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Certain Personal Matters - From an Observatory · The H. G. Wells Library

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  Speaker 1: Chapter thirty seven of Certain Personal Matters. This is a
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  Speaker 1: LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain.
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  Speaker 1: For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox dot org.
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  Speaker 1: Recording by Jordan Corioti Certain Personal Matters by H. G. Wells.
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  Speaker 1: From an observatory, it will be some time yet before
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  Speaker 1: the rising of the moon. Looking down from the observatory,
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  Speaker 1: one can see the pathways across the park dotted out
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  Speaker 1: in yellow lamps, each with a fringe of dim green,
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  Speaker 1: and further off hot and bright. Is a tracery of
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  Speaker 1: the illuminated streets through which people go to and fro.
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  Speaker 1: Save for an occasional stirring or a passing voice speaking
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  Speaker 1: out of the dimness beneath me, the night is very still.
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  Speaker 1: Not a cloud is to be seen in the dark
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  Speaker 1: midwinter sky to hide one speck of its broad smears
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  Speaker 1: of stardust and its shining constellations. As the moon rises,
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  Speaker 1: heaven will be flooded with blue light, and one after another,
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  Speaker 1: the stars will be submerged and lost, until only a solitary,
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  Speaker 1: shining pinnacle of brightness will here and there remain out
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  Speaker 1: of the whole host of them. It is curious to
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  Speaker 1: think that, were the moon but a little brighter and
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  Speaker 1: truly the ruler of the night, rising to its empire
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  Speaker 1: with the setting of the sun, we should never dream
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  Speaker 1: of the great stellar universe in which our little solar
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  Speaker 1: system swims, or know it only as a traveler's tail,
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  Speaker 1: a strange thing to be seen at times in the
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  Speaker 1: Arctic circle. Nay, if the Earth's atmosphere were some few
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  Speaker 1: score miles higher, a night long twilight would be drawn
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  Speaker 1: like an impenetrable veil across the stars. By a mere
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  Speaker 1: accident of our existence. We see their multitude ever and
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  Speaker 1: again when the curtains of the daylight and moonlight, and
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  Speaker 1: of our own narrow pressing necessities are for a little
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  Speaker 1: while drawn back, then for an interval we look as
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  Speaker 1: if out of a window into the great deep of heaven.
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  Speaker 1: So far as physical science goes, there is nothing in
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  Speaker 1: the essential conditions of our existence to necessitate that we
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  Speaker 1: should have these transitory glimpses of infinite space. We can
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  Speaker 1: imagine men just like ourselves without such an outlook. But
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  Speaker 1: it happens that we have it. If we had not
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  Speaker 1: this vision, if we had always so much light in
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  Speaker 1: the sky, that we we could not perceive the stars.
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  Speaker 1: Our lives, so far as we can infer, would be
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  Speaker 1: very much as they are now. There would still be
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  Speaker 1: the same needs and desires, the same appliances for our
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  Speaker 1: safety and satisfaction. This little gas lit world below would
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  Speaker 1: scarcely miss the stars now if they were blotted out forever,
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  Speaker 1: But our science would be different in some respects had
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  Speaker 1: we never seen them. We should still have good reason,
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  Speaker 1: in Fuquat's pendulum experiment, for supposing that the world rotated
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  Speaker 1: upon its axis, and that the Sun was so far
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  Speaker 1: relatively fixed, but we should have no suspicion of the
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  Speaker 1: orbital revolution of the world. Instead, we should describe the
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  Speaker 1: seasonal differences to a meriional movement of the sun. Our
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  Speaker 1: spectroscopic astronomy, so far as it refers to the composition
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  Speaker 1: of the Sun and Moon, would stand precisely where it does,
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  Speaker 1: but the bulk of our mathematical astronomy would not exist.
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  Speaker 1: Our calendar would still be in all essential respects as
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  Speaker 1: it is now our year, with the solstices and equinoxes
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  Speaker 1: at its cardinal points. The texture of our poetry might
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  Speaker 1: conceivably be the poorer without its star spangles our philosophy
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  Speaker 1: for the want of a nebular hypothesis. These would be
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  Speaker 1: the main differences Yet to those who indulge in speculative dreaming,
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  Speaker 1: how much smaller life would be with the sun and
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  Speaker 1: a moon in a blue beyond for the only visible,
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  Speaker 1: the only thinkable universe. And it is we repeat, from
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  Speaker 1: the scientific standpoint, a mere accident that the present, the
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  Speaker 1: daylight world, periodically opens, as it were, and gives us
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  Speaker 1: this inspiring glimpse of the remoteness of space. One may
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  Speaker 1: imagine countless meteors and comets streaming through the Solar system,
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  Speaker 1: unobserved by those who dwelt under such conditions as have
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  Speaker 1: just been suggested, or some huge dark body from the
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  Speaker 1: outer depth, sweeping straight at that little visible universe, and
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  Speaker 1: all unsuspected by the inhabitants. One may imagine the scientific
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  Speaker 1: people of such a world, common, their assurances of the
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  Speaker 1: permanence of things, incapable almost of conceiving any disturbing cause.
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  Speaker 1: One may imagine how an imaginative writer who doubted that
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  Speaker 1: permanence would be poo pooed. Cannot we see to the
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  Speaker 1: uttermost limits of space? They might argue, And is it
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  Speaker 1: not altogether blue and void. Then, as the unseen visitor
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  Speaker 1: draws near, begin the most extraordinary persebations. The two known
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  Speaker 1: heavenly bodies suddenly fall from their accustomed routine. The moon
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  Speaker 1: hitherto invariably full, changes towards its last quarter, and then
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  Speaker 1: behold for the first time, the rays of the greater
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  Speaker 1: stars visibly pierced the blue canopy of the sky, how suddenly, painfully,
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  Speaker 1: Almost the minds of thinking men would be enlarged when
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  Speaker 1: this rash of the stars appeared. And what then, if
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  Speaker 1: our heavens were to open very thin indeed, is the
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  Speaker 1: curtain between us and the unknown. There is a fear
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  Speaker 1: of the night that has begotten of ignorance and superstition,
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  Speaker 1: a nightmare fear, the fear of the impossible. And there
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  Speaker 1: is another fear of the night, of the starlit, night
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  Speaker 1: that comes with knowledge. When we see in its true proportion,
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  Speaker 1: this little life of hours, with all its phantasmal environments
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  Speaker 1: of cities and stores and arsenals, and the habits, prejudices
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  Speaker 1: and promises of men down there in the gas lit street.
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  Speaker 1: Such things are real and solid enough, the only real things, perhaps,
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  Speaker 1: but not appear not under the midnight sky. Here for
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  Speaker 1: a space, standing silently upon the dim gray tower of
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  Speaker 1: the old observatory, may clear our minds of instincts and illusions,
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  Speaker 1: and look out upon the reel and now to the eastward.
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  Speaker 1: The stars are no longer innumerable, and the sky grows wan.
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  Speaker 1: Then a faint, silvery mist appears above the house stops.
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  Speaker 1: And at last, in the midst of this there comes
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  Speaker 1: a brilliantly shining line, the upper edge of the rising
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  Speaker 1: moon end up from an observatory