De Facie Quae in orbe Lunae Apparet

These things then, said Sylla, agree with my story, and are taken thence. But I should first willingly ask, what need there is of making such a preamble against these opinions, which are at hand and in every man’s mouth, concerning the face that is seen within the orb of the moon. Why should we not, said I, being, by the difficulty there is in these discourses, forced upon those? For, as they who have long lain lingering under chronical diseases, after they have been worn out and tired with experimenting all ordinary remedies and the usual rules of living and diet, have at last recourse to lustrations and purifications, to charms and amulets fastened about the neck, and to the interpretation of dreams; so in such obscure and abstruse questions and speculations, when the common, apparent, and ordinary reasons are not satisfactory, there is a necessity of trying such as are more extravagant, and of not contemning but enchanting ourselves (as one may say) with the discourses of the ancients, and endeavoring always to find out the truth.

For you see at the very first blush, how impertinent his opinion is who said, that the form appearing in the moon is an accident of our sight, by its weakness giving way to her brightness, which we call the dazzling of our

The sharp-rayed sun, and gently shining moon.

With shining fire it circled does appear,

And in the midst is seen the visage clear

Of a young maid, whose eyes more gray than blue,

Her brow and cheeks a blushing red do show.

Then Apollonides taking up the discourse, and asking what that opinion of Clearchus was; It would more, said I, beseem any man than you to be ignorant of this discourse, as being grounded on the very fundamental principles of geometry. For he affirms, that what we call a face, is the image and figure of the great ocean, represented in the moon as in a mirror. For the circumference of a circle, when it is reflected back,[*](See the account of various ancient doctrines of vision and the reflection of light in the treatise on the Opinions of Philosophers, Book IV. Chapters 13 and 14. The idea that vision was caused by something proceeding from the eye to the object is especially to be noticed. (G.)) is wont in many places to touch objects which are not seen in a direct line. And the full moon is for evenness and lustre the most beautiful and purest of all mirrors. As then you hold, that the heavenly bow appears, when the ray of light is reflected back towards the sun, in a cloud which has got a little liquid smoothness and consistence; so, said he, there is seen in the moon the surface of the sea, not in the place where it is situated, but from whence the reflection gives a sight of it by its reverberated and reflexed light, as Agesianax again says in another passage,

This flaming mirror offers to your eyes

The vast sea’s figure, as beneath it lies

Foaming with raging billows.

Apollonides therefore, being delighted with this, said. A singular opinion indeed is this of his, and (to speak in a word) strangely and newly invented by a man sufficiently presumptuous, but not void of learning and wit. But how, I pray, was it refuted?

First, said I, the superficies of the sea is all of a nature, the current of it being uniform and continuous; but the appearance of those black and dark spots which are seen in the face of the moon is not continued, but has certain

But pray, sir, said I, casting mine eyes upon Lucius, call a little to mind what was said at first by those of our party.

Nay rather, answered he,—lest we should seem too injurious to Pharnaces, in thus passing by the opinion of the Stoics, without opposing any thing against it,—let us make some reply to this man, who supposes the moon to be wholly a mixture of air and mild fire, and then says that, as in a calm there sometimes arises on a sudden a breeze of wind which curls and ruffles the superficies of the sea, so, the air being darkened and rendered black, there is an appearance and form of a face.

You do courteously, Lucius, said I, thus to veil and cover with specious expressions so absurd and false an opinion. But so did not our friend; but he said, as the truth is, that the Stoics disfigured and mortified the moon’s face, filling it with stains and black spots, one while invocating her by the name of Diana and Minerva, and another while making her a lump and mixture of dark air and charcoal-fire, not kindling of itself or having any light of its own, but a body hard to be judged and known, always smoking and ever burning, like to those thunders which by the poets are styled lightless and sooty. Now that a fire of coals, such as they would have that of the moon to be, cannot have any continuance nor yet so much as the least subsistence, unless it meets with some solid matter fit to maintain it, keep it in, and feed it, has, I think, far better than it is by these philosophers, been understood by those poets who in merriment affirm that Vulcan was therefore said to be lame because fire can no more go forward without wood or fuel than a cripple without a crutch. If then the moon is fire, whence has it so much air? For that region above, which is with a continual motion carried round, consists

