"
"Is the Chair," asked Ardan, "to infer from the honorable gentleman's
observations that he considers the Moon to be a world much older than
the Earth?"
"Not exactly that," replied the Captain without hesitation; "I rather
mean to say that the Moon is a world that grew old more rapidly than the
Earth; that it came to maturity earlier; that it ripened quicker, and
was stricken with old age sooner. Owing to the difference of the volumes
of the two worlds, the organizing forces of matter must have been
comparatively much more violent in the interior of the Moon than in the
interior of the Earth. The present condition of its surface, as we see
it lying there beneath us at this moment, places this assertion beyond
all possibility of doubt. Wrinkled, pitted, knotted, furrowed, scarred,
nothing that we can show on Earth resembles it. Moon and Earth were
called into existence by the Creator probably at the same period of
time. In the first stages of their existence, they do not seem to have
been anything better than masses of gas. Acted upon by various forces
and various influences, all of course directed by an omnipotent
intelligence, these gases by degrees became liquid, and the liquids grew
condensed into solids until solidity could retain its shape.
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