Faint perceptions of moving formations, often almost rigorously
geometric, upon one part of this earth, and perhaps faintest of
signal-like sounds that reached the moon—the new prophet—and that he
preached the old lunar doctrine that there is no god but the Earth-god,
but exhorted his hearers to forsake their altars upon which had burned
unheeded lights, and to build a temple upon which might be recited a
litany of lights and shades.
We are only now realizing how the Earth-god looks to the beings of the
moon—who know that this earth is dominant; who see it frilled with the
loops of the major planets; its Elizabethan ruff wrought by the
complications of the asteroids; the busy little sun that brushes off the
dark.
God of the moon, when mists make it expressionless—a vast, bland,
silvery Buddha.
God of the moon, when seeing is clear—when the disguise is off—when, at
night, from pointed white peaks drip the fluctuating red lights of a
volcano, this earth is the appalling god of carnivorousness.
Sometimes the great roundish earth, with the heavens behind it broken by
refraction, looks like something thrust into a shell from external
existence—clouds of tornadoes as if in its grasp—and it looks like the
fist of God, clutching rags of ultimate fire and confusion.
That a new prophet had appeared upon the moon, and had excited new hope
of evoking response from the bland and shining Stupidity that has so
often been mistaken for God, or from the Appalling that is so identified
with Divinity—from the clutched and menacing fist that has so often been
worshipped.
There is no intelligence except era-intelligence. Suppose the whole
geo-system be a super-embryonic thing. Then, by the law of the embryo,
its parts can not organize until comes scheduled time. So there are
local congeries of development of a chick in an egg, but these local
centers can not more than faintly sketch out relations with one another,
until comes the time when they may definitely integrate. Suppose that
far back in the 19th century there were attempts to communicate from the
moon; but suppose that they were premature: then we suppose the fate of
the protoplasmic threads that feel out too soon from one part of an egg
to another. In October, 1866, Schmidt, of Athens, saw and reported in
terms of the concepts of his era, and described in conventional
selenographic language. See _Rept. B. A._, 1867.
Upon Dec. 14, 16, 25, 27, 1866, Linné was seen as a white spot. But
there was something that had the seeming more of a design, or of a
pattern, an elaboration upon the mere turning to white of something that
had been black—a fine, black spot upon Linné; by Schmidt and Buckingham,
in December, 1866 (_The Student_, 1-261). The most important
consideration of all is reviewed by Schmidt in the _Rept. B. A._,
1867-22—that sunlight and changes of sunlight had nothing to do with the
changing appearances of Linné. Jan. 14, 1867—the white covering, or, at
least, seeming of covering, of Linné, had seemingly disappeared—Knott’s
impression of Linné as a dark spot, but “definition” was poor. Jan.
16—Knott’s very strong impression, which, however, he says may have been
an illusion, of a small central dark spot upon Linné. Dawes’
observation, of March 15, 1867—“an excessively minute black dot in the
middle of Linné.”
A geometric figure that was white-bordered and centered with black,
formed and dissolved and formed again.
I have an impression of spectacles that were common in the United
States, during the War: hosts of persons arranging themselves in living
patterns: flags, crosses, and in one instance, in which thousands were
engaged, in the representation of an enormous Liberty Bell. Astronomers
have thought of trying to communicate with Mars or the moon by means of
great geometric constructions placed conspicuously, but there is nothing
so attractive to attention as change, and a formation that could appear
and disappear would enchance the geometric with the dynamic. That the
units of the changing compositions that covered Linné were the lunarians
themselves—that Linné was terraced—hosts of the inhabitants of the moon
standing upon the ridges of their Cheops of the Serene Sea, some of them
dressed in white and standing in a border, and some of them dressed in
black, centering upon the apex, or the dark material of the apex left
clear for the contrast, all of them unified in a hope of conveying an
impression of the geometric, as the product of design, and
distinguishable from the topographic, to the shining god that makes the
stars of their heavens marginal.
It is a period of great activity—or of conflicting ideas and
purposes—upon the moon: new and experimental demonstrations, but also,
of course, the persistence of the old. In the _Astronomical Register_,
5-114, Thomas G. Elger writes that upon the 9th of April, 1867, he was
surprised to see, upon the dark part of the moon, a light like a star of
the 7th magnitude, at 7.30 P. M. It became fainter, and looked almost
extinguished at 9 o’clock. Mr. Elger had seen lights upon the moon
before, but never before a light so clear—“too bright to be overlooked
by the most careless observer.” May 7, 1867—the beacon-like light of
Aristarchus—observed by Tempel, of Marseilles, when Aristarchus was upon
the dark part of the moon (_Astro. Reg._, 5-220). Upon the night of June
10, 1867, Dawes saw three distinct, roundish, black spots near Sulpicius
Gallus, which is near Linné; when looked for upon the 13th, they had
disappeared (_The Student_, 1-261).