The ancients, who had not the aid of the telescope, supplied the defect of that instrument by extraordinary penetration. They deduced all those consequences that are admitted by the moderns; for they discovered long before, by the mental eye, whatever has since been presented to bodily sight through the medium of telescopes. We have seen in how sublime a manner they entered into the views of the Supreme Being in his destination of the planets, and the multitude of stars placed by him in the firmament. We have already seen, that they looked upon them as so many suns, about which rolled planets of their own, such as those of our solar system; maintaining that those planets contained inhabitants, whose natures they presume not to describe, though they suppose them not to yield to those of ours, either in beauty or dignity.
Orpheus is the earliest author whose opinion on this subject hath come down to us. Proclus presents us with three verses of that eminent ancient, wherein he positively asserts, that “the moon was another earth, having in it mountains, vallies,” &c.
Pythagoras, who followed Orpheus in many of his opinions, taught likewise, that “the moon was an earth like ours, replete with animals, whose nature he presumed not to describe,” though he was persuaded they were of a more noble and elegant kind than ours, and not liable to the same infirmities.
Cicero ascribes a similar sentiment to Democritus, when, in explaining his theory, he says, that, according to it, Quintus Luctatius Catulus, for instance, might without end be multiplied into an infinity of worlds. It were easy to multiply quotations, in proof that this opinion was common among the ancient philosophers. There is a very remarkable passage of Stobæus, wherein he gives us Democritus’s opinion about the nature of the moon, and the cause of those spots which we see upon its disk. That great philosopher imagined, that “those spots were no other than shades, formed by the excessive height of the lunar mountains,” which intercepted the light from the lower parts of that planet, where the vallies formed themselves into what appeared to us as shades or spots.
Plutarch went still farther, alleging, that there were embosomed in the moon, vast seas and profound caverns. These, his conjectures, are built upon the same foundation with those of the moderns. He says, that those deep and extensive shades which appear upon the disk of that planet, must be occasioned by the “vast seas” it contains, which are incapable of reflecting so vivid a light, as the more solid and opaque parts; or “by caverns extremely wide and deep, wherein the rays of the sun are absorbed,” whence those shades and that obscurity which we call the spots of the moon. Xenophanes said, that those immense cavities were inhabited by another race of men, who lived there, as we do upon this earth.
MEDICAL AND LEGAL DUALITY.
Two Physicians.
A gentleman calling on a friend, found two physicians with him: he wrote the following lines on the back of his card:—
“By one physician might your work be done,
But two are like a double-barrell’d gun;
From one discharge sometimes a bird has flown,
A second barrel always brings it down.”