ARE THERE OCEANS IN OUTER SPACE? 



ocean's surface, along parts of its coastlines, and down 

 into the deeps — we must have some conception of man's 

 relation to the world's seas, and a mental picture of the 

 oceans as compared with our world, and with the solar 

 system. 



Man is a creature dependent upon the earth (his 

 natural habitat) for his daily life and substance. He 

 depends upon air for the purification of his blood — and 

 no artificial expedients can make him independent of it 

 for long. He also depends upon fire for his existence — 

 that mysterious phenomenon which is conditioned by the 

 sun, directly and indirectly. But he is most intimately 

 dependent on water, for his body is mainly composed of 

 it. In fact, by a curious coincidence, the percentage of 

 water in man's body roughly approximates to the seven- 

 tenths preponderance of the world's water surface as 

 compared with its land area. 



Man's natural habitat, earth, is one across which fire 

 and water wage incessant warfare. In this warfare the 

 air is an instrument, or weapon used by the protagonists, 

 rather than a field of action. Water — whether in the form 

 of the world's oceans, or as rivers or streams, or merely 

 in the form of torrential rains — attacks the earth, 

 crumbling and eating away the world's coastlines, in- 

 cessantly changing the shapes of countries and con- 

 tinents, and killing millions of humans through the 

 centuries by wrecking man's ships and smashing his 

 dwellings with devastating floods. 



Fire retaliates by destroying man's dwellings and 

 forests whenever he relaxes his watchfulness. Man enlists 

 the aid of either of the protagonists as it suits him, but he 

 is forever menaced by both, despite the paradoxical fact 

 that they are his natural friends as well as enemies. 



Man is curiously situated in relation to this incessant 

 warfare. He lives upon a spinning globe, slightly flattened 

 at the poles — a globe which has often been compared, 

 quite appropriately as regards shape, with an ordinary 



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