The Humanisphere

by Brian Stableford

  Lieutenant Drummond, I might say, is the only one among us who has proposed a solution: I am in haste to make it known, believing it to be very appropriate to demonstrate how powerful the entirely experimental method followed since Newton by the astronomical school is. I shall leave my young friend to express himself in this circumstance, and it is his notes that I am transcribing here:

  “We have constantly observed,” he said, “that that in the excursions that have always taken place when the sun is no longer illuminating the lunar hemisphere turned toward us, the savage Vespertilios seemed to launch themselves into the remotest regions, and they were seen to disappear at the horizon as if they were taking refuge in the hemisphere opposed to the Earth. It was impossible for us to conserve any doubt in that regard after the observation we made on 17 September 1835.

  “From that fact, it results necessarily that the hemisphere that we can perceive differs essentially from the one that it is given to us to observe. In fact, nowhere, except in the great fissures that the craters of extinct craters present, does one encounter beings belonging to that savage and bloodthirsty race. Everywhere that the Selenians have been able to establish their dwellings, they have destroyed, or at least expelled, that enemy race.

  “In consequence, since the unknown hemisphere of the Moon serves as a refuge for those savages, we are forced to conclude that it is entirely dissimilar to the known hemisphere. It doubtless presents immense fissures, enormous craters, infinite precipices, such that one can see all the way to the center of the planet. In sum, the Moon presents something akin to a concavity in its invisible hemisphere. From that mathematical consequence it results quite naturally, by the sole fact of the lunar from, that he center of gravity is more than eighty-three miles closer to the Earth than the sphere that would have for its circumference the apparent disk of the Moon. The inclination of the polar edifices thus no longer has anything surprising about it.”

  That conclusion is certainly worthy of the present state of science, and I adopt it with great satisfaction. I ought, however to add that before Lieutenant Drummond, Helvetius had announced the principle that serves as a base for that ingenious theory of the figure of the Moon, in order that justice can be rendered to everyone; for in the sciences, an invention belongs to the first to stake a claim by delivering an idea to publicity. Now, Helvetius wrote in 1647:

  Quod si in Luna dentur res creatae viventes, illae quae habitant in hemisphaerio Lunae patente et aperto Terrae, ratione luminis sunt melioris conditionis quam illae quae colunt hemisphaerium Lunae nobis absconditum ac latens.

  That posited, we can proceed boldly with the description of the capital of the Moon—or, to put it better, the only agglomeration of edifices that we have found sufficiently large to merit bearing the name of city.

  Selenopolis, the name we have given to it by common accord, is situated, as we have said above, at 0 degrees 48 minutes of longitude and 0 degrees 53 minutes of north latitude. It is built in an uneven, broken, fissured ground where bottomless abysses are found at every instant at the foot of a gigantic peak; there are a few scattered plateaux of medium extent, and a few pleasant valleys planted with trees that seem to be public gardens, but more frequently steep mountains in the form of bizarrely truncated conoids and varying distances from one another. That is the ground on which the Seleniabns have built their capital.

  We have been unable to reach complete agreement on the reasons that might have determined the choice of that rugged and broken region in preference to more cheerful and more fortunate regions. The only reasonable hypothesis that has been presented to our minds is that they wanted to supervise at the closest possible range the factories that we have distinguished in the depths of the abovementioned fissures. They wanted by their number and by their continuous presence to protect their subjects against the disasters that the spirit of sedition and revolt would not fail to bring down on their heads if they could ever formulate the idea of an enterprise crowned with some success. They must have preferred to intimidate them and impose a salutary terror upon them, rather than find themselves constrained to make terrible examples to repress their disorders.

  Whether it was politics or the instinct of self-preservation, however, whether hazard or unknown causes led the Selenians to build their city in that place, the fact remains, and it is with the facts before anything else that we have to occupy ourselves.

  The plan of Selenopolis presents something approximating to a regular octagon. At each angle there is an observation castle, the utility of which might have been very great in the past but which is presently much less, because, for the eleven months that our observations lasted, we did not see a single savage Vespertilio approach, even remotely, the regions neighboring the city. The memory of numerous defeats had doubtless made them avoid the area.

  The entire southern part of the city is very populous; it is there that the most numerous habitations are found. The buildings are generally circular; the two walls that enclose them describe two concentric circles. The space, sometimes very extensive, left empty inside is planted with trees whose distribution is so carefully organized by species, in accordance with the seasons, that we did not observe them a single time without finding some in flower, some in fruit and others in full maturity, always one after another successively, which necessarily supposes a great variety of endeavors and occupations, and, in consequence, a long series of observations of culture and climatic variations.

