Who lives on the Moon? What we learn from Ambrose Bierce and The Devil's Dictionary

'LUNARIAN, n. An inhabitant of the moon, as distinguished from Lunatic, one whom the moon inhabits. The Lunarians have been described by Lucian, Locke and other observers, but without much agreement. For example, Bragellos avers their anatomical identity with Man, but Professor Newcomb says they are more like the hill tribes of Vermont'.

Somehow I have started a practice of posting on Bluesky every day a dictionary definition from one of the many interesting and/or satirical dictionaries that are around. First of all I did Flaubert's Dictionary of Received Ideas. Then I moved on to Ambrose Bierce's The Devil's Dictionary, published in 1911. (I'm grateful to Finnbarr for recommending this to me). Some of Bierce's definitions are definitely old school racist and misogynist, so I've been quite select in what I've chosen to put on social media. But of course, when I came across this one for Lunarians, I was immediately captivated.

We'll leave aside any analysis of the Moon and madness; I'm just going to focus on the Moon itself. 

First of all, Bierce mentions Lucian. Lucian of Samosata's account of voyages to the Moon, written in the 2nd century CE, is a work of satire. This quote about the lunar inhabitants will give you the flavour of it:

'I am afraid to mention their eyes, lest, from the incredibility of the thing, you should not believe me. I must, however, inform you that they have eyes which they take in and out whenever they please: so that they can preserve them anywhere till occasion serves, and then make use of them; many who have lost their own, borrow from others; and there are several rich men who keep a stock of eyes by them'

You can read the full work for yourself here.

Lucian crater, on the Moon. Source: NASA

Now, I was unaware that philosopher John Locke (1632 -1704) had written about the Moon so of course I had to look this up straight away. It turns out I had the wrong Locke; but in tumbling down this wild rabbit hole, I did find this. In the fourth book of An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, according to the Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy,

Locke distinguishes two sorts of probable propositions. The first of these have to do with particular existences or matters of fact, and the second that are beyond the testimony of the senses. Matters of fact are open to observation and experience, and so all of the tests noted above for determining rational assent to propositions about them are available to us. Things are quite otherwise with matters that are beyond the testimony of the senses. These include the knowledge of finite immaterial spirits such as angels or things such as atoms that are too small to be sensed, or the plants, animals or inhabitants of other planets that are beyond our range of sensation because of their distance from us.

So other planets could be inhabited, but we'll never know!

Bierce actually means Richard Locke, who was the perpetrator of the Great Moon Hoax of 1835. This was also a work of satire, so this makes sense. The illustration below shows how he portrayed the lunar inhabitants.

A lithograph of the hoax's "ruby amphitheater", as printed in The Sun. Source: Wikimedia

Bierce says that 'Bragellos avers their anatomical identity with Man', which is funny when you consider the Lunarians described by Lucian, with their detachable eyes and many other absurdities, and by Locke, as you can see in the illustration above, with bat wings stretching between their limbs (Homo vespertilio). Bargellos, however, is a made-up person; Bierce has such people scattered throughout the Dictionary, with hilarious names like Opoline Jones and Jex Wopley.

Professor Newcomb is not made up. I'm pretty sure he's astronomer Simon Newcomb (1835 – 1909). Newcomb wrote three serious works on the Moon: Research on the Motion of the Moon, Part I (1878), Investigation of Inequalities in the Motion of the Moon Produced by the Action of the Planets (1907) and Research on the Motion of the Moon, Part II (1912). I had a look at them and frankly they're too full of equations and not very satirical.

He also wrote The Philosophy of Hyperspace and The Fairyland of Geometry, which I am very much more interested in. I suppose I'll just have to read between the equations.

Bierce might be alluding to the fact that in 1884 Newcomb became the inaugural president of the American Society for Psychical Research (ASPR). In this period, there were psychics, such as Catherine Müller, who visited other planets and met the inhabitants. In the course of his association with the Society, Newcomb decided that psychic research was all bunkum, which doesn't provide much to mock. 

By coincidence, one of the founding members of the ASPR was psychologist G. Stanley Hall.  I had come across him before. He invited Freud and Jung to the US in 1909 - enough alone to make him interesting! Some time before the turn of the 19th century, he conducted a study on what children thought about the Moon. It's fascinating, and I talk more about it in Dr Space Junk vs the Universe: Archaeology and the Future.

Back to Newcomb, though. Bierce says Newcomb thought the Lunarians were 'more like the hill tribes of Vermont'. Vermont is a very mountainous US state. I feel that this means something, but I don't know what. The hill tribes of Vermont could refer to a First Nations people, or to some type of white people. Bierce seems to be saying that Newcomb thought the hill tribes of Vermont did not resemble 'Man' [sic], so might as well be alien, I guess, or unevolved or devolved or something. I haven't really found anything else about this one.

So there you have it, a little discursion on Ambrose Bierce's satirical interplanetary musings.