The Moon-Voyage

CHAPTER XIX.

A MEET­ING.

The next day the sun did not rise ear­ly enough to sat­is­fy pub­lic im­pa­tience. Bar­bi­cane, fear­ing that in­dis­creet ques­tions would be put to Michel Ar­dan, would like to have re­duced his au­di­tors to a small num­ber of adepts, to his col­leagues for in­stance. But it was as easy as to dam up the Falls at Ni­agara. He was, there­fore, obliged to re­nounce his project, and let his friend run all the risks of a pub­lic lec­ture. The new Town Hall of Tam­pa Town, notwith­stand­ing its colos­sal di­men­sions, was con­sid­ered in­suf­fi­cient for the oc­ca­sion, which had as­sumed the pro­por­tions of a pub­lic meet­ing.

The place cho­sen was a vast plain, sit­uat­ed out­side the town. In a few hours they suc­ceed­ed in shel­ter­ing it from the rays of the sun. The ships of the port, rich in can­vas, fur­nished the nec­es­sary ac­ces­sories for a colos­sal tent. Soon an im­mense sky of cloth was spread over the cal­cined plain, and de­fend­ed it against the heat of the day. There 300,000 per­sons stood and braved a sti­fling tem­per­ature for sev­er­al hours whilst await­ing the French­man's ar­rival. Of that crowd of spec­ta­tors one-​third alone could see and hear; a sec­ond third saw bad­ly, and did not hear. As to the re­main­ing third, it nei­ther heard nor saw, though it was not the least ea­ger to ap­plaud.

At three o'clock Michel Ar­dan made his ap­pear­ance, ac­com­pa­nied by the prin­ci­pal mem­bers of the Gun Club. He gave his right arm to Pres­ident Bar­bi­cane, and his left to J.T. Mas­ton, more ra­di­ant than the mid­day sun, and near­ly as rud­dy.

Ar­dan mount­ed the plat­form, from which his eyes ex­tend­ed over a for­est of black hats. He did not seem in the least em­bar­rassed; he did not pose; he was at home there, gay, fa­mil­iar, and ami­able. To the cheers that greet­ed him he an­swered by a gra­cious bow; then with his hand asked for si­lence, be­gan to speak in En­glish, and ex­pressed him­self very cor­rect­ly in these terms:--

“Gen­tle­men,” said he, “al­though it is very warm, I in­tend to keep you a few min­utes to give you some ex­pla­na­tion of the projects which have ap­peared to in­ter­est you. I am nei­ther an or­ator nor a _sa­vant_, and I did not count up­on hav­ing to speak in pub­lic; but my friend Bar­bi­cane tells me it would give you plea­sure, so I do it. Then lis­ten to me with your 600,000 ears, and please to ex­cuse the faults of the or­ator.”

This un­cer­emo­ni­ous be­gin­ning was much ad­mired by the au­di­ence, who ex­pressed their sat­is­fac­tion by an im­mense mur­mur of ap­plause.

“Gen­tle­men,” said he, “no mark of ap­pro­ba­tion or dis­sent is pro­hib­it­ed. That set­tled, I con­tin­ue. And, first of all, do not for­get that you have to do with an ig­no­rant man, but his ig­no­rance goes far enough to ig­nore dif­fi­cul­ties. It has, there­fore, ap­peared a sim­ple, nat­ural, and easy thing to him to take his pas­sage in a pro­jec­tile and to start for the moon. That jour­ney would be made soon­er or lat­er, and as to the mode of lo­co­mo­tion adopt­ed, it sim­ply fol­lows the law of progress. Man be­gan by trav­el­ling on all fours, then one fine day he went on two feet, then in a cart, then in a coach, then on a rail­way. Well, the pro­jec­tile is the car­riage of the fu­ture, and, to speak the truth, plan­ets are on­ly pro­jec­tiles, sim­ple can­non-​balls hurled by the hand of the Cre­ator. But to re­turn to our ve­hi­cle. Some of you, gen­tle­men, may think that the speed it will trav­el at is ex­ces­sive--noth­ing of the kind. All the plan­ets go faster, and the earth it­self in its move­ment round the sun car­ries us along three times as fast. Here are some ex­am­ples. On­ly I ask your per­mis­sion to ex­press my­self in leagues, for Amer­ican mea­sures are not very fa­mil­iar to me, and I fear get­ting mud­dled in my cal­cu­la­tions.”

The de­mand ap­peared quite sim­ple, and of­fered no dif­fi­cul­ty. The or­ator re­sumed his speech.