Whilst I was yet speaking, Pharnaces interrupting my discourse said: See here again the usual stratagem of the Academy brought into play against us, which is to busy themselves at every turn in speaking against others, but never to afford an opportunity for reproving what they say themselves; so that those with whom they confer and dispute must always be respondents and defendants, and never plaintiffs or opponents. You shall not therefore bring me this day to give you an account of those things you charge upon the Stoics, till you have first rendered me a reason for your turning the world upside down.

Then Lucius smiling said: This, good sir, I am well contented to do, provided only that you will not accuse us of impiety, as Cleanthes thought that the Greeks ought to have called Aristarchus the Samian into question and condemned him of blasphemy against the Gods, as shaking the very foundations of the world, because this man, endeavoring to save the appearances, supposed that the heavens remained immovable, and that the earth moved through an oblique circle, at the same time turning about its own axis. As for us therefore, we say nothing that we take from them. But how do they, my good friend, who suppose the moon to be earth, turn the world upside down more than you, who say that the earth remains here hanging

Stands shouldering the pillar of the heaven and earth,

A burden onerous.

[*](Aesch. Prom. 349.)

If then there runs under the moon only a light air, not firm enough to bear a solid burthen, whereas under the earth there are, as Pindar says, columns and pillars of adamant for its support, therefore Pharnaces himself is out of all dread of the earth’s falling, but he pities the Ethiopians and those of Taprobane, who lie directly under the course of the moon, fearing lest so ponderous a mass should tumble upon their heads. And yet the moon has, for an help to preserve her from falling, her motion and the impetuosity of her revolution; as stones, pebbles, and other weights, put into slings, are kept from dropping out, whilst they are swung round, by the swiftness of their motion. For every body is carried according to its natural

Yes surely, said Pharnaces, being in its proper and natural place, the very middle and centre of the universe. For this it is to which all heavy and ponderous things do from every side naturally tend, incline, and aspire, and about which they cling and are counterpoised. But every superior region, though it may perhaps receive some earthly and weighty thing sent by violence up into it, immediately repels and casts it down again by force, or (to speak better) lets it follow its own proper inclination, by which it naturally tends downwards.

For the refutation of which, being willing to give Lucius time for the calling to mind his arguments, I addressed myself to Theon, and asked him which of the tragic poets it was who said that physicians

With bitter med’cines bitter choler purge.

And Theon having answered me that it was Sophocles; This, said I to him, we must of necessity permit them to do; but we are not to give ear to those philosophers who would overthrow paradoxes by assertions no less strange and paradoxical, and for the oppugning strange and extravagant opinions, devise others yet more wonderful and absurd; as these men do, who broach and introduce this doctrine of a motion tending towards the middle, in which what sort of absurdity is there not to be found? Does it not thence follow, that the earth is spherical, though we nevertheless see it to have so many lofty hills, so many deep valleys, and so great a number of inequalities? Does it not follow that there are antipodes dwelling opposite to another, sticking on every side to the earth, with their heads downwards and their heels upwards, as if they were woodworms or lizards? That we ourselves go not on the earth straight upright, but obliquely and bending aside like drunken men? That if bars and weights of a thousand talents apiece should be let fall into the hollow of the earth, they would, when they were come to the centre, stop and rest there, though nothing came against them or sustained them; and that, if peradventure they should by force pass the middle, they would of themselves return and rebound back thither again? That if one should saw off the two trunks or ends of a beam on either side of the earth, they would not be always carried downwards, but falling both from without into the earth, they would equally meet, and hide themselves together in the middle? That if a violent stream of water should run downwards into the ground, it would, when it came to the centre of the earth, which they hold to be an incorporeal point, there gather together, and turn round like a whirlpool, with a perpetual and endless suspension? Some of which positions are so absurd, that none can so much as force his imagination, though falsely, to conceive them possible.

