"Especially did it occur to me to laugh at the men who were quarreling
about the boundaries of their land, and at those who were proud because
they cultivated the Sikyonian plain, or owned that part of Marathon
around Oenoe, or held possession of a thousand acres at Acharnae. Of
the whole of Greece, as it then appeared to me from above, being about
the size of four fingers, I think Attica was in proportion a mere speck.
So that I wondered on what condition it was left to these rich men to be
proud."[14]
[Footnote 14: Ikaromenippus; or, Above the Clouds. Prof. D.C. Brown's
translation.]
Such scenes as Lucian beheld, in imagination, upon the earth while
looking from the moon, many would fain behold, with telescopic aid,
upon the moon while looking from the earth. Galileo believed that the
details of the lunar surface revealed by his telescope closely resembled
in their nature the features of the earth's surface, and for a long
time, as the telescope continued to be improved, observers were
impressed with the belief that the moon possessed not only mountains and
plains, but seas and oceans also.
It was the discovery that the moon has no perceptible atmosphere that
first seriously undermined the theory of its habitability. Yet, as was
remarked in the introductory chapter, there has of late been some change
of view concerning a lunar atmosphere; but the change has been not so
much in the ascertained facts as in the way of looking at those facts.
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