“The fol­low­ing, gen­tle­men, is the speed of the dif­fer­ent plan­ets. I am obliged to ac­knowl­edge that, notwith­stand­ing my ig­no­rance, I know this small as­tro­nom­ical de­tail ex­act­ly, but in two min­utes you will be as learned as I. Learn, then, that Nep­tune goes at the rate of 5,000 leagues an hour; Uranus, 7,000; Sat­urn, 8,858; Jupiter, 11,675; Mars, 22,011; the earth, 27,500; Venus, 32,190; Mer­cury, 52,520; some comets, 14,000 leagues in their per­ihe­lion! As to us, ver­ita­ble idlers, peo­ple in no hur­ry, our speed does not ex­ceed 9,900 leagues, and it will go on de­creas­ing! I ask you if there is any­thing to won­der at, and if it is not ev­ident that it will be sur­passed some day by still greater speeds, of which light or elec­tric­ity will prob­ably be the me­chan­ical agents?”

No one seemed to doubt this af­fir­ma­tion.

“Dear hear­ers,” he re­sumed, “ac­cord­ing to cer­tain nar­row minds--that is the best qual­ifi­ca­tion for them--hu­man­ity is in­closed in a Popil­ius cir­cle which it can­not break open, and is con­demned to veg­etate up­on this globe with­out ev­er fly­ing to­wards the plan­etary shores! Noth­ing of the kind! We are go­ing to the moon, we shall go to the plan­ets, we shall go to the stars as we now go from Liv­er­pool to New York, eas­ily, rapid­ly, sure­ly, and the at­mo­spher­ic ocean will be as soon crossed as the oceans of the earth! Dis­tance is on­ly a rel­ative term, and will end by be­ing re­duced to ze­ro.”

The as­sem­bly, though great­ly in favour of the French hero, was rather stag­gered by this au­da­cious the­ory. Michel Ar­dan ap­peared to see it.

“You do not seem con­vinced, my wor­thy hosts,” he con­tin­ued with an ami­able smile. “Well, let us rea­son a lit­tle. Do you know how long it would take an ex­press train to reach the moon? Three hun­dred days. Not more. A jour­ney of 86,410 leagues, but what is that? Not even nine times round the earth, and there are very few sailors who have not done that dur­ing their ex­is­tence. Think, I shall be on­ly nine­ty-​eight hours on the road! Ah, you imag­ine that the moon is a long way from the earth, and that one must think twice be­fore at­tempt­ing the ad­ven­ture! But what would you say if I were go­ing to Nep­tune, which grav­itates at 1,147,000,000 leagues from the sun? That is a jour­ney that very few peo­ple could go, even if it on­ly cost a far­thing a mile! Even Baron Roth­schild would not have enough to take his tick­et!”

This ar­gu­ment seemed great­ly to please the as­sem­bly; be­sides, Michel Ar­dan, full of his sub­ject, grew su­perbly elo­quent; he felt he was lis­tened to, and re­sumed with ad­mirable as­sur­ance--

“Well, my friends, this dis­tance from Nep­tune to the sun is noth­ing com­pared to that of the stars, some of which are bil­lions of leagues from the sun! And yet peo­ple speak of the dis­tance that sep­arates the plan­ets from the sun! Do you know what I think of this uni­verse that be­gins with the sun and ends at Nep­tune? Should you like to know my the­ory? It is a very sim­ple one. Ac­cord­ing to my opin­ion, the so­lar uni­verse is one sol­id ho­mo­ge­neous mass; the plan­ets that com­pose it are close to­geth­er, crowd one an­oth­er, and the space be­tween them is on­ly the space that sep­arates the molecules of the most com­pact met­al--sil­ver, iron, or plat­inum! I have, there­fore, the right to af­firm, and I will re­peat it with a con­vic­tion you will all share--dis­tance is a vain word; dis­tance does not ex­ist!”

“Well said! Bra­vo! Hur­rah!” cried the as­sem­bly with one voice, elec­tri­fied by the ges­ture and ac­cent of the or­ator, and the bold­ness of his con­cep­tions.

“No!” cried J.T. Mas­ton, more en­er­get­ical­ly than the oth­ers; “dis­tance does not ex­ist!”

And, car­ried away by the vi­olence of his move­ments and emo­tions he could hard­ly con­tain, he near­ly fell from the top of the plat­form to the ground. But he suc­ceed­ed in re­cov­er­ing his equi­lib­ri­um, and thus avoid­ed a fall that would have bru­tal­ly proved dis­tance not to be a vain word. Then the speech of the dis­tin­guished or­ator re­sumed its course.