Bearing then upon their shoulders, and drawing after them. I do not say a little bag or box, but a whole pack of juggler’s boxes, full of so many absurdities, with which they play the hocus-pocus in philosophy, they nevertheless accuse others of error for placing the moon, which they hold to be earth, on high, and not in the middle or centre of the world. And yet, if every heavy body inclines towards the same place, and does from all sides and with every one of its parts tend to its own centre, the earth certainly will appropriate and challenge to itself these ponderous masses—which are its parts—not because it is the centre of the universe, but rather because it is the whole; and this gathering together of heavy bodies round about it will not be a sign showing it to be the middle of the world, but an argument to prove and testify that these bodies which had been plucked from it and again return to it have a communication and conformity of nature with the earth. For as the sun draws into himself the parts of which he is composed, so the earth receives a stone as a part belonging to it, in such manner that every one of such things is in time united and incorporated with it.

But you mathematicians, friend Apollonides, say that the sun is distant from our upper sphere infinite thousands of miles, and after him the day-star or Venus, Mercury, and other planets, which being situated under the fixed stars, and separated from one another by great intervals, make their revolutions; and in the mean time you think that the world affords not to heavy and terrestrial bodies any great and large place or distance one from another. You plainly see, it would be ridiculous, if we should deny the moon to be earth because it is not seated in the lowest region of the world, and yet affirm it to be a star, though so many thousands of miles remote from the upper firmanent, as if it were plunged into some deep gulf. For she is so low before all other stars, that the measure of the distances cannot be expressed, and you mathematicians

But leaving the stars, as well erring as fixed, see what Aristarchus proves and demonstrates in his treatise of magnitudes and distances; that the distance of the sun is above eighteen times and under twenty times greater than that of the moon from us. And yet they who place the moon lowest say that her distance from us contains six and fifty of the earth’s semidiameters, that is, that she is six and fifty times as far from us as we are from the centre of the earth; which is forty thousand stadia, according to those that make their computation moderately. Therefore the sun is above forty millions and three hundred thousand stadia distant from the moon; so far is she from the sun by reason of her gravity, and so near does she approach to the earth. So that if substances are to be distinguished by places, the portion and, region of the earth challenges to itself the moon, which, by reason of neighborhood and proximity, has a right to be reputed and reckoned amongst the terrestrial natures and bodies. Nor shall we, in my opinion, do amiss if, having given so vast an interval and distance to these bodies which are said to be above, we

In a word, how is the earth said to be the middle, and of what is it the middle? For the universe is infinite; and infiniteness having neither beginning nor end, it is convenient also that it should not have any middle; for the middle is a certain end or limit, but infiniteness is a privation of all sorts of limits. Now he that affirms the earth to be the middle, not of the universe but of the world, is certainly a pleasant man, if he does not think that the world itself is subject to the same doubts and difficulties. For the universe has not left a middle even to the very world, but this being without any certain seat or foundation, it is carried in an infinite voidness to no proper end; or if perhaps it has stopped, it has met with some other cause or stay, not according to the nature of the place. As much may be conjectured of the moon, that by the means of another soul and another Nature, or (to say better) of another difference, the earth continues firm here below, and the moon moves. Besides this, see whether they are not ignorant of a great inconvenience and error. For if it is true that all which is without the centre of the earth, however it be, is above, there will then be no part of the world below; but the earth and all that is upon it

Nevertheless, supposing, if you please, that it is against Nature for earthly bodies to have any motions in heaven, let us consider leisurely and mildly-and not violently, as is done in tragedies—that this is no proof of the moon’s not being earth, but only that earth is in a place where by nature it should not be; for the fire of Mount Aetna is indeed against nature under ground, nevertheless it ceases not to be fire. And the wind contained within bottles is indeed of its own nature light and inclined to ascend, but is yet by force constrained to be there where naturally it should not be. And is not our very soul, I beseech you in the name of Jupiter, which, as yourselves say, is light, of a fiery substance, and imperceptible to sense, included within the body, which is heavy, cold, and palpable? Yet do we therefore say that the soul does not belong to the body; or that it is not a divine substance

