Essential Science Fiction Novels - Volume 10. Edward Bellamy

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СКАЧАТЬ but it may be quite the reverse with the poorest. Then, as to quality of the food: if nature has provided more delicious fruits for the natives of tropical climates, she has given a sharper appetite and stronger digestion to the Hyperborean, which equalizes the sum of their enjoyments. A dry crust is relished, when an individual is hungry, more than the most savoury and delicate dainties when he is in a fever; and water to one man, is a more delicious beverage than the juice of the grape or of the palm to another. As to the necessity for labour, which is ever pressing on the inhabitants of cold countries, it is this consequent and incessant activity which gives health to their bodies, and cheerful vigour to their minds; since, without such exercise, man would have been ever a prey to disease and discontent. And, if no other occupation be provided for the mind of man, it carves out employment for itself in vain regrets and gloomy forebodings—in jealousy, envy, and the indulgence of every hateful and tormenting passion: hence the proverb,—'If you want corn, cultivate your soil; if you want weeds, let it alone.'

      "But again: the native of those sunny isles is never sensible of the bounty of Providence, till he is deprived of it. Here, as well as every where else, desire outgoes gratification. Man sees or fancies much that he cannot obtain; and in his regret for what he wants, forgets what he already possesses. What is it to one with a tooth-ache, that a savoury dish is placed before him? It is the same with the mind as the body: when pain engrosses it in one way, it cannot relish pleasure in another. Every climate and country too, have their own evils and inconveniences."

      "You think, then," said I, "that the native of Kamtschatka has the advantage?"

      "No," he rejoined, "I do not mean to say that, for the evils of his situation are likewise very great; but they are more manifest, and therefore less necessary to be brought to your notice."

      It was now, by our time-pieces, about two o'clock in the afternoon—that is, two hours had elapsed since we left terra firma; and, saving a few biscuits and a glass of cordial a-piece, we had not taken any sort of refreshment. The Brahmin proposed that we now should dine; and, opening a small case, and drawing forth a cold fowl, a piece of dried goat's flesh, a small pot of ghee, some biscuits, and a bottle of arrack flavoured with ginger and spices, with a larger one of water, we ate as heartily as we had ever done at the hermitage; the slight motion of our machine to one side or the other, whenever we moved, giving us nearly as much exercise as a vessel in a smooth sea. The animal food had been provided for me, for the Brahmin satisfied his hunger with the ghee, sweetmeats, and biscuit, and ate sparingly even of them. We each took two glasses of the cordial diluted with water, and carefully putting back the fragments, again turned our thoughts to the planet we had left.

      The middle of the Pacific now lay immediately beneath us. I had never before been struck with the irregular distribution of land and water on our globe, the expanse of ocean here being twice as large as in any other part; and, on remarking this striking difference to the Brahmin, he replied:

      "It is the opinion of some philosophers in the moon, that their globe is a fragment of ours; and, as they can see every part of the earth's surface, they believe the Pacific was the place from which the moon was ejected. They pretend that a short, but consistent tradition of the disruption, has regularly been transmitted from remote antiquity; and they draw confirmation of their hypothesis from many words of the Chinese, and other Orientals, with whom they claim affinity."

      "Ridiculous!" said I; "the moon is one-fourth the diameter of the earth; and if the two were united in one sphere, the highest mountains must have been submerged, and of course there would have been no human inhabitants; or, if any part of the land was then bare, on the waters retiring to fill up the chasm made by the separation of so large a body as the moon, the parts before habitable would be, instead of two, three, or at most four miles, as your Himalah mountains are said to be, some twenty or thirty miles above the level of the ocean."

      "That is not quite so certain," said he: "we know not of what the interior of the earth is composed, any more than we could distinguish the contents of an egg, by penetrating one hundredth part of its shell. But we see, that if one drop of water be united with another, they form one large drop, as spherical as either of the two which composed it: and on the separation of the moon from the earth, if they were composed of mingled solids and fluids, or if the solid parts rested on fluid, both the fragment and the remaining earth would assume the same globular appearance they now present.

      "On this subject, however, I give no opinion. I only say, that it is not contradicted by the facts you have mentioned. The fluid and the solid parts settling down into a new sphere, might still retain nearly their former proportion: or, if the fragment took away a greater proportion of solid than of fluid, then the waters retiring to fill up the cavity, would leave parts bare which they had formerly covered. There are some facts which give a colour to this supposition; for most of the high mountains of the earth afford evidence of former submersion; and those which are the highest, the Himalah, are situated in the country to which the origin of civilization, and even the human species itself, may be traced. The moon too, we know, has much less water than the earth: and all those appearances of violence, which have so puzzled cosmogonists, the topsy-turvy position in which vegetable substances are occasionally found beneath the soil on which they grew, and the clear manifestations of the action of water, in the formation of strata, in the undulating forms it has left, and in the correspondent salient and retiring angles of mountains and opposite coasts, were all caused by the disruption; and as the moon has a smaller proportion of water than the earth, she has also the highest mountains."

      "But, father," said I, "the diameter of the earth being but four times as large as that of the moon, how can the violent separation of so large a portion of our planet be accounted for? Where is the mighty agent to rend off such a mass, and throw it to thirty times the earth's diameter?"

      "Upon that subject," said he, "the Lunarian sages are much divided. Many hypotheses have been suggested on the subject, some of which are very ingenious, and all very fanciful: but the two most celebrated, and into which all the others are now merged, are those of Neerlego and Darcandarca; the former of whom, in a treatise extending to nine quarto volumes, has maintained that the disruption was caused by a comet; and the latter, in a work yet more voluminous, has endeavoured to prove, that when the materials of the moon composed a part of the earth, this planet contained large masses of water, which, though the particles cohered with each other, were disposed to fly off from the earth; and that, by an accumulation of the electric fluid, according to laws which he has attempted to explain, the force was at length sufficient to heave the rocks which encompassed these masses, from their beds, and to project them from the earth, when, partaking of the earth's diurnal motion, they assumed a spherical form, and revolved around it. And further, that because the moon is composed of two sorts of matter, that are differently affected towards the earth in its revolution round that planet, the same parts of its surface always maintain some relative position to us, which thus necessarily causes the singularity of her turning on her axis precisely in the time in which she revolves round the earth."

      "I see," said I, "that doctors differ and dispute about their own fancies every where."

      "That is," said he, "because they contend as vehemently for what they imagine as for what they see; and perhaps more so, as their perceptions are like those of other men, while their reveries are more exclusively their own. Thus, in the present instance, the controversy turns upon the mode in which the separation was effected, which affords the widest field for conjecture, while they both agree that such separation has taken place. As to this fact I have not yet made up my mind, though it must be confessed that there is much to give plausibility to their opinion. I recognise, for instance, a striking resemblance between the animal and vegetable productions of Asia and those of the moon."

      "Do you think, father," said I, "that animal, or even vegetable life, could possibly exist in such a disruption as is supposed?"

      "Why not?" said he: "you are not to imagine that the shock would be felt in proportion СКАЧАТЬ