“My friends,” said he, “I think that this ques­tion is now solved. If I have not con­vinced you all it is be­cause I have been timid in my demon­stra­tions, fee­ble in my ar­gu­ments, and you must set it down to my the­oret­ic ig­no­rance. How­ev­er that may be, I re­peat, the dis­tance from the earth to her satel­lite is re­al­ly very unim­por­tant and un­wor­thy to oc­cu­py a se­ri­ous mind. I do not think I am ad­vanc­ing too much in say­ing that soon a ser­vice of trains will be es­tab­lished by pro­jec­tiles, in which the jour­ney from the earth to the moon will be com­fort­ably ac­com­plished. There will be no shocks nor run­ning off the lines to fear, and the goal will be reached rapid­ly, with­out fa­tigue, in a straight line, 'as the crow flies.' Be­fore twen­ty years are over, half the earth will have vis­it­ed the moon!”

“Three cheers for Michel Ar­dan!” cried the as­sis­tants, even those least con­vinced.

“Three cheers for Bar­bi­cane!” mod­est­ly an­swered the or­ator.

This act of grat­itude to­wards the pro­mot­er of the en­ter­prise was greet­ed with unan­imous ap­plause.

“Now, my friends,” re­sumed Michel Ar­dan, “if you have any ques­tions to ask me you will ev­ident­ly em­bar­rass me, but still I will en­deav­our to an­swer you.”

Un­til now the pres­ident of the Gun Club had rea­son to be very sat­is­fied with the dis­cus­sion. It had rolled up­on spec­ula­tive the­ories, up­on which Michel Ar­dan, car­ried away by his live­ly imag­ina­tion, had shown him­self very bril­liant. He must, there­fore, be pre­vent­ed from de­vi­at­ing to­wards prac­ti­cal ques­tions, which he would doubt­less not come out of so well. Bar­bi­cane made haste to speak, and asked his new friend if he thought that the moon or the plan­ets were in­hab­it­ed.

“That is a great prob­lem, my wor­thy pres­ident,” an­swered the or­ator, smil­ing; “still, if I am not mis­tak­en, men of great in­tel­li­gence--Plutarch, Swe­den­borg, Bernardin de Saint-​Pierre, and many oth­ers--an­swered in the af­fir­ma­tive. If I an­swered from a nat­ural phi­los­ophy point of view I should do the same--I should say to my­self that noth­ing use­less ex­ists in this world, and, an­swer­ing your ques­tion by an­oth­er, friend Bar­bi­cane, I should af­firm that if the plan­ets are in­hab­it­able, ei­ther they are in­hab­it­ed, they have been, or they will be.”

“Very well,” cried the first ranks of spec­ta­tors, whose opin­ion had the force of law for the oth­ers.

“It is im­pos­si­ble to an­swer with more log­ic and jus­tice,” said the pres­ident of the Gun Club. “The ques­tion, there­fore, comes to this: 'Are the plan­ets in­hab­it­able?' I think so, for my part.”

“And I--I am cer­tain of it,” an­swered Michel Ar­dan.

“Still,” replied one of the as­sis­tants, “there are ar­gu­ments against the in­hab­it­abil­ity of the worlds. In most of them it is ev­ident that the prin­ci­ples of life must be mod­ified. Thus, on­ly to speak of the plan­ets, the peo­ple must be burnt up in some and frozen in oth­ers ac­cord­ing as they are a long or short dis­tance from the sun.”

“I re­gret,” an­swered Michel Ar­dan, “not to know my hon­ourable op­po­nent per­son­al­ly. His ob­jec­tion has its val­ue, but I think it may be com­bat­ed with some suc­cess, like all those of which the hab­it­abil­ity of worlds has been the ob­ject. If I were a physi­cian I should say that if there were less caloric put in mo­tion in the plan­ets near­est to the sun, and more, on the con­trary, in the dis­tant plan­ets, this sim­ple phe­nomenon would suf­fice to equalise the heat and ren­der the tem­per­ature of these worlds bear­able to be­ings or­gan­ised like we are. If I were a nat­ural­ist I should tell him, af­ter many il­lus­tri­ous _sa­vants_, that Na­ture fur­nish­es us on earth with ex­am­ples of an­imals liv­ing in very dif­fer­ent con­di­tions of hab­it­abil­ity; that fish breathe in a medi­um mor­tal to the oth­er an­imals; that am­phib­ians have a dou­ble ex­is­tence dif­fi­cult to ex­plain; that cer­tain in­hab­itants of the sea live in the great­est depths, and sup­port there, with­out be­ing crushed, pres­sures of fifty or six­ty at­mo­spheres; that some aquat­ic in­sects, in­sen­si­ble to the tem­per­ature, are met with at the same time in springs of boil­ing wa­ter and in the frozen plains of the Po­lar Ocean--in short, there are in na­ture many means of ac­tion, of­ten in­com­pre­hen­si­ble, but no less re­al. If I were a chemist I should say that aëro­lites--bod­ies ev­ident­ly formed away from our ter­res­tri­al globe--have when anal­ysed, re­vealed in­dis­putable traces of car­bon, a sub­stance that owes its ori­gin sole­ly to or­gan­ised be­ings, and which, ac­cord­ing to Re­ichen­bach's ex­per­iments, must nec­es­sar­ily have been 'an­imalised.' Last­ly, if I were a the­olo­gian I should say that Di­vine Re­demp­tion, ac­cord­ing to St. Paul, seems ap­pli­ca­ble not on­ly to the earth but to all the ce­les­tial bod­ies. But I am nei­ther a the­olo­gian, chemist, nat­ural­ist, nor nat­ural philoso­pher. So, in my per­fect ig­no­rance of the great laws that rule the uni­verse, I can on­ly an­swer, 'I do not know if the heav­en­ly bod­ies are in­hab­it­ed, and, as I do not know, I am go­ing to see!'”

