54 -- 



nomical world. The telescopes of our observatories were 

 directed towards this satellite hundreds of thousands of 

 times, and every time yielded only partial and local re- 

 sults. We learned that it revolves round our globe in an 

 elliptical orbit, and that it does not revolve upon its own 

 axis like the earth, but occupies in each such revolution 

 the same time it takes to complete its orbit round the 

 earth. The moon we also found was of volcanic origin, 

 possessing lakes and mountains, but destitute of air and 

 consequently without vegetable life. For the rest it moves 

 with the same side always towards our planet so that 

 its physiognomy presents no changes. But what the moon 

 is in itself, why it does not revolve around its own axis 

 in the same way as our earth, why it presents alwaj^s 

 one aspect to its planet what its influence may be, or 

 how it is acted upon by earth these are points as to 

 which the scientific world remained in darkness. Physi- 

 cal geography it is true admits certain hypotheses regard- 

 ing lunar tides, but all such theories are of most hyper- 

 bolical origin, as I shall try to explain in another place. 



In an earlier part of this work, speaking of the influ- 

 ence of the sun on the earth and the surrounding plane- 

 tary world, I said: Where there is a sun, natures revives; 

 where there is no sun she perishes. If we regard the 

 earth as a rotating sphere with one side turned towards 

 the sun and the other towards infinite space, judging by 

 the above axiom one half of the globe must be daily in 

 a dying and the other half in a reviving condition, and 

 thus the sun, expending its radiate energy on the revival 

 of the perishing life of earth, would receive either 

 nothing or at any rate infinitesimal quantities of nourish- 

 ment in return, and finally the too prolonged absence of 

 solar rays at the poles would result in the destruction of 

 all vegetation, which in its turn would react injuriously 

 on the perfection of the planet. 



In order that the flora of the earth should not be thus 

 endangered, nature has furnished the planets with their 

 satellites and earth among them with its moon. The 