Where neither sun’s bright face is seen,

Nor earth beheld, spread o’er with green,

Nor the salt sea,

For if there had not been any other part of the world against Nature, but every thing had been in the same place and quality it naturally ought to be, without standing in need of any change or transposition or having had any occasion for it from the beginning, I know not what the work of Divine Providence is or in what it consists, or of what Jupiter has been the father, creator, or worker. For there would not in a camp be any need of the art of ranging and ordering of battles, if every soldier of himself knew and understood his rank, place, and station, and the opportunity he ought to take and keep; nor would there be any want of gardeners or builders, if water were of itself framed to flow where it is necessary, and irrigate such plants as stand in need of watering, or if bricks, timber, and stones would of their own inclinations and natural motion range and settle themselves in due and fitting places and orders. Now if this discourse manifestly takes away Providence, and if the ordering and distinction of things that are in the world belongs to God, why should we wonder at Nature’s having been so disposed and ordained by him, that the fire should be here, and the stars there, and again the earth should be situated here below, and the moon above, lodged in a prison found out by reason, more sure and straight than that which was first ordained by Nature? For if it were of absolute necessity that all things should follow their natural instinct and move according to the motion given them by Nature, neither the Sun, Venus, nor any other planet would any more run a circular course; for light and fiery substances have by Nature their motion directly upwards. And if

But if, laying aside those servile habits and opinions to which we have enslaved ourselves, we must frankly and fearlessly deliver our judgment, it seems clear to me, that there is not any part of the universe which has a peculiar and separate rank, situation, or motion, that can simply be said to be natural to it. But when every thing exhibits and yields up itself to be moved, as is most profitable and fit for that for whose sake it was made and to which it is by Nature appointed,—suffering, doing, or being disposed, as is most expedient and meet for the safety, beauty, and power of the same,—then it appears to have its place, motion, and disposition according to Nature. As a proof of this, we may observe that man, who, if any thing in the world be so, is made and disposed according to Nature; has upwards, especially about his head, heavy and terrestrial things, and about the middle of his body such as are hot and participate of fire; of his teeth also some grow upwards and some downwards, and yet neither the one nor the other are contrary to Nature; neither is the fire which shines in his eyes according to Nature, and that which is in his heart and stomach against it; but it is in

Look on the crabs, the oysters of the sea,

And shell-fish all, which heavy coats enfold,

The tortoise too with arched back, whom we

Covered with crust, as hard as stone, behold.

View them but well, and plain it will appear,

They hardened earth above their bodies bear.

Wherefore it is also probable that the world, if it is an animal, has in many parts of its body earth, and in as many fire and water and air, not thrust and driven into it by force, but ordered and disposed by reason. For neither was the eye by its lightness forced into that part of the body where it is, nor the heart by its gravity pressed down into the breast; but both the one and the other were thus placed because it was better and more expedient. In like manner we ought not to think of the parts of the world, either that the earth settled where it is, being beaten down thither by its ponderosity; or that the sun was carried upwards by its levity, like a bottle or bladder full of wind (which, being plunged into the bottom of the water, immediately rises up again), as Metrodorus of Chios was persuaded; or that the other stars, as if they had been put into a balance, were swayed this way or that way, according to their weight or lightness, and so mounted higher or lower to the places they now possess. But reason having prevailed in the constitution of the world, the stars have, like to glittering eyes, been fixed in the firmament, as it were in the face of the universe, there to turn continually

These things being said, as I was giving Lucius his turn to follow and continue the discourse,—there being nothing left to be added but the demonstrations of this doctrine,—Aristotle smiling said: I am a witness, that you have directed all your contradictions and all your refutations against those who, supposing the moon to be half fire, affirm in general that all bodies do of their own accord tend either upwards or downwards; but if there is