Did the ad­ver­sary of Michel Ar­dan's the­ories haz­ard any fur­ther ar­gu­ments? It is im­pos­si­ble to say, for the fran­tic cries of the crowd would have pre­vent­ed any opin­ion from be­ing pro­mul­gat­ed. When si­lence was again re­stored, even in the most dis­tant groups, the tri­umphant or­ator con­tent­ed him­self with adding the fol­low­ing con­sid­er­ations:--

“You will think, gen­tle­men, that I have hard­ly touched up­on this grave ques­tion. I am not here to give you an in­struc­tive lec­ture up­on this vast sub­ject. There is an­oth­er se­ries of ar­gu­ments in favour of the heav­en­ly bod­ies be­ing in­hab­it­ed; I do not look up­on that. Al­low me on­ly to in­sist up­on one point. To the peo­ple who main­tain that the plan­ets are not in­hab­it­ed you must an­swer, 'You may be right if it is demon­strat­ed that the earth is the best of pos­si­ble worlds; but it is not so, notwith­stand­ing Voltaire.' It has on­ly one satel­lite, whilst Jupiter, Uranus, Sat­urn, and Nep­tune have sev­er­al at their ser­vice, an ad­van­tage that is not to be dis­dained. But that which now ren­ders the earth an un­com­fort­able place of abode is the in­cli­na­tion of its ax­is up­on its or­bit. Hence the in­equal­ity of day and night; hence the un­for­tu­nate di­ver­si­ty of sea­sons. Up­on our mis­er­able spheroid it is al­ways ei­ther too warm or too cold; we are frozen in win­ter and roast­ed in sum­mer; it is the plan­et of colds, rheuma­tism, and con­sump­tion, whilst on the sur­face of Jupiter, for in­stance, where the ax­is has on­ly a very slight in­cli­na­tion, the in­hab­itants can en­joy in­vari­able tem­per­ature. There is the per­pet­ual spring, sum­mer, au­tumn, and win­ter zone; each 'Jo­vian' may choose the cli­mate that suits him, and may shel­ter him­self all his life from the vari­ations of the tem­per­ature. You will doubt­less agree to this su­pe­ri­or­ity of Jupiter over our plan­et with­out speak­ing of its years, which each lasts twelve years! What is more, it is ev­ident to me that, un­der these aus­pices, and un­der such mar­vel­lous con­di­tions of ex­is­tence, the in­hab­itants of that for­tu­nate world are su­pe­ri­or be­ings--that _sa­vants_ are more learned, artists more artis­tic, the wicked less wicked, and the good are bet­ter. Alas! what is want­ing to our spheroid to reach this per­fec­tion is very lit­tle!--an ax­is of ro­ta­tion less in­clined on the plane of its or­bit.”

“Well!” cried an im­petu­ous voice, “let us unite our ef­forts, in­vent ma­chines, and rec­ti­fy the earth's ax­is!”

Thun­ders of ap­plause greet­ed this propo­si­tion, the au­thor of which could be no oth­er than J.T. Mas­ton. It is prob­able that the fiery sec­re­tary had been car­ried away by his in­stincts as en­gi­neer to ven­ture such a propo­si­tion; but it must be said, for it is the truth, many en­cour­aged him with their cries, and doubt­less, if they had found the rest­ing-​point de­mand­ed by Archimedes, the Amer­icans would have con­struct­ed a lever ca­pa­ble of rais­ing the world and re­dress­ing its ax­is. But this point was want­ing to these bold me­chani­cians.

Nev­er­the­less, this em­inent­ly prac­ti­cal idea had enor­mous suc­cess: the dis­cus­sion was sus­pend­ed for a good quar­ter of an hour, and long, very long af­ter­wards, they talked in the Unit­ed States of Amer­ica of the propo­si­tion so en­er­get­ical­ly enun­ci­at­ed by the per­pet­ual sec­re­tary of the Gun Club.