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I

The desire for the wings of a dove seems to have been
perennial among human beings. At the dawn of re-
corded Chinese history we are told of Emperor Shun
who was said to have made a successful flight and a
descent in a parachute. In the Bible we hear of Elijah
carried to heaven by good angels in a fiery chariot and
of Christ's being transported by the devil to the top
of a mountain and to the pinnacle of a temple. Solomon
is said to have given the Queen of Sheba a vessel by
means of which she could traverse the air. Greek leg-
end told of flying gods like Hermes and flying mortals
like Daedalus and Icarus. In Platonic myths we hear
of the rise and fall of human souls through the heavenly
spheres and of the winged chariots in the Phaedrus.
In the myth of Er we are sometimes on the earth,
sometimes above it, looking down. Both classical and
later literatures use the device of dream or ecstasy in
which the soul leaves the body to travel through space.
Cicero's Somnium Scipionis set the pattern for much
later dream literature: Scipio in his dream gains a
conception of the universe and of the comparative
insignificance of earth. Plutarch's De facie in orbe
lunare is a cosmic voyage in its implications, concerned
with the moon's size, shape, distance, light, and nature.
In medieval literature such themes were picked up and
others added as man in trance sought other worlds and
Dante descended into Hell, then made his journey to
Paradise.

In England the prehistory of aviation begins with
a monarch, as in China, this one better known to us
for his son than for himself. Bladud, legendary tenth
king of Britain, was said to have made a flight on
feathered wings, which resulted in his death and the
accession of his son, King Lear. Into his death was read
a lesson on overweening ambition expressed by one
of many poets who wrote of him:

During the Renaissance that myriad-minded man,
Leonardo da Vinci, discovered the principle of the
glider and invented a parachute, in addition to his
many important studies of birds' wings and the princi-
ples underlying their flight. But it remained for the
seventeenth century to make basic discoveries that
presaged modern aviation and to develop the cosmic
voyage into the important type of literature it re-
mained for many years.

There were two main causes for the emergence of
the cosmic voyage as a form of art, one literary, one
scientific. The first English translation of Lucian's
moon-voyages in 1634 was in part responsible for the
popularity of the theme. In the True History men
reached the moon not by design but by chance. Ad-
venturing into unknown territory beyond the Pillars
of Hercules, mariners found their ship caught up by
a whirlwind. After eight days they reached the moon.
Lucian's description of the moon-world, and his voyage
among the stars to “cloud-cuckoo land” were the
merest fantasy with no attempt at even semi-scientific
verisimilitude. The voyage of Lucian's other moon-
voyager, Icaromenippus, has more similarities with the
cosmic voyage as it developed. Menippus reached the
moon by design, not chance. He fastened to his body
two wings, one of a vulture, the other of an eagle, and
after a period of practice took off from the summit
of Olympus. His first stop was at the moon, from which
he looked back upon an earth, which—according to
the Ptolemaic astronomy—remained stationary below
him. But not content merely with a moon-voyage, he
went on through the stars to heaven, which he reached
in a few days. He was returned to earth by Hermes,
and his wings stripped away to prevent further audac-
ity. But, while the Lucianic voyages helped establish
the literary pattern, the great stimulation of the cosmic
voyage to imagination was a major scientific discovery.

In March, 1610, appeared the Sidereus Nuncius (“the
starry messenger,” or message) of Galileo Galilei, Pro-
fessor of Mathematics at the University of Padua. In
this little pamphlet, Galileo set down excitedly the
chief discoveries he had made by his fifth telescope,
the first one developed to a power sufficient for celes-
tial observation. For centuries it had been taken for
granted by Greek, Roman, and medieval men that all
the stars were known and numbered and that they were
arranged in the familiar constellations, by a knowledge
of which men were able to travel by land or sea.
Through his “optick tube”—it was not called “tele-
scope” for some time—Galileo had observed “stars
innumerable,” and had solved the mystery of the Milky
Way, which proved to be the radiance of myriads of
stars never seen by the naked eye. What seemed to
Galileo his major discovery was one that began with
an incorrect surmise: he thought at first (1609) that
he had discovered four new planets but not much later
(Jan. 7, 1610) he found them to be satellites of Jupiter.
This discussion will be limited, however, to his obser-
vations on the moon, which proved very different from
the smooth lustrous body shining by its own light which
man observes at night. “The Moon,” Galileo reported,
“certainly does not possess a smooth and polished
surface, but one rough and uneven, and just like the
face of the Earth itself, is everywhere full of vast
protuberances, deep chasms, and sinuosities.” This was
not entirely new, since Plutarch and other classical

philosophers had presupposed such a possibility, but
their theories were based at most on logic. Galileo had
seen the sinuosities of the moon with his own eyes
through his tube. So too he could prove, not merely
conjecture, that the moon has no light of its own but
shines by reflected light. Most of all, Galileo had dis-
covered moon-spots, as later he discovered sunspots.
To some extent, the spots implied change or decay from
perfection, which up to the time of Galileo had been
limited to the sublunary world. The “great or ancient
spots” on the moon man had always known, drawing
them into various patterns of “the man in the moon.”
But Galileo had discovered “other spots smaller in size,
but so thickly scattered that they sprinkle the whole
surface of the moon.” From his observation Galileo
concluded that the surface of the moon, like that of
earth, is varied by mountains and valleys, and, indeed,
for a time he thought that some spots might indicate
the presence of lunar seas and lakes. Galileo later
denied the existence of water on the moon, though
other astronomers continued for some years to pre-
suppose its existence, making it possible for writers of
moon-voyages to imagine moon-worlds with atmos-
phere in which their travellers could breathe as on
earth.

The new moon-maps that began to appear during
the seventeenth century were engrossing to the imagi-
nation. For a time England used one nomenclature,
the Continent another, both imaginative and poetic.
They agreed in giving names to the lunar mountains.
There might indeed be, as Fontenelle suggested in his
Plurality of Worlds (Entretiens sur la pluralité des
mondes, 1686) “a promontory of dreams, a sea of tears,
or a sea of nectar.” Others suggested that there might
be a desert uninhabitable because of heat or an ocean
unknown to sons of Adam. So human imagination
played with the idea of a new world in the moon, as
one hardy mariner after another set off on voyages of
discovery.

Among the themes that entered imagination in the
seventeenth century was the possibility that man might
colonize the moon. The original suggestion was Ger-
man, made by no less a person than Johann Kepler,
according to John Wilkins' Discourse concerning a New
World (1638). England, with true British imperialism,
inevitably adopted the idea, as Wilkins shows. Indeed,
one of the reasons for the advance in aeronautics during
the seventeenth century was the belief that, once the
principle of space-flight was discovered, the first nation
to raise its flag on the moon—and later on the planets—
would possess new colonies. As time went on, the moon
was to be claimed by Spanish, Italian, and Dutch
romancers, as well as by German and British. In the
various travels that make up Voyages to the Moon, this
author looked eagerly at illustrations to see what flag
floated over the new territory. Let us turn now to some
of the various imaginary journeys.