Indeed, good sir, said Lucius, if you should suppose the other stars, and the whole heaven apart, to be of a pure and sincere nature, free from all change and alteration of passion, and should bring in also a circle, in which they make their motion by a perpetual revolution, you would not perhaps find any one now to contradict you, though there are in this infinite doubts and difficulties. But when the discourse descends so far as to touch the moon, it cannot maintain in her that perfection of being exempt from all passion and alteration, nor that heavenly beauty of her body. But to let pass all other inequalities and differences, the very face which appears in the body of the moon necessarily proceeds from some passion of her own substance or the mixture of another; for what is mixed suffers, because it loses its first purity, being filled by force with that which is worse. Besides, as for the slowness and dulness of her course, her feeble and inefficacious heat, by which, as Ion says,

The black grape comes not to maturity,

In brief, my friend Aristotle, if the moon is earth, she is a most fair and admirable thing, and excellently well adorned; but if you regard her as a star or light or a certain divine and heavenly body, I am afraid she will prove deformed and foul, and disgrace that beautiful appellation, if of all bodies, which are in heaven so numerous, she

Looks always backwards on the sun’s bright rays.

Our friend therefore indeed, having in a lecture of his demonstrated this proposition of Anaxagoras, that the sun communicates to the moon what brightness she has, was well esteemed for it. As for me, I will not say what I have learned of you or with you, but having taken it for granted, will pass on to the rest. It is then probable that the moon is illuminated, not like a glass or crystal, by the brightness of the sun’s rays shining through her, nor yet again, by a certain collustration and conjunction of light and brightness, as when many torches set together augment the light of one another. For so she would be no less full in her conjunction or first quarter than in her opposition, if she did not obstruct or repel the rays of the sun, but let them pass through her by reason of her rarity, or if he did by a contemperature shine upon her and kindle the light within her. For we cannot allege her declinations and aversions in the conjunction or new moon, as when it is half-moon or when she appears crescent or in the wane; but being then perpendicularly (as Democritus says) under him that illuminates her, she receives and admits the sun; so that then it is probable she should appear, and he shine through her. But this she is so far from doing, that she is not only then unseen, but also often hides the sun, as Empedocles has it:

The sun’s bright beams from us she turns aside,

And of the earth itself as much doth hide,

As her orb’s breadth can cover;

It remains then that, according to the opinion of Empedocles, the light of the moon which appears to us comes from the repercussion and reflection of the sun’s beams. And for this reason it comes not to us hot and bright, as in all probability it would, if her shining proceeded either from inflammation or the commixtion of two lights. But as voices reverberated cause an echo more obscure and less express than the speech that was pronounced, and as the blows of darts and arrows, rebounding from some wall against which they are shot, are more mild and gentle;

So Titan’s lustre, smiting the moon’s orb,

Sylla then, taking up the discourse, said: There is indeed a great deal of probability in all that you have spoken. But as to the strongest objection that is brought against it, has it, think you, been any way weakened by this discourse? Or has our friend quite passed it over in silence?

What opposition do you mean, said Lucius? Is it the difficulty about the moon, when one half of her appears enlightened?

The very same, answered Sylla. For there is some reason, seeing that all reflection is made by equal angles, that when the half-moon is in the midst of heaven, the light proceeding from her should not be carried upon the earth, but glance and fall beyond and on one side of it. For the sun, being placed in the horizon, touches the moon with its beams; which, being equally reflected, will therefore

