain the most de- 

 lightful savannas, flames like mountains of light, empurpled zones, 

 and abundance of gold and silver ; all this accounts for the visage 

 in the moon's disk ! The objection that the spots on the moon are 

 too large to be thus accounted for is met with the noteworthy propo- 

 sition that it is the remoteness of the light from the body casting the 

 shadow, and not the size of the body, that makes a shadow large ; 

 and if Mount Athos casts a shadow 700 stadia in length, that is a con- 

 sequence not of its height, but of the sun's great distance. The dis- 

 cussion here is diverted to the question of the habitability of the 

 moon and the fate of our souls after death ; of this argument I need 

 only quote the comforting assurance that the devout and the virtuous 

 migrate to the moon, and that from the ether in which they float 



