Page:A Voyage in Space (1913).djvu/208

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188
A VOYAGE IN SPACE

away. You see that this is still a considerable distance; you would not expect to recognize much at such a distance. Some of you have been at sea and seen a ship on the horizon; you know how small it looks when it is five or six miles away, and how close it must come before you can see the people on its decks. You can well imagine that at 240 miles you might not see the ship at all with the naked eye—even a very big ship. We have as yet been unable to see any signs of life on the Moon, but that does not mean that there is no life; still less that there has never been any life. Perhaps life may by this time have disappeared from the Moon, as there is apparently very little air and water, if any. The Moon has dried up. But that there was life on it once I firmly believe. It seems reasonably certain that bodies which have so much in common with our own Earth, such as the planets and satellites of our system (and probably of other systems, for the stars are Suns like our own and probably have planets and satellites as our Sun has), have also life on them as our Earth has. It would be strange indeed if this peculiarity were confined to a single, rather insignificant body.

But whether there are men and women like ourselves on the Moon, or ever were, is quite a different question. Let me remind you what a vast number of forms of life there are even on our own Earth. There are fishes which live in the water; there are birds which fly in the air; there are insects which crawl and there are rabbits which live underground. Mr. H. G. Wells in his fascinating book has supposed that the inhabitants of the Moon are a combination of the last two classes; he makes them large insects