And yet, by Jupiter, replied Lucius, this has not been forgotten or overpassed, but already spoken to. And casting his eye, as he was discoursing, upon the mathematician Menelaus; I am ashamed, said he, in your presence, dear Menelaus, to attempt the subverting and overthrowing of a mathematical position, which is supposed as a basis and foundation to the doctrine of the catoptrics concerning the causes and reasons of mirrors. And yet of necessity I must. For it neither appears of itself nor is confessed as true, that all reflections are at equal angles; but this position is first checked and contradicted in concave mirrors, when they represent the images of things, appearing at one point of sight, greater than the things themselves. And it is also disproved by double mirrors, which being inclined or turned one towards the other, so that an angle is made within, each of the glasses or plain superficies yields a double resemblance; so that there are four images from the same face, two answerable to the object without on the left side, and two others obscure and not so evident on the right side in the bottom of the mirror. Of which Plato renders the efficient cause; for he says, that a mirror being raised on the one and the other side, the sight varies the reflection, falling from one side to the other. And therefore, since of the views or visions some immediately have recourse to us, and others, sliding to opposite parts of the mirror, do again return upon us from thence, it is not possible that all reflections should be made at equal angles. Though those who closely impugn our opinion contend that, by these reflections of light from the moon upon the earth, the equality of angles is taken away, thinking this to be much more probable than the other.

Nevertheless, if we must of necessity yield and grant

But in brief, said he, I wonder how they come thus to allege against us the half-moon, there being the same reason when she is gibbous and crescent. For if the sun enlightened the moon, as a mass of ethereal or fiery matter, he would never surely leave one hemisphere, or half of her globe always appearing dark and shadowy to sense, as it is seen to be; but how little soever he touched her superficies, it would be agreeable to reason that it should be wholly replenished and totally changed by that light of his, which by reason of its agility and swiftness so easily spreads and passes through all. For, since wine touching water only in one point, or one drop of blood falling into any liquor, dyes and colors it all with a red or purple color; and since they say, that the very air is altered and changed with light, not by any defluxions or beams intermingled,

But forasmuch as she is not only enlightened herself, but also sends back hither the image of her illumination, this confirms us yet further in what we say touching her substance. For reflections and reverberations are not made upon any thing which is rare, and of thin and subtile parts; nor is it easily to be imagined how light can rebound from light, or one fire from another. But that which is to make the reverberation or reflection must be solid and firm, that a blow may be given against it and a rebounding made from it. As a proof of this, we see that the air transmits the sun, and gives him a way to pierce quite through it, not obstructing or driving back his rays; but on the contrary from wood, stones, or clothes put in the sun, there are made many reflections of light and many illuminations round about. So we see that the earth is illuminated by him, not to the very bottom, as the water, nor thoroughly and all over, as the air, through which the beams of the sun have a clear passage; but just such a circle as surrounds the

Now when all the company began highly to commend Lucius’s harangue; This is excellently well done of you, Lucius (said I to him), that you have to so fine a discourse added as fine a proportion, for you must not be defrauded of that which is your due.

Then Lucius, smiling, thus went on: I have yet a second proportion to be added to the former, by which we will clearly demonstrate that the moon altogether resembles the earth, not only because they suffer and receive the same accidents from the same cause, but because they work the same effect on the same object. For you will without difficulty, I suppose, grant me that, of all the accidents which befall the sun, there is none so like to his setting as his eclipse, especially if you but call to mind that recent conjunction which, beginning at noonday, showed us many stars in many places of the heavens, and wrought a temperature in the air like that of the twilight. But if you will not grant me this, our friend Theon here will bring us a Mimnermus, a Cydias, an Archilochus, and besides these, a Stesichorus and a Pindar, lamenting that in eclipses the world is robbed of its brightest light, and saying that night comes on in the midst of the day, and that the rays of the sun wander in the path of darkness; but

When one moon’s going, and another comes.

And Aristotle (I mean the ancient philosopher of that name) rendering the reason why there are oftener seen to happen eclipses of the moon than of the sun, among other causes alleges this, that the sun is eclipsed by the interposition of the moon, and the moon by that of the earth, which is much greater and consequently oftener opposes itself. And Posidonius thus defines this accident: The eclipse of the sun is the conjunction of the sun and moon, the shadow of which darkens our sight.[*](Here again the text is defective, and the sense conjectural. (G.)) For there is no eclipse except to those whose sight the shadow of the moon intercepting hinders them from seeing the sun. Now in confessing that the shadow of the moon descends down to us, I know not what he has left himself to say. It is certainly impossible for a star to cast a shadow; for that which is not enlightened is called a shadow, and light makes no shadow, but on the contrary drives it away.

