Page:Bierce - Collected Works - Volume 09.djvu/68

64 do not discern any gain in "sweetness and light" from these despotic readjustments of the relations among sun, earth and moon, and must set it all down to the account of ignorance, which, in any degree and however excusable, is not a thing to be admired. Concerning nothing is it more general, more deep, more dark, more invincible, nor withal, more needless, than it is with regard to movements and visible aspects of our satellite. How one can have eyes and not know the pranks of the several heavenly bodies is possibly obvious to Omniscience, but a finite mind cannot rightly understand it.

We will suppose that our planet is without a satellite. The nights are brilliant or starless, as the clouds may determine, but in all the measureless reaches of space is no world having a visible disk, with vicissitudes of light and shadow. One day a famous man of science announces in the public prints a startling discovery. He has found an orb, smaller than the earth but of considerable magnitude, moving in such a direction and at such a rate of speed that at a stated time the next year it will have approached our sphere so closely as to be caught by its attractive power and held, a prisoner, wheeling round and round