  The habitations of the Selenian city are not isolated from one another as blocks of houses are separated by streets in all terrestrial cities; on the contrary, they communicate by means of open galleries carried by bridges every time they pass over the abysses described above. We shall remark here that the openings made in the walls to perform the functions of doors as well as windows are triangular in all the edifices of Selenopolis, contrary to what we observed in the castles and isolated monuments. In cities, where one can neglect precautions of defense, one is only occupied with the conveniences of purpose, so the windows have the form of isosceles triangles whose base is placed horizontally at the upper part of the opening; the corresponding angle is 96 degrees, which gives 42 degrees for each of the two superior angles. The singular form of those tapering windows caused us the greatest astonishment, but it soon disappeared on seeing the admirable facility with which the Selenians and civilized Vespertilios enter and exit from them flying. Then we understood that the form in question had been decided with a view to the purpose of the opening that it was designed to frame.

  The aspect of those openings has the most beautiful effect on the immense facades, which are decorated with marbles and metallic ornaments in all the monuments of a certain importance.

  The richest and vastest of these edifices are located in the northern part of the city. We have not been able to discover a plausible reason for that disposition, so we shall not seek to explain it. There, we have observed two vast elliptical monuments whose greatest diameter is no less than half a mile in length, and which are separated by the entire width of the city. An octagonal expanse of water five hundred feet in diameter, which appeared to us to be very deep, is located at the center of one of the uncovered areas left empty between the walls of these monuments; the corresponding area is occupied in the other by an observation castle similar in every respect to those we have described. Around that expanse of water, eight long needles in the form of triangular obelisks are distributed, which, with another placed at the center and much longer, form a set of nine.

  The walls that enclose those vast enclosures are pierced at intervals by openings disposed in such a fashion that the Selenians need the greatest skill to pass through them without suspending the rapidity of their flight. Those windows, triangular, like all those we have observed in the city, are distributed regularly in nine rows at different heights throughout the circumference of the edifice. Contrary to the usage observed among us, however, the windows of the various rows are not arranged directly above one another, but
distributed in such a fashion that the one in the upper row is directly above the middle of the space separating those below; thus, the Selenians have established in principle the theory of fillings above voids, of which a few trials are found in Gothic edifices.

  These monuments appear to us to be designed for the exercises of young Selenians. It is where they come to train, by means of simulated conflict with civilized Vespertilios, for combat with savage Vespertilios. In those exercises, one of the troops is always composed of mingled Selenians and Vespertilios, while the other is made up only of Vespertilios. We have observed them in these exercises several times; they launch themselves with incredible rapidity, rising, descending, passing through the thousand openings in that arena of sorts; then, depending on the location, they plunge into the expanse of water or gather in number around the fortress, continually brushing in their multiple evolutions the sharp spikes of the observation-boxes.

  Several times, I ought to say, those interesting spectacles attracted our attention to the point of rendering us passionate spectators and making us lose sight of our role as scientific observers , and it was difficult not to abandon oneself to that involvement; in fact, I do not know whether any spectacle exists more interesting than that of intelligent beings deploying all their resources of cunning, skill and physical and mental power in a goal of practical utility and without great danger to their person—for their skill is such that in those dangerous exercises, accidents appeared to us to be extremely rare.

  The space contained between these two monuments and a third, different fort placed in the center of the city and forming an equilateral triangle with them is evidently the richest and most animated part of the city.

  There, as elsewhere, bridges of several tiers are extended over the abysses between two rocks, sometimes only between two sharp peaks; some are formed of a single stone, others of two enormous masses of rock between which a third is fitted like the keystone of an arch. There, as elsewhere, all the peaks, all the summits and all the houses are decorated variously with metallic spikes, or clusters of triangular obelisks, plantations of various sorts; but, more than anywhere else, the monuments are rich, numerous and very extensive.

  Nothing equals the splendor, ostentation and originality of a construction of strange taste extended between the highest two peaks in the central part of the city. It is like an immense wall built with the most precious materials, pierced at entirely irregular intervals by large triangular openings, with the form, unlike those we have observed almost everywhere else, of equilateral triangles. The upper part is bizarrely terminated by crenellations separated at intervals by triangular gaps disposed three by three at unequal heights. Over each of the crenellations, in a space expressly contrived, rises a triangular obelisk of a bright blue material, mixed with yellow threads like gold.

  We were so dazzled by the richness and glamour of all those monuments of the most diverse forms that it took us several days to remark what was happening in the depths of the vast abysses that we had identified at the very beginning. It was something hideous and repulsive. As the depth increased, the walls of rock became viscous and smoky, and at the very bottom, we saw something turbulent and filthy stirring in places, to which we were not able to put a name.

  After having vanquished our repugnance, however, we discovered, on looking more closely, immense machines that were visibly operating with great regularity. Here, we distinguished immense pendulums, there large wheels rotated manually by beings who race it was impossible for us to recognize, so uncertain and unsteady as the little light that penetrated to those depths.

  Sometimes the depths of those immense fissures suddenly became an ardent red, like the fire of a blast furnace, but an instant later such a thick smoke rose up that it hid everything from our gaze before we could recover from the dazzle caused by the sudden brightness, and it was not possible for us to observe anything. On seeing a few civilized Vespertilios plunge into those deep fissures occasionally, and come back as quickly as possible, we thought that they had gone to give orders for the work that was doubtless being done in those horrible abodes, and that the workers might be Beavers, doubtless condemned to that harsh labor.

  And we wondered whether it really was from those somber factories that the rich fabrics emerged in which the Selenians were clad, and all the apparatus of luxury that surrounded them, all the ornaments with which they decorated their edifices, their metals and their marbles, so admirable sculpted.

  It was, in consequence, there that the materials had been prepared of the admirable temple placed in the center of the city in front of the pierced wall that we have described, forming an equilateral triangle with the two arenas. It seemed to us then quite different from the way we had seen it at first; its richness produced a very different impression on us, now that we knew all the dolors that it had cost.

  The plan of that edifice presents a precise equilateral triangle, each angle of which is blunted and rounded. It is supported by thirty-six columns devoid of bases or capitals, distributed in sequence around the edifice, nine on each side and three on each curved section. Those columns are surmounted by a platform supported on the other side by a wall, from which they are nine feet distant, a separation three times that which separates them from one another. They support a wall of an elevation double their length, and on which a monolith is set that covers the whole edifice, which is a single massive block of a milky gray substance, which we presume might be unpolished crystal.

  That opaque body appears to us to let some light penetrate the interior of the edifice, but it prevented us from seeing anything that might be happening there. Mr. Drummond thought that if the crystal was unpolished, it was doubtless a precaution to shelter the mysteries from the indiscretion of civilized Vespertilios, who were, in any case, not admitted to the interior of the unitary temple, toward which the faces of all the inhabitants of the Moon are directed at times of prayer.

  At the three angles of the edifice are three elongated triangular pyramids, which appeared to us, like the columns sustaining them, to be carved in the blues of a mineral product, which, by the brightness of its blue color and the seams of gold that we saw mixed in with it, appears to us to have a considerable analogy with the precious stone known as lapis lazuli, from which we derive the color commonly known as ultramarine.

  The windows of the temple, bordered by a strip of that beautiful marble, are also fitted with unpolished crystal, and we have presumed that the interval between the wall supported on the columns and the interior wall rising to the top might well have been contrived with the aim of preventing Vespertilios from seeing anything of the interior of the sanctuary when the Selenians admitted thereto open the windows to introduce themselves.

  Seventh Fragment: CONJECTURES ON

  WORSHIP AND RELIGION

  Thus far, in the report of so many astonishing discoveries, and in order to communicate the elements of our conviction to the scientific world, it is evident that we have consistently proceeded to philosophical deductions solely by the examination of the facts and the relationships between them. To embark on the exploration of facts of a major order, however, perhaps requires, a priori, to suppose them and to proceed to their encounter by way of the conjectural method. The history of science shows clearly enough that more than one discovery has resulted from hypothesis, and that the experimental method alone, by paralyzing the temerities of the human mind, would have imprisoned it and condemned it to crawl in the narrow main of known facts.

  My colleagues and I, therefore, did not refrain from proposing hypotheses, sometimes frivolous, which helped us rest from our labors during the stormy nights that the equinoxes commonly bring to the extreme regions of southern Africa.

  During one of those nights, one of the boldest and most important conjectures was submitted to us by the honorable Sir William Cobett, a member of the Biblical Society who had arrived at the Cape shortly before, momentarily deflected from the voyage he was making to India by the desire to m
eet up with his young and savant friend Lieutenant Drummond.

  The hypothesis that he introduced into our conversations was significant and serious; it concerned primarily the dogma of revelation; Sir William Cobett only produced it tremulously himself. It was a matter of deciding, in accordance with the errant and fragmentary observations that we had collected scrupulously up to that point, still awaiting a decisive incident that would rally them under a single point of view, whether the Selenians, and the species of an inferior nature that are immediately subordinate to them, recognize a supreme God and, in consequence, honor him.

  That proposition encloses a second, and one of superior interest, which had not at first been formulated by any of us, although the Selenians might certainly have been pagans or idolaters, without having the slightest acquaintance with the eternal verities propagated by the Gospel. Newton had moist eyes every time he pronounced the name of the Eternal! Without the revelation, our world would still be languishing in darkness. In any case, as one can imagine, it was not for Christian Englishmen, enlightened by the luminaries philosophy and the progress of civilization, to pose a question unfortunately defended by the skeptic Bayle as to whether an atheistic civilization could exist.8

  Our terrestrial globe—which of us is unaware of it?—has presented here and there in the course of the centuries a few attempts at realization so deadly as to attest to the human mind one obvious fact: that the propagation of the poisonous maxims of atheism have consistently ended in bloodshed, after having covered the planet with scandals and ravages and causing retrogression to a state of barbarity. It is by laws, natural or revealed, that societies are organized and subsist. The superhuman notions of devotion, morality and resignation, by establishing order and progress in the privileged races of the universe, moderate the egotism and destructive spirit of the personality, while the negation of God leads to the negation of all social order. The harmonies of the Selenian world immediately reject the merest admissibility of those deplorable attempts.