But what arguments, said he, were alleged after this?

The moon, answered I then, suffered the same eclipse.

You have done well, replied he, to put me in mind of it. But would you have me go on and prosecute the rest of the discourse, as if you had already supposed and granted that the moon is eclipsed, being intercepted within the shadow of the earth? Or shall I take for the subject of a declamation the making a demonstration of it, by rehearsing to you all the arguments, one after another?

Nay, by Jove, said Theon, let this be the argument of your discourse. For I indeed stand in need of some persuasion,

Then said Lucius: These are the principal points, and the summary of what is said. But in the first place, if you please, take the argument drawn from the form and figure of the shadow. For this is a cone, as it must be when a great fire or light that is spherical encompasses a mass that is also globular but less; whence it comes that, in the eclipses of the moon, the circumscriptions of the black and dark from the clear and luminous have their sections always round. For the sections given or received by one round body applied to another, which way soever they go, do by reason of the similitude always keep a circular form. Now as for the second argument, I suppose you understand that the first part which is eclipsed in the moon is always that which looks towards the east, and in the sun that which regards the west. Now the shadow of the earth moves from the east to the west, but the sun and moon from the west eastward. The experience of the appearances gives us a visible knowledge of this, nor is there need of many words to make us fully understand it; and from these suppositions the cause of the eclipse is confirmed. For, inasmuch as the sun is eclipsed by being overtaken, and the moon by meeting that which makes the eclipse, it probably or rather necessarily follows that the one is surprised behind, and the other before. For the obstruction begins on that side whence that which causes it first approaches. Now the moon comes upon the sun from the west, as striving in course with

The third argument is taken from the time and greatness of the eclipses. For the moon, if she is eclipsed when she is on high in her apogee (or at her farthest distance from the earth), continues but a little while in her defect or want of light; but when she suffers the same accident being low and in her perigee (or near the earth), she is very much oppressed, and slowly gets out of the shadow; and yet, when she is low, she moves swifter, and when high, slower. But the cause of the difference is in the shadow, which is, like pyramids, broadest at the bottom or basis; and, growing still narrower by little and little, terminates in a sharp point at the top. Whence it comes, that when she is low, she is embarrassed within greater circles, traversing the bottom of the shadow and what is most obscure and dark; but when she is high, being through the narrowness of the shadow (as it were) but in a shallow puddle, by which she is sullied, she immediately gets out again. I omit what was said particularly about the bases and disposition of parts, for these admit of a rational explanation, so far as this is possible; but I return to the subject properly before us, which has its foundation in our senses. For we see that fire shines forth and appears brighter out of a dark and shady place, through the thickness of the caliginous air, which admits no effluxions or diffusions of the fire’s virtue, but keeps in and contains its substance within itself. Or rather,—if this is a passion of the senses,—as hot things, when near to cold ones, are felt to be hotter, and pleasures immediately after pains are found more vehement, so things that are bright appear better when they are near to such as are obscure, the imagination being more strained and extended by means of different passions. But there seems to be a greater appearance of probability in the first reason.

If it were then true that the moon, being, as the Stoics say, a muddy and troubled star, has a weak and duskish fire, it would be meet that she should suffer none of these accidents which she is now seen to suffer, but altogether the contrary; to wit, that she should be seen when she is hidden, and absconded when she appears; that is, she should be concealed all the rest of the time, being obscured by the environing air, and again shine forth and become apparent and manifest for six months together, and afterwards disappear again five months, entering into the shadow of the earth. For of four hundred and sixty-five revolutions of ecliptic full moons, four hundred and four are of six months’ duration, and the rest of five. The moon then should all this time appear shining in the shadow; but on the contrary we see, that in the shadow she is eclipsed and loses her light, and recovers it again after she is escaped and got forth of the shadow. Nay, she appears often in the daytime, so that she is rather any thing else than a fiery and starry body.