The Moon Hoax

by Richard Adams Locke

There are no "men in the moon," There cannot be, for they could not exist without air and water. 'Tis a pity, for the sight of this planet of ours, thirteen times the size which the moon appears to us, as fair, and bright, and shining as our nightly luminary, would be a sight worth seeing.

Science has made such progress, and common sense has so far kept pace with it, that the old idea that this was the only inhabited sphere in the universe is now completely exploded. There is no reason to believe that our planet is the only one in our solar system which is devoted to a useful career; nor is there any ground for imagining that our sun is the only one, of the myriad of suns we see every night, which gives light, and heat, and happiness to human creatures. On the contrary, the supreme wisdom of the Deity affords a fair presumption that this little planet of ours is but as a grain of sand among the worlds which have been created for the glory of God, and that each planet after its kind is fitted for the habitation of creatures whose office and purpose it is to thank and bless Him for their existence. Moons may be an exception for a time.

Of all this we know but little, and can only conjecture vaguely. As science advances, we may have telescopic instruments so superior to those now in use that we shall be able to decipher the moon's surface as plainly as a distant shore on our own planet. But visits thither must ever remain as impossible as they are at present. The story of Hans Pfall will remain a brilliant imagination to the end of time.

"In consequence of the moon having no atmosphere, or but a very thin one, all celestial objects must be seen with very great distinctness. The earth, when full, appears to an inhabitant of the moon thirteen times as large as the moon appears to us; that is, its diameter is about 3-6/10 times as large as our apparent lunar diameter. It is always on the same part of the heaven, when seen from the same part of the moon. M. Quetelet, in his Astronomie Elémentaire, Paris, 1826, a very good work, which ought to be translated, has the following remarks on the appearance of the earth at the moon, which we would rather quote than vouch for, though they may possibly be well founded.

"Our vast continents, our seas, even our forests are visible to them; they perceive the enormous piles of ice collected at the poles, and the girdle of vegetation which extends on both sides of the equator; as well as the clouds which float over our heads, and sometimes hide us from them. The burning of a town or forest could not escape them, and if they had good optical instruments, they could even see the building of a new town, or the sailing of a fleet."

The lunar day, as we shall afterwards see, is equivalent to our actual month of 29½ days: though the rotation of the moon on her axis is performed in the sidereal month of 27 days 8 hours nearly. Hence the inhabitant of the moon sees the sun for 14¾ of our days together, which time is followed by a night of the same duration. Of course the existence of any animal like man is impossible there, as well on this account as on that of the want of an atmosphere.

The phases which the earth presents to the moon are similar in appearance to those which the moon presents to the earth, but in a different order. Thus, when it is new moon at the earth, it is full earth at the moon: and the contrary. When the moon is in her first quarter, the earth is in its third quarter, and so on; while half-moon at the earth is accompanied by half-earth at the moon.

There is no branch of science better fitted to be made the leading subject of general instruction than that which relates to the planetary and sidereal universe. The truths which it reveals are so startling in their nature, and apparently so far beyond the reach of human intelligence, that men of high literary name have confessed their incapacity to understand them, and their inability to believe them. There are few, indeed, we fear, who really believe that they sojourn on a revolving globe, and that each day and year of life is measured by its revolutions. There are few who believe that the great luminary of the firmament, whose restless activity they daily witness, is an immovable star, controlling, by its solid mass, the primary planets of our system, and forming, as it were, the gnomon of the great dial which measures the thread of life and the tenure of empires. Fewer still believe that each of the million of stars—those atoms of light which the telescope can scarcely descry—are the centres of planetary systems that may equal or surpass our own; and still smaller is the number who believe that the solid pavement of the globe upon which we nightly slumber is an elastic crust, imprisoning fires and forces which have often burst forth in tremendous energy, and are, at this very instant, struggling to escape—now finding an outlet in volcanic fires—now heaving and shaking the earth—now upraising islands and continents, and gathering strength perhaps for some final outburst which may shatter our earth in pieces, or change its form, or scatter its waters over the land. And yet these are truths than which there is nothing truer, and nothing more worthy of our study.

In order to learn, then, what is the constitution, and what has been or may be the probable history of the various worlds in our firmament, we must study the constitution and physical history of our own. The men of limited reason who believed that the earth was created and launched into its ethereal course when man was summoned to its occupation, must have either denied altogether the existence of our solar system, or have regarded all its planets as coeval with their own, and as but the ministers to its convenience. Science, however, has now corrected this error, and liberated the pious mind from its embarrassments. The Palæontologist—the student of ancient life—has demonstrated, by evidence not to be disputed, that the earth had been inhabited by animals and adorned with plants during immeasurable cycles of time antecedent to the creation of man—that when the volcano, the earthquake, and the flood, had destroyed and buried them, nobler forms of life were created to undergo the same fiery ordeal:—and that, by a series of successive creations and catastrophes, the earth was prepared for the residence of man, and the rich materials in its bosom elaborated for his use, and thrown within his grasp. In the age of our own globe, then, we see the age of its brother planets, and in the antiquity of our own system we see the antiquity of the other systems of the universe. In our catastrophes, too, we recognise theirs, and in our advancing knowledge and progressive civilization, we witness the development of the universal mind—the march of the immortal spirit to its final destiny of glory or of shame.

The following are the names which have been given to the mountains and valleys, or hollows, in the moon, and which are referred to in the accompanying picture [See title page].