notebook, where the process of the sitting of the 6th of
December may be seen.
“Now,” said Nicholl, “let us attack the second question, an
indispensable complement of the first. I ask the honorable
commission, if the moon is not habitable, has she ever been
inhabited, Citizen Barbicane?”
“My friends,” replied Barbicane, “I did not undertake this
journey in order to form an opinion on the past habitability of
our satellite; but I will add that our personal observations
only confirm me in this opinion. I believe, indeed I affirm,
that the moon has been inhabited by a human race organized like
our own; that she has produced animals anatomically formed like
the terrestrial animals: but I add that these races, human and
animal, have had their day, and are now forever extinct!”
“Then,” asked Michel, “the moon must be older than the earth?”
“No!” said Barbicane decidedly, “but a world which has grown old
quicker, and whose formation and deformation have been more rapid.
Relatively, the organizing force of matter has been much more
violent in the interior of the moon than in the interior of the
terrestrial globe. The actual state of this cracked, twisted,
and burst disc abundantly proves this. The moon and the earth
were nothing but gaseous masses originally. These gases have
passed into a liquid state under different influences, and the
solid masses have been formed later. But most certainly our
sphere was still gaseous or liquid, when the moon was solidified
by cooling, and had become habitable.”
“I believe it,” said Nicholl.
“Then,” continued Barbicane, “an atmosphere surrounded it, the
waters contained within this gaseous envelope could not evaporate.
Under the influence of air, water, light, solar heat, and central
heat, vegetation took possession of the continents prepared to
receive it, and certainly life showed itself about this period,
for nature does not expend herself in vain; and a world so
wonderfully formed for habitation must necessarily be inhabited.”
“But,” said Nicholl, “many phenomena inherent in our satellite
might cramp the expansion of the animal and vegetable kingdom.
For example, its days and nights of 354 hours?”
“At the terrestrial poles they last six months,” said Michel.
“An argument of little value, since the poles are not inhabited.”
“Let us observe, my friends,” continued Barbicane, “that if in
the actual state of the moon its long nights and long days
created differences of temperature insupportable to
organization, it was not so at the historical period of time.
The atmosphere enveloped the disc with a fluid mantle; vapor
deposited itself in the shape of clouds; this natural screen
tempered the ardor of the solar rays, and retained the
nocturnal radiation. Light, like heat, can diffuse itself in
the air; hence an equality between the influences which no longer
exists, now that atmosphere has almost entirely disappeared.
And now I am going to astonish you.”
“Astonish us?” said Michel Ardan.
“I firmly believe that at the period when the moon was inhabited,
the nights and days did not last 354 hours!”
“And why?” asked Nicholl quickly.
“Because most probably then the rotary motion of the moon upon
her axis was not equal to her revolution, an equality which
presents each part of her disc during fifteen days to the action
of the solar rays.”
“Granted,” replied Nicholl, “but why should not these two
motions have been equal, as they are really so?”
“Because that equality has only been determined by
terrestrial attraction. And who can say that this attraction
was powerful enough to alter the motion of the moon at that
period when the earth was still fluid?”
“Just so,” replied Nicholl; “and who can say that the moon has
always been a satellite of the earth?”
“And who can say,” exclaimed Michel Ardan, “that the moon did
not exist before the earth?”
Their imaginations carried them away into an indefinite field
of hypothesis. Barbicane sought to restrain them.
“Those speculations are too high,” said he; “problems
utterly insoluble. Do not let us enter upon them. Let us only
admit the insufficiency of the primordial attraction; and then
by the inequality of the two motions of rotation and revolution,
the days and nights could have succeeded